Mr. Stevenson was ever an intelligent and anxious observer of the habits and industry of the people of those remote and isolated parts of the country which he so often visited. He was specially interested in the fisheries from which they mainly derive their support, as testified by frequent allusions to them in his journals and notes.
The following notice regarding the state of the Scottish fisheries, made in 1819, to the editor of the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_,[11] will be read with interest:--
“Having been for many years conversant with the navigation of the Scottish seas, I have, prior to the war with Holland, seen fleets of Dutch ‘busses’ engaged in the herring fishery off the northern parts of our coast. For a long time past, however, those industrious fishermen had not ventured to approach these shores; and they are now only beginning to reappear.
“In the early part of August last, while sailing along the shores of Kincardineshire, about ten miles off Dunnottar Castle, the watch upon deck, at midnight, called out ‘Lights ahead.’ Upon a nearer approach these lights were found to belong to a small fleet of Dutch fishermen employed in the deep sea fishing, each vessel having a lantern at her mast head. What success these plodding people had met with our crew had no opportunity of inquiring; but upon arriving the next morning at Fraserburgh,--the great fishing station on the coast of Aberdeen--we found that about 120 boats, containing five men each, had commenced the fishing season here six weeks before, and had that night caught no fewer than about 1500 barrels of herrings, which in a general way, when there is a demand for fish, may be valued at £1 sterling per barrel to the fishermen, and may be regarded as adding to the wealth of the country perhaps not less than £3000. In coasting along between Fraserburgh and the Orkney Islands, another fleet of Dutch fishermen was seen at a distance. The harbour and bay of Wick were crowded with fishing boats and busses of all descriptions, collected from the Firth of Forth and southward even as far as Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The Caithness fishing was said to have been pretty successful, though not equal to what it has been in former years.