THE MACKEREL FISHERIES.

But few are aware of the great extent of the mackerel and other fisheries of this country. It has been estimated that during the summer months, or rather between June and November, more than twenty thousand vessels are constantly engaged in the different kinds of fisheries, employing no less than 250,000 men. By a treaty with Great Britain, American vessels are allowed the privilege of fishing within certain limits of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the quantity of fish taken from this place alone, is truly astonishing. The coast of Newfoundland yields its codfish to the hardy sailor from May until December, while the better class of mackerel are taken from August to October. Many mackerel, however, of a proper class, are taken along the southern shore of our own country prior to this, but as a general thing they are deemed worthy of little notice. The Bay of Chaleur, along the coast of Prince Edward's Island, the Magdalen Islands and Northumberland Straits, are considered the choicest mackerel grounds. Here the fleet of vessels congregated at one time will often amount to two thousand sail, although, as a general thing, not more than from two to four husdred vessels sail in company. At night, when the fleet is safely anchored, the lanterus lighted on each vessel and swinging upon the shrouds, one may fancy himself looking upon some huge city lying in repose, with its lamps all trimmed and burning.

The bait alone, which is ground up and thrown to the fish to keep them about the vessel, is a very large item in the expense of carrying on the trade. This is either herrings, porgies, or clams, well salted and cleansed, put up expressly for the purpose. The average cost of it is about three-and-a-half dollars per barrel, at least two barrels of which are thrown away per day in good fishing. Allowing at the time we were in the Gulf there were two thousand sail, you then have $16,000 per day, thrown away to the fishes, or say $100 per vessel for each trip; which is below the actual amount, and we thus have the enormous sum of $200,000.

The method of taking the mackerel is very simple. The vessel is "hove to," and men are arranged on the "windward" side, as many as can conveniently stand from bow to stern. Each man is provided with four lines; only two can be used in fast fishing. On each line is attached the hook, which is sunk into an oblong bit of lead, called a "jig." A barrel is placed behind each man, into which the fish are "snapped" as caught, the jaw tearing out as easily as though made of paper. Owing to this tenderness of the jaw, the fish must be hauled very carefully, though with great rapidity. One man stands "amidships," throwing the bait which has been carefully ground, to keep the fish about the vessel, while the hooks are baited with pork rind, a bit of liv. er, or a piece of the mackerel itself. When caught, they are split, gibbed, scraped washed in three waters, and then salted-the whole being done with astonishing celerity,

THE PROMPT MERCHANTS' CLERK.

A correspondent of the London Youth's Instructor relates an anecdote, which we transfer to the pages of the Merchants' Magazine for the especial benefit of young men entering mercantile life:

"I once new a young man,” said an eminent preacher the other day, in a sermon to young men, "that was commencing life as a clerk. One day his employer said to him, Now, to morrow, that cargo of cotton must be got out and weighed, and we must have a regular account of it.'

"He was a young man of energy. This was the first time he had been intrusted to superintend the execution of this work. He made his arrangements over night, spoke to the men about their carts and horses, and, resolved to begin very early in the morning, he instructed the laborers to be there at half-past four o'clock. His master comes in, and, seeing him sitting in the counting-house, looks very black, supposes that his commands had not been executed.

"I thought,' said the master, 'you were requested to get out that cargo this morning.'

་

"It is all done,' said the young man, and here is the account of it.'

ness.

"He never looked behind him from that moment-never! His character was fixed, confidence was established. He was found to be the man to do the thing with promptHe very soon came to be one that could not be spared; he was as necessary to the firm as any of the partners. He was a religious man, and went through a life of great benevolence, and at his death was able to leave his children an ample fortune. He was not smoke to the eye nor vinegar to the teeth, but just the contrary."

COMMERCIAL GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES.

From the able and eloquent speech of the Hon. DAVID SEYMOUR, of New York, on the River and Harbor Bill, delivered in the House of Representatives, July 21, 1852, we extract the following brief but comprehensive picture of our commercial progress;

"Let us briefly survey the present position of our Republic, and see what it demands of us as wise and patriotic legislators. Our country is rapidly advancing in her career of greatness. Compare its situation in 1838, when the last general appropriations for the rivers and harbors were made, with its present condition, and we are astonished at the progress we have made. No other nation has achieved so much in the same period. We have peaceably annexed one empire, settled the boundaries of another, and conquered a third. Our Commerce, which, fourteen years ago, was found in three grand divisions-that of the western rivers, the northwestern lakes, and the Atlantic coast-has crossed the isthmus, and now covers the shores of the western ocean. To our two maritime fronts, the Atlantic and the Gulf, we have added the Pacific. And there from a coast of sixteen hundred miles in extent, we look out upon the primeval habitations of our race-the seats of ancient empire-and the most inviting field ever opened to the moral or physical energies of man. Nor is the dominion thus gained a barren scepter. On the contrary, the precious metals found in abundance in California have placed in the hands of this Republic a monetary power which, ere long, will transfer commercial ascendancy from Europe to America, and will adjust in our great commercial emporium the balance-sheet of the world. And can such a nation be longer held in the swaddling bands of its infancy or the leadingstrings of its childhood? The enterprise of our country, always bold and restless, is already, by the liberal aids of an improved science and the vast accessions of capital, driven onward almost with maddening speed. Nothing can arrest the progress of individual effort in all the avenues of Commerce. You may excite the apprehensions of the timid, the doubts of the wavering, or the opposition of the enemies of progress, but all will be in vain. The mighty current of events, as they are ordained, will, in spite of our resistance, bear us onward and still onward to our destiny. It is, then, the part of wisdom, of exalted patriotism, to grasp the helm of the ship of State, and, with a strong and bold hand, guide it on its course by the chart of the Con-titution.

COMMISSION MERCHANTS.

The Pittsburgh Daily Despatch, puts a question, and makes a statement in the following paragraph, which we are assured is supported by the most incontestable evidence.

"HOW IS THIS?"-Can a Commission Merchant in "good and regular standing" in a Christian Church, go to a steamboat officer and bargain for the shipment of say 400 bbls of flour at forty cents per barrel, provided the steamboat officer will agree to fill up the bill at fifty cents per bbl.-s -so as to enable the merchant to make $40 over his legitimate commission, &c., off the confiding consigner or owner, who pays this forty dollars more than he need pay, if the whole transaction were straight forward and bona fide? Is this a "fair business transaction?" Is it honorable or even honest? Is it not a mean fraud? We think so-yet it is done here, not occasionally, but constantly-by people affecting honor and even piety. A man who confides in them is made to suffer to the tune of five or ten cents per hundred on the freight which he entrusts to them for shipment, and steamboatmen must become parties to the fraud, or in case of refusal, give place to those who will. We may be told this is none of our business, but it is-all that demoralizes or depraves public sentiment, concerns every wise citizen-and it is our duty to see that neither steamboatmen nor other men are tempted or compelled to do what they feel and acknowledge to be wrong, by those who profess to be moral Christian men. We have a host of witnesses to support our statements, if any body doubts.

ABSORPTION IN BUSINESS.

Some men devote themselves so exclusively to their business, as to almost entirely neglect their domestic and social relations. A gentleman of this class having failed, was asked what he intended to do. "I am going home to get acquainted with my wife and children," said he.

THOMAS TARBELL, A BOSTON MERCHANT,

FREEMAN HUNT, Esq., Editor of the Merchants' Magazine :—

DEAR SIR:-The public journals of Boston have recently announced the death of an old merchant, and a good man-Mr. THOMAS TARBELL. He was the poor man's friend, and for years was ever ready to dispense the bounty of our public charities, and to aid the poor and friendless by his purse and counsel.

One provision of his will deserves a record in your valuable Magazine. He has provided for the ultimate payment of the balance remaining unpaid on old debts which he was owing in 1826, when misfortunes in business caused him to make an assignment of his property.

Such instances are rare, and should be noticed. His friends, and the community among which he lived, will share the feelings of pride and pleasure he would have enjoyed, had his measure of success while he lived enabled him then to have carried into effect this cherished purpose of his heart.

The Commerce in roses is an entirely French business. As early as 1779, France exported rose bushes, and for the last twenty years enormous quantities are sent from France to England, Russia, Germany, and the United States. The department of the Seine alone, it is said, produces every year roses to the amount of a million of francs. A hundred thousand stalks (pieds) are sold in the flower-market, they (francs de pied?) amount to a hundred and fifty thousand more; finally, the grafts which are exported are valued at eight hundred thousand. Four millions francs value of flowers are sold in the Paris market alone, independently of what are furnished for public and private festivals. Paris consumes five millions francs worth of strawberries; five hundred hectares (a hectare is a little over two acres) of the department of the Seine is devoted to this interesting culture. Epiny, near St. Denis, sends great quantities of asparagus to England every day. Meaden sends as large an amount of plums, while Honfleur and its suburbs dispatch to London a million francs worth of melons.

Kitchen garden culture may then be called a peculiarly French branch of industry, for its productions figure in all the European markets, and even in Senegal and North America.

THE ROMANCE OF TRADE.

Lundy Foot, the celebrated snuff manufacturer of Dublin, originally kept a small tobacconist's shop at Limerick, Ireland. One night his house, which was uninsured, was burnt to the ground. As he contemplated the smoking ruins on the following morning, in a state bordering on despair, some of the poor neighbors, groping among the embers for what they could find, stumbled upon several canisters of unconsumed but half baked snuff, which they tried, and found so grateful to their noses, that they loaded their waistcoat pockets with the spoil.

Lundy Foot, roused from his stupor, at length imitated their example, and took a pinch of his own property, when he was instantly struck by the superior pungency and flavor it had acquired from the great heat to which it had been exposed. Treas uring up this valuable hint, he took another house, in a place called "Black Yard," and preparing a large oven for the purpose, set diligently about the manufacture of that high dried commodity, which soon became known as "Black Yard Snuff”—a term subsequently corrupted into the more familiar word " Blackguard."

Lundy Foot, making his customers pay liberally through the nose for one of the most "distinguished" kinds of snuff in the world, soon raised the price of his production, took a larger house in the city of Dublin, and was often heard to say "I made a very handsome fortune by being, as I supposed, utterly ruined!"

When he was rich enough to own and use a carriage, he applied to Lord Norbury for an appropriate motto for its panels. The wily Judge suggested the Latin phrase, 66 Quid rides."

EXPEDIENTS OF SMUGGLERS.

A gentleman from Paris writes the following :—I saw through one of the windows of the Mayor's office, in the twelfth arondisement, the body of a negro hanging by the neck. At the first glance, and even at the second, I took it for a human being, whom disappointed love, or perhaps an expeditious judge, had disposed of so suddenly; but I soon ascertained that the ebony gentleman in question was only a large doll, as large as life. What to think of this I did not know, so I asked the door keeper the meaning of it.

"This is the Contraband Museum," was the answer; and on my showing a curiosity to examine it, he was kind enough to act as my cicerone.

In a huge dirty room are scattered ever the floor, along the walls and on the ceiling, all the inventions of roguery which had been confiscated from time to time by those guardians of the law, the revenue officers.

It is a complete arsenal of the weapons of smuggling, all, unfortunately, in complete confusion.

Look before you; there is a hogshead dressed up for a nurse, with a child that holds two quarts and a half. On the other side are logs hollow as the Trojan horse, and filled with armies of cigars. On the floor lies a huge boa constrictor, gorged with China silks; and just beyond it, a pile of coal curiously perforated with spools

of cotton.

The colored gentlemen who excited my sympathy at first, met with his fate under the following circumstances:-He was built of tin, painted black, and stood like a heyduck, or Ethiopean chasseur, on the foot-board of a carriage, fastened by his feet and hands. He had frequently passed through the gates, and was well known by sight to the soldiers, who noticed he was always showing his teeth, which they supposed to be the custom of his country.

One day the carriage he belonged to was stopped by a crowd at the gate. There was, as usual, a grand chorus of yells and oaths, the vocal part being performed by the drivers and cartmen, and the instrumental by the whips.

The negro, however, never spoke a single word. His good behaviour delighted the soldiers, who held him up as an example to the crowd.

“Look at that black fellow," they cried, "see how well he behaves! Bravo, nigger, bravo!"

He showed a perfect indifference to their applause.

My friend," said a clerk at a barrier, jumping up on the foot-board, and slapping

our sable friend on the shoulder, "we are very much obliged to you."

Oh, surprise! the shoulder rattled. The officer was bewildered, he sounded the footman all over, and found he was made of metal, and as full as his skin could hold of the very best contraband liquor drawn out of his foot.

The juicy mortal was seized at once, and carried off in triumph.

The first night the revenue people drank up one of his shoulders, and he was soon bled to death. It is now six years since he lost all the moisture of his system, and was reduced to a dry skeleton.

CHRONICLES OF THE COMMERCE OF CHARLESTON.

A correspondent of the Charleston Courier has culled from the pages of "The Political Magazine and Parliamentary, Naval, Military and Literary Journal,” pub- . lished in London in 1780, with a view to ascertain facts in relation to that city, and incidentally to Carolina. We give a few of his extracts, as follows:

"In 1686 the Spaniards invaded Carolina. In April, 1693, the labors of Locke were abrogated on the requisition of the Carolinas themselves. It was not until twenty-seven years after that this province acquired the appellation of North and South Carolina. About this time rice was introduced by a brigantine from Madagascar, touching at Sullivan's Island in her way to Britain. About the beginning of this century Sir Nathaniel Johnson introduced the culture of silk. After a long and violent opposition, the Church of England was established by law.

In 1715 Charleston consisted of five or six hundred houses. In 1740 a great fire, in the space of six hours, destroyed three hundred of the best houses.

"In 1744 two hundred and thirty vessels loaded at Charleston; fifteen hundred seamen, at least, employed.

“In 1745 indigo was discovered to be a spontaneous plant in the province. Many of the planters doubled their capital every three or four years by planting indigo.

"In 1724 British goods valued at near £60,000, imported. Eighteen thousand barrels of rice, 52,000 barrels of pitch, tar, and turpentine, with deer-skins, furs, and raw silk were exported to England.

"In 1761 rice 40s. a barrel, indigo 28. a pound; yet as the quantity increased the price rose, for in 1771 rice sold at £3 10s. a barrel, and indigo at 3s. a pound. At the peace of 1762. and for three years after, on an average the export was £395,666 13s 4d., but in 1771 the export had risen to the amazing value of £756,000 sterling.

"In 1773, 507 vessels cleared at Charleston. In December, 1799, the militia muster roll in Charleston 1,400 men; inhabitants 14,000. Province militia muster roll 13,000. Total white inhabitants 65,000. The whole number of negroes and mulattoes in the province upward of 100,000."

POLITENESS IN DUNNING,

An old gentleman had owed a firm for years; at last, after everybody's patience and temper were exhausted, a clerk named Frank undertook to get the money. Frank called upon the gentleman, and met with a polite reception, and the usual answer, with the addition, " You need not trouble yourself, young man, about the matter; I will make it all right."

"O, no," replied Frank, "I could not think for a moment of compelling you to call at the store for a few dollars. It will not be the slightest inconvenience for me to stop in, as I pass your place of business six times a day, to and from my meals, and I can call every time I go by."

"Here," said the old fellow to his bookkeeper, alarmed at the prospect of being dunned six times a day for the next six months, "pay this impertinent rascal. He can beat me in politeness, and, if he wants a situation, I will give him two thousand dol lars a year."

SMUGGLING IN CHINA.

A correspondent of the London Spectator, whose letter is published in the Chinese Repository, says:—

Smuggling is no new thing in China. Nothing in all the land seems better regulated, or to be conducted more systematically than this branch of business. How far its tariff of duties has been reduced to writing no one can tell; indeed, every tariff in China is merely nominal, as different from the reality as can well be imagined. One of these new features, the only one I will allude to, seems to have resulted from the stolidity of the functionaries connected with the native custom-house department. Because a foreign vessel happened to be furnished with a certain kind of machinery, her owners must be subjected to any amount of annoyance the custom-house people might see fit to impose. The managers of the steamer were not to be wronged in this way, nor were those who wished to ship cargo by her; and accordingly they arranged their own business. The amount of duties lost on the one side, and saved on the other, by this measure, must, some persons say, be reckoned by thousands of dollars!

STUDY AND BUSINESS.

In learning, concentrate the energy of mind principally on the study; the attention divided among several studies is weakened by the division; besides, it is not given to man to excel in many things. But while one study claims your main attention, make occasional excursions into the fields of literature and science, and collect materials for the improvement of your favorite pursuit.

The union of contemplative habits constructs the most useful and perfect character; contemplation gives relief to action; action gives relief to contemplation. A man unaccustomed to speculation is confined to a narrow routine of action; a man of more speculation constructs visionary theories, which have no practical utility.

Excellence in a profession, and success in business, are to be obtained only by persevering industry. None who thinks himself above his vocation can succeed in it, for we cannot give our attention to what our self-importance despises. None can be eminent in his vocation who devotes his mental energy to a pursuit foreign to it, for success in what we love is failure in what we neglect.