48 The Sea what the coroner's jury called an accident, was a native of Guysboro, N.S. When his wife claimed the body, she put a curse on Souris —"it would be a Town of widows". Fully a third of the crews of the American Schooners were Maritimers. The rioters arrested that night were fined $50 each, which seemed excessive. The run-of-mill offences which came before the magis¬ trates were for "fighting on the shore on the Sabbath" a $2 fine, or for being "drunk and disorderly" a $1 fine. Fighting the previous year was described by the Island Guardian and Christian Chronicle as "great rioting at Souris , caused by sailors who came ashore and got maddened by liquor. Several were severely injured." A Souris resident tells of a riot between and Nova Scotia fishermen..."towards the end, an English man-o-war came in the harbour and landed the crew on the beach. They fixed bayonets and marched up through the Town sweeping the crews back to their ships. English warships acted more or less as patrol vessels before the coming of the Dominion patrol boats. I remember a later one, the Kingfisher. ' But all was not fighting. Other diversions such as band concerts on the wharf, ball games in the pasture fields, social hours for the sailors at the reading room, The Sailors' Rest, provided occasions when Souris and her guests were on the friendliest terms. Fishermen had their superstitions. It is said that the Gloucester men never wanted to hear "Sweet Adeline" sung on board ship. If any one Adeline inclined was so reckless as to sing of her aboard ship, the schooner would put in at the nearest port and get clear of the offender. A fisherman too, and this is still held by the older men in Souris , never wanted anything but white mitts in his boat. Some would absolutely refuse to go out if anyone was wearing gray mitts. Sounds, Cod Oil and Fish Flakes: The thrifty fisherman of the early days combined several jobs. E.G. Fuller , whose wife for many years ran the Fuller House (sounded like a good table), later known as the Lennox, was storekeeper, fish trader and U.S. Consular agent. His sons were fishermen and he maintained fish stands in both Souris and Chepstow . But even without a hotel or an exporting business, fishermen had many things to keep them busy. Gone are the days when their small fields bloomed into flake yards and they dried their own fish, turning it, piling it and taking it in when rain threatened. Gone too, the sight of sounds drying on the fences. Sounds were not noises. Sounds were swim bladders from the hake which were dried and shipped to isinglass factories where they were ground into pulp and rolled into long thin sheets. Isinglass is remembered best in Souris homes as the transparent doors of cheery Quebec heaters and base burners. Cod oil was another of the fishermen's sidelines. It was made by allowing the livers to rot by self-digestion in barrels or vats exposed to sun and air. Eventually a layer of golden brown oil rose to the surface. This was used interchangeably with seal oil in the black iron betty lamps where it smoked badly and smelt abominable. But the most of Souris 'early oil was doubtless used for dressing leather. Only a tanner would find the smell of unrefined cod oil unobjectionable.