716 GEOGRAPHICAL BE VIEW OF IDE FISHERIES. 



New-laud,' ami to appropriate it to his own use, forbidding all others to use. the same without his license. [Colony 

 Records.] The inference seems to be that the oyster was not common in this river." ' 



EAISLY HISTORY OF THE MACKEREL FISHERY. The following interesting account of the mackerel fishery from 

 1660 to 181'2, including certain laws regarding the capture of the fish only at certain seasons, modes of capture, and 

 habits of the fish, appears in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. iv, 2d series: 



"The mackerel fishery has been pursued with great success from Scitnato during a long series of years. As early 

 as the year 1680 Robert Studson, of Scituate, with Nathaniel Thomas, of Marshfield, it appears, hired the 'Cape 

 Fishery' for bass and mackerel of the colony. Subsequent to 1700 it was common for a vessel to take 800 or more 

 barrels during the season within Massachusetts Bay, which were worth in those early times about 40 shillings, O. T,, 

 the barrel. It was common, we are told in later annals, at Boston and at Plymouth, &c., when making an outfit 

 cargo for the Jamaica market, to lloor a vessel, as it is termed, with an hundred or more barrels of Scituate mackerel. 

 It is probable the packing out, so termed, was usually performed in Boston in old times. In 1670, in Plymouth 

 Colony, at the June court, this law passed : ' Whereas we have formerly seen great inconvenience of taking mackerel 

 at unseasonable times, whereby their increase is greatly diminished, and that it hath been proposed to the court of 

 the Massachusetts that somo course might be taken for preventing the same, and that they have lately drawn up an 

 order about tlie same, this coart doth enact that henceforth no mackerel shall be caught, except for spending while 

 fresh, before the first of July annually, on penalty of the loss of the same, the one half to the informer and the other 

 to the colony.' In 1684, on the motion of William Clark, a merchant of Plymouth, the court passed an order prohib 

 iting the seining of mackerel in any part of the colony, when the court leased the cape fishery for bass and mackerel 

 to Mr. Clark for seven years at 30 per annum, but which ho resigned 11)89. 



'Dr. Douglass, who wrote on New England about 1750, says of macker 1 : 'They tet in the second week of May, 

 lean, and seem to eat muddy ; some are caught all summer. There is a second setting in for autumn, fat and delicious 

 eating. They are, north latitude fish, and are not found south of New England. Beginning of July for a short time 

 they disappear, or will not take the bait; hook mackerel, for a market, are preferable to these caught by seines, 

 which bruise one another.' These fish, it seems, were formerly seined for the purpose of bait, a practice now disused, 

 and all are taken by the hook. (The people of Hull, it seems, first taught the Plymouth colonists to take them at 

 Cape Cod by moonlight. See Hist. Coll., vol. vi, 1st ser., p. 127.) They are a capricious and sportive fish. In 

 cloudy, and even wet, weather they take the hook with most avidity. They are very partial to the color of red; 

 hence a rag of that line is sometimes a bait. A small strip of their own flesh, taken from near the tail, is used as a 

 bait with most success. 



" In early times the shores of our bays were skirted by forest trees quite near to the water's edge. In the month of 

 June, when all nature is iu bloom, the volatile farina of the bloom of the forest trees then floats in the air, and occa- 

 sionally settles on the smooth surface of the seas. Then it is that this playful fish, attracted by this phenomenon, 

 leaps and bounds above the surface of the water. So again, at a later period, in July and August, winged insects, 

 carried away by the southwest winds, rest and settle on the bosom of the ocean, a welcome herald, it is said, to the 

 mackerel catcher. Such are the habits of many fishes, and hence the use of the fly as a bait by the angler of the trout 

 streams. 



"A mackerel fishery existed in former days at Plymouth. There were perhaps twelve small schooners thus em- 

 ployed in autumn, taking 50 barrels a week each, iu the bay, about the year 1754. The people of Rhode Island and 

 Connecticut were largely concerned in this fishery formerly, it being very common to see 20 or more small sloops 

 from this section of New England, occasionally taking shelter under Plymouth beach in stormy periods. But the 

 places where these fish are now taken are chiefly George's Banks, Nautucket Shoals, and Block Island Channel. In 

 the year 1770 we are told there were upwards of 30 sail of vessels iu this branch of the fisheries, from Scitnate; 

 but not so many since 1783 to 1812. War, the scourge of national prosperity, destroys or suspends all exterior fisheries. 

 We hope and trust a state of peace will revive and prosper them." 



A series of essays on commerce appeared in a Boston newspaper about the year 1784. One of them was devoted 

 in part to the fisheries, iu -which the writer (probably James Swan, esq., a member of the general court for Dor- 

 chester), with felicity of expression, eulogized the mackerel fishery, saying "that it was of more value to Massachu- 

 setts than would be the pearl fisheries of Ceylon." 



KIVER FISHERIES IN 1815 AND 1831. The kinds and distribution of fish, off and in the river close by Scituate, 

 were written in 1815 and recorded in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. iv, 2d series, as follows: 



" Bass, shad, alewives, smelt, and eels seek North River; cod aud other sea fish common to all the bay are taken 

 just without the harbour." 



Mr. Samuel De..ne in 1831 wrote concerning the Scituate alewife fishery: 



"We first notice the fisheries of the streams. It is reasonable to conjecture that the first alewives were taken in 

 the first herring brook, as some of the earliest settlements were near that stream. These fish ascended this brook to 

 George Moore's pond, aud as the stream was narrow they were easily taken in nets. They continued to ascend this 

 brook until the mills prevented them in late years by not being provided with suitable sluices. Recently (1831) an 

 attempt has been made to restore them, but without much success. Mr. Hatherly had 'a herring weir 'on Mus- 

 quashcut brook, near his house, in 1640. We believe that a few of these fish find their way through the gulf to the 

 Musquashcut pond at the present day. 



" On Round brook was formerly an abundant alewife fishery. As late as 1794 an act of the general court was 

 procured by Scituate and Cohasset, for renewing the fishery, by providing sluices at the mills, regulating the time 



'Coll. Maps. Hist. Soc., vol. iv, 2d si-rica, p. 2l'8. 



