T

XVIII

A FISHERMAN

HE Como fisherman is an ancient man,

withered and brown. He should be

accorded a unique place in the history

of humanity by the great world hurrying past his nook in battalions and armies. His career reminds one of the three wiseacres of Gotham who put out to sea in a wash-bowl, according to the nursery rhyme. He occupies the very tiniest sphere, yet is he kin to the bronzed sons of ocean of all coasts. Compared with his field of labour, the other lakes, Maggiore, Garda, or Lugano, have a vast horizon. He is entitled to a momentary consideration from the curious fact that, while the natives of many lands, both gentle and simple, may fish for minnows in a brook, either as a pastime or to supply the cottage larder with additional food, for him the

calling is a profession, followed by himself and his father before him, on this small, inland sheet of water. How wee and droll seem his ambitions as appertaining to the water populations of the earth, the African streams of mighty volume, the American network of rivers, with their tributaries, and the lakes with navigable stretches of rough billows out of sight of shores.

He lives on the side of Varenna, near the foaming cascade of the Fiume di Latte, where the torrent thaws in the spring, when the ice and snow begin to melt on the mountains above, winter having made the nymph of the spot a mute prisoner in crystal fetters for long months of cold in a cavern of the draughty hollow.

In the matter of living he is not better placed than the poor peasants of the Valtellina, with one room, smoky from the hearth in the middle of the floor, and the drying of chestnuts, at times, no chimney, a bed of straw on one side where sleeps the entire family, the passage way, a stable, and for protection against the wind a tattered cloth, the lamp a firebrand. On a festa

the coarse, brown bread of daily fare is mixed with nuts divided in halves. For the rest this humble population subsists on the harvest of rivers and lakes, the fish and mollusks.

The fisherman's hovel is like those described by Virgil and Theocritus. He shares all with a comrade, a partner, as old as himself. Their couch is scarcely more than the classical rushes spread on the ground, with a bundle of dried leaves for a pillow. Nets of fine mesh and tackle are collected beneath the roof, fish-hooks attached to white horse-hair lines, poles, and baskets, osier-work for stakes and palisades in shallows. premises.

Poverty has set her seal on the

Go to sea if you wish to fish, says the proverb. How is our ancient fisherman of Como to reach the sea? He haunts the side of Lecco by preference, where the river Adda, after a turbulent course down through the Valtellina range stirs the depths of Como, and flows out near the town of Lecco, then sweeps down to join the Po near Cremona. Hope is ever verdant, according

to another proverb. Why should not river Adda, as a natural gateway, bring to our fisherman riches, as well as a finny host enter Lugano in May, coming from the sea by way of the Ticino, Lake Maggiore, and the Tresa, when a party of men, on dark nights, light torches of leaves and straw, draw up their barge near shore, jump overboard to form a chain, and drive their prey to land, attracted by the fire, beating the surface of the water with oars? He patiently follows the migrations from one end of Como to the other of the palatable little fish of the herring species, the agoni. He could count on his brown fingers, if in boastful mood, the number of fine trout ever caught by him in younger days. He waits and hopes in his chances of good luck, while his boat rocks gently on the current. Who knows if there are fabulous creatures, half-monster and half-merman in the depths of the lake, such as the ancients believed in? The ledges are treacherous, and bodies of the drowned seldom recovered here. What fright if one of these shapes got entangled in the net sometime! In the

meanwhile the years pass, and the boat rocks gently on the current, and the nets are often empty. Oh, that the lamprey of Crassus, or a sleek carp would rise to the hook of the ancient fisherman! He imagines he discerns strange forms down in the clear waters, such as the filmy, indeterminate polypus, the little fish of the Latins, the remora, capable of magically retarding the progress of vessels, some species of the cramp fish that benumbs the members if handled, or a modern cousin of the scarus, set free by kindred when the angler's hook has been swallowed. What if one dredged up some delicate morsel, like the naker, with a tiny lobster serving as porter at the door of the shell to watch for food? There is ever the gateway of river Adda for a shoal to approach, moving in a cube, after the manner of the tunnies, and fill his boat to overflowing, like the miracles of sacred history. He dreams of fearful adventures on stormy winter nights, when the wind makes havoc among the trees and the lake is lashed into foam. He is more apt to capture in his sleep the golden prize