MONEY IN THE SEA.
The Magician who Makes Gold Swim--$30,000,000 in a Shoal of
Cod--200 per cent. Profits in Salmon--How French Sardines are Made
in Maine--Vast Money in Bivalves--John Bull, Brother Jonathan, and
the Seal Fisheries--Chasing a Greenland Whale--Old Salts who Have
Made their “Pile”--Why Salt Fish is Worth More than Fresh--The
Greatest Reservoir of Wealth--A Leaf from a Business Ledger.
Gold floats in the air, swims in the sea, springs up out of the earth,
and lies deep hid in the mountain bed. How can gold swim? In the form of
millions upon millions of tiny creatures whose destruction brings gold
into the pockets of their captors. Literally, the ocean is the biggest
field of revenue on the planet. It is a reservoir of wealth which all
the ages are not likely to exhaust. Further, the ocean, unlike the land,
has not been and cannot be partitioned out among individual owners. Any
man can enter upon any body of water not actually occupied by another,
and appropriate all that he finds there. The following are among the
most profitable of the fisheries: