Let this passage be compared with the following, which gives an account of the use of the same kind of net among the Arabs. It will then appear how extensively it is employed, since we find it used in exactly the same way both by our own countrymen and by tribes which we consider as ranking very low in the scale of civilization; and on making this comparison, the inference will seem not unreasonable, that the ancient Greeks and Romans, who in several of their colonies in the Euxine Sea, on the coasts of Ionia, and of Spain, and in other places, carried on the catching and curing of fish with the greatest possible activity and to a wonderful extent, used nets of as great a compass as those which are here described.
"The fishery is here (i. e. at Burka, on the eastern coast of Arabia) conducted on a grand scale, by means of nets many hundred fathoms in length, which are carried out by boats. The upper part is supported by small blocks of wood, formed from the light and buoyant branches of the date-palm, while the lower part is loaded with lead. To either extremity of this a rope is attached, by which, when the whole of the net is laid out, about thirty or forty men drag it towards the shore. The quantity thus secured is enormous; and what they do not require for their own consumption is salted and carried into the interior. When, as is very generally the case, the nets are the common property of the whole village, they divide the produce into equal shares[1]."
That this method of fishing was practised by the Egyptians from a remote antiquity appears from the remaining monuments. The paintings on the tombs show persons engaged in drawing the sean, which has floats along its upper margin and leads along the lower border[2]. An ancient Egyptian net, obtained by M. Passalacqua, is preserved in the Museum at Ber-*
- ↑ Lieutenant Wellsted's Travels in Arabia, vol. i. (Ornam), pp. 186, 187.
- ↑ See Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 20, 21; see also vol. iii. p. 37. One of these paintings, copied from Wilkinson, is introduced in Plate X. fig. 3. of this work. The fishermen are seen on the shore drawing the net to land full of fishes. There are eight floats along the top, and four leads at the bottom on each side. The water is drawn as is usual in Egyptian paintings.
