one side of the other barges, this was intended to close up the oblong when the fish were all in the final chamber.

We were rowed from our yacht to one of the scattered boats in which was seated Signor Carusa, the boss of the show, we handed him our introduction and took our seats in his boat. Here we sat for upwards

of an hour and saw shoals of Tunny swimming about deep down in the sea, they looked the size of big cod at this great depth. They seemed rather obstinate about entering the last chamber. At length, however, a shout was raised by the men at the entrance, the shoal was in, and we rowed quickly to the big barge at the top of the chamber of death. Meanwhile the second large barge filled up the other end of the oblong, and sixty men on board of it began hauling up the net, singing a mournful chant as they did so to keep in time, while a man standing in a boat inside the oblong enclosure constantly threw water over them to keep them cool. The men continued to haul until their barge had touched the other barges; and now began such a splashing and dashing, the mighty monsters, crowded together and filled with fear, rose to the surface and churned the water into a mass of foam. We began to think that we should not have a dry shred of clothing on before many minutes were passed. However, we got out of the way of the water by standing at the back of the barge. The work of slaughter now commenced, some sixty men being in one barge at the one end of the oblong and thirty in another at the other end; as the fish swam past they were first gaffed by two men with very long gaffs and drawn to the side of the barge, where four other men with short gaffs hooked the fish on either side and hauled them all bleeding into the boat where they were left to die. It took six men to land a fish. This process goes on till all are killed.

A small boat had been left during this time to catch any sword-fish there might happen to be amongst the Tunny before they damaged the net. This boat ran a great risk of being upset as it got many a heave from these large fish.

On this occasion four hundred and ninety Tunny and three Swordfish were killed. It was, we were told, a fair kill but nothing unusual. The slaughter of the Tunny was not altogether a pleasant sight, especially before breakfast, the sea being made quite red with blood for some distance round. It was truly a scene of butchery ! After all were taken, the net was lowered again and the barges with their cargoes

started off for the shore. On their reaching the factory the fish were thrown into the sea, then some men from the shore waded in, and having fixed into the eye of the fish a hook with a long rope attached to it, they landed them by running them up an inclined plane into a kind of paved courtyard where they were left for a time. When all had been laid out in this courtyard, the process of cutting up began, each man having his different part to perform. One, with a large axe, cut off their heads with two strokes; another removed the roe from the female fish and so on. When the process of cutting was over the carcasses were carried into the factory, where the greater part was salted down like pork for the Italian navy. Some of the more delicate portions are tinned in oil, and the roes are cured like tongues.

The flesh when eaten fresh is more like veal than fish; it is very pleasant to the taste though rather rich. The roe is most excellent served as a "Savory" cut in thin slices and put cold on hot slices of buttered toast, another way in which it may be eaten is with oil as "Hors d'œuvres."

The isle of Favignana is a convict settlement, and a good many of the convicts are employed in the factory. They looked a real bad lot with their clanking leg chains and green and white striped uniforms.

After inspecting the factory we took a lounge in the town, a small one of the Sicilian type.

At one o'clock we bade adieu to Favignana and its Tunny fishery and re-embarked for Marsala. Thus ended our most interesting and enjoyable trip.

A. L. WOODHOUSE.

ON THE HISTORY

AND ANTIQUITIES OF LYME.

PART IV.

EVEN as early as 1612 there had been a very bitter quarrel between the respective adherents of the Court and Country parties in this borough. John Geere or Geare, who was vicar of Lyme from 1608 to 1650, had incurred the censure of his ecclesiastical superiors by his very pronounced Puritanism and his license as a preacher was withdrawn. Out of revenge or perhaps from a really conscientious motive he thereupon procured an act as it was then called, i.e., brought an action against the Mayor and his brethren and the Cobb-wardens (meaning the wardens of the Cobb ale) for the using of profane and religious abuses. The ground of attack does not seem to have been skilfully chosen for the Council had not yet become so virtuous as to wish that there should be no more cakes and ale. They were on the side of Sir Toby rather than of Malvolio. The majority not only passed a vote that the action should be defended at the town cost, but countercharged Geere's chief partizan and backer, Robert Hassard, with misdemeanours wilfully committed in his Mayoralty and made it a Star Chamber matter. Hassard, in consequence, was deprived of the Magistracy which as ex-mayor he continued to hold by virtue of the recent Charter. But he had powerful friends at Court, and at their intercession was conditionally reinstated provided he cleared himself by a judicial hearing before the Star Chamber. This he neglected to do, perhaps felt he could not do. The triumphant Royalists in the Corporation followed up their victory, and he was expelled by a vote of the capital burgesses on this account and for being a professed follower of John Geere. Another of the sixteen, by name John Viney, was also suspended from his office at the

same time, as being too great a favourer of Geere, until he should show some worthy fruits of his conformity and amendment.

Notwithstanding this repulse Puritanism went on increasing both in power and in intensity. Strolling players were not allowed to contaminate the borough with their presence, Sabbath observance was enforced by strict penalties, and the Cobb ale itself gradually fell into desuetude. It became yearly more difficult to find persons willing to accept the onorous office of Wardenship of the ale, and the Juries at the Court Leet attacked it either covertly or openly. It ceased and was never afterwards revived. Thirty years after the expulsion of Hassard from the Corporation the Cavalier element in Lyme though not extinct had become in a very small minority. But Protestant and Puritanical as Lyme was, the one name in its martyrology is that of the Roman Catholic priest Hugh Green, who was arrested on the Cobb at Lyme, as he was about to take his passage for abroad, and executed at Dorchester amid circumstances of much cruelty and insult in 1642, on no other charge than of having a little outstayed the day fixed by Royal Proclamation (much against the King's will) for all Roman Catholic priests leaving the country.

In the Civil War the importance of Lyme to the Parliament and the reason also why the Royalists besieged it with such pertinacity arose from the fact that it was one, and apparently the weakest, link in a chain of forts extending across from Channel to Channel, which effectually curbed and kept in check the Royalist counties of Devon and Cornwall (Plymouth was the only non-Royalist place in the one county, and in the other there was none) and prevented their forces from marching to join the main army of the King.

Almost immediately after the commencement of hostilities in 1642 Sir Thomas Trenchard and Sir Walter Earle, the latter of whom had represented Lyme in the House of Commons, took possession of the town for the Parliament. There were forts there and batteries guarding the approach by sea, but the land side was entirely unprotected. The oldest of these forts were the Eastern Fort or Gun Cliff immediately at the back of the Guild Hall, which remains, though the embrasures have been walled up, and was mounted with four guns, and the Bell Cliff which overlooks the entrance to the Marine Parade and was formerly surmounted by a parapet which has since given place to iron rails. The

latter got its name from the alarm bell hung in it to summon the burgesses to arms. Only fifteen years before a third fort, the Stoning or Stone Fort, of which only the foundation now remains upon the beach and can be sometimes seen, had been built facing the sea and a little further to the west, for the better protection of the Cobb, and by the subscriptions of the townspeople. There was or had been a fourth

fort close to the Cobb itself at a spot called Birch Door. But except the Stone Fort all were merely constructed of palisades and mud. The Gun Cliff dates from William Ellesdon's Mayoralty in 1595. There were also guns on the Church Cliffs.

But in this Civil War there was more danger from the land side than the sea, and the first care of the Parliamentarian officers was to erect a chain of defensive works in this direction connected by a curtain wall. The encroachment of the sea has swept away all trace of what used to be Davey's Fort in the Church Cliffs, and Newel's Fort, which guarded the approach by way of Charmouth Lane. There were two other forts which guarded the approach by way of Uplyme, Gatch's Fort or the Middle Fort and the Western Fort. One of these seems to have been on the site of Mr. Carter's Nursery Ground, where within the memory of several persons there was a heaped-up mound of earth, in levelling which there was discovered a large quantity of cannon balls and bullets. All classes, and women even more zealously than men, laboured like the Athenians of Themistocles or what would have been a more familiar instance to themselves, the Jews of Ezra, at the construction and completion of these works, and probably, unlike the Lyme people of to-day, without any thought of payment. The Parliament did indeed make a small grant both of ammunition and of money, but too small to be more than a very moderate grant in aid.

Col. Thomas Ceely was appointed Governor and ably supported by Captain Pyne and other gallant officers. Blake joined the garrison but not quite yet.

1643 opened with "excursions and alarums;" the town was threatened by the approach of Lord Poulett and Sir Ralph Hopton, and the townsmen petitioned the Parliament for help. The Parliament ordered Sir Walter Earle to send such forces from the levies of Dorset as the occasion should require, and granted the burgesses £200 out of their own subscription money. That danger being averted the Lyme garrison