ttack of a formidable
dog which keeps watch and ward over the premises, explains to me the
mystery of the trade. I find myself in the midst of a square. On one
side are a great stack of oak and many casks of old salt. The latter, I
gather, is sold to be used as manure. The former is applied to the fire,
which gently smokes the Yarmouth bloater. On one side, the herrings, as
they are received, are pickled--that is, first washed in fresh water, and
then immersed in great tubs in which the water is mixed with salt. The
next thing is to take them into a room in which several women are engaged
in spitting them--that is, hanging them on rods--and then they are
carried to the apartment where they are hung up, while oak logs are burnt
beneath. In twelve hours they are sufficiently smoked, and then you have
the real Yarmouth bloater. I am glad I have seen the process, as I have
a horrible suspicion that the costermonger manufactures many a Yarmouth
bloater in some filthy Whitechapel slum, the odour of which by no means
tends to improve the flavour of so delicate a fish.

But we have to discuss the red-herring, not of the artful politician,
anxious to dodge his hearers, but of the breakfast-table. For this
purpose I am taken to a large oven filled with oak sawdust, gathered from
Ipswich, and oak shavings, which are also brought from a distance,
principally from Bass's Brewery, and, indeed, from all the great works
where oak is used; I see heaps of fire made from these ashes, which give
out much heat, and at the same time much smoke. In a loft above are hung
the herrings, and there they hang twelve days, till they gradually become
of the colour of a guinea, when they are packed up and sent away in
casks, while the bloaters go away in baskets of a hundred, in pots
holding a smaller number, and in barrels in which as many as three
hundred are stowed away. As to the kippered herring, he undergoes quite
a different treatment. Some twenty or thirty women get hold of him, cut
him open, take out his gut and wash him, and then he is hung over an oak
fire and smoked for twelve hours, and thus, saturated with smoke inside
and out, is regarded in many circles as a delicacy to be highly prized.
But he must be got off the premises. Well, if we climb to a loft, we
shall see a good many young women hard at work stripping the rods, on
which he and his fellows have been suspended, and stowing the fish away.
In the autumn especially the