228 NEWFOUNDLAND.

again immediately after the fish is thrown on the stage.

The stage is a building erected on posts, jutting out into the sea far enough to allow the fishing boats to come close to its end. Generally covered over and attached to it, or rather on the same platform, is the salt-house, in which there are one or more tables, with st1 ong wooden stools fo1 four important

personages among the shoremen, distinguished by the ;"

-._-.

expressive cognomens of cut- th1 oat, header, splitte1,§" and salter. *6 “M“ .

F 11211311 is thrown with a kind of pike upon the stage, and carried generally by boys or women to the long table. The business of the cut-throat, as his name implies, is to cut, with a sharp-pointed double- edged knife, across the throat of the fish to the bone, and rip open its bowels. He then passes it quickly to the header, who, with a strong sudden wrench, pulls off the head, and tears out the entrails, passing the fish instantaneously to the splitter, and at the same moment separating the liver, precipitates the head and entrails through a hole in the platform into the sea, under the stage-floor. The splitter, with one cut, lays the fish open from head to tail, and, almost in the twinkling of an eye, with'another cut takes out the sound bone, which, if the sounds are not to be preserved, he lets fall through a hole into the sea,

* The splitter is next in rank to the foreman of the fishing-rooms, who is called master voyage, and under him, receives most wages; the next in precedence and wages is the salter. The cut-throat and header are pretty much on a par.