n view of this
river) to Dartmouth, a town of note, seated at the mouth of the River
Dart, and where it enters into the sea at a very narrow but safe
entrance. The opening into Dartmouth Harbour is not broad, but the
channel deep enough for the biggest ship in the Royal Navy. The sides of
the entrance are high-mounded with rocks, without which, just at the
first narrowing of the passage, stands a good strong fort without a
platform of guns, which commands the port.

The narrow entrance is not much above half a mile, when it opens and
makes a basin or harbour able to receive 500 sail of ships of any size,
and where they may ride with the greatest safety, even as in a mill-pond
or wet dock. I had the curiosity here, with the assistance of a merchant
of the town, to go out to the mouth of the haven in a boat to see the
entrance, and castle or fort that commands it; and coming back with the
tide of flood, I observed some small fish to skip and play upon the
surface of the water, upon which I asked my friend what fish they were.
Immediately one of the rowers or seamen starts up in the boat, and,
throwing his arms abroad as if he had been bewitched, cries out as loud
as he could bawl, "A school! a school!" The word was taken to the shore
as hastily as it would have been on land if he had cried "Fire!" And by
that time we reached the quays the town was all in a kind of an uproar.

The matter was that a great shoal--or, as they call it, a "school"--of
pilchards came swimming with the tide of flood, directly out of the sea
into the harbour. My friend whose boat we were in told me this was a
surprise which he would have been very glad of if he could but have had a
day or two's warning, for he might have taken 200 tons of them. And the
like was the case of other merchants in town; for, in short, nobody was
ready for them, except a small fishing-boat or two--one of which went out
into the middle of the harbour, and at two or three hauls took about
forty thousand of them. We sent our servant to the quay to buy some, who
for a halfpenny brought us seventeen, and, if he would have taken them,
might have had as many more for the same money. With these we went to
dinner; the cook at the inn broiled them for us, which is their way of
dressing them, with pepper and salt, which cost us about a farthing; so
that two of us and a servant dined--and at a tavern, too--for three
farthings, dressing and all. And this is the reason of te