54 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



codfish in abundance on the coast, and in their season are 

 plentifully taken. There is a fish called bass, a most sweet 

 and wholesome fish as ever I did eat; it is altogether as 

 good as our fresh salmon, and the season of their coming 

 was begun when we first came to New England in June, and 

 so continued about three months' space. Of this fish our 

 fishers take many hundreds together, which I have seen 

 lying on the shore, to my admiration : yea, their nets 

 ordinarily take more than they are able to haul to land, 

 and for want of boats and men they are constrained to 

 let many go after they have taken them, and yet some- 

 times they fill two boats at a time with them. And be- 

 sides bass, we take plenty of scate and thornbacks, and 

 abundance of lobsters, and the least boy in the plantation 

 may both catch and eat what he will of them. For my 

 own part I was soon cloyed of them, they were so great 

 and fat, and luscious. I have seen some myself that 

 have weighed sixteen pounds; but others have had, divers 

 times, so great lobsters as have weighed twenty-five pounds, 

 as they assure me. Also here is abundance of herring, tur- 

 bot, sturgeon, cusks, haddocks, mullets, eels, crabs, muscles 

 and oysters. Besides, there is probability that the country 

 is of an excellent temper for making salt; for since our 

 coming our fishermen have brought home very good salt, 

 which they found candied, by the standing of sea water 

 and the heat of the sun, upon a rock by the sea shore ; and 

 in divers salt marshes that some have gone to, they have 

 found some salt in some places crushing under their feet 

 and cleaving to their shoes." 1 



Johnson, who came over in 1630, gives several instances 

 of how the people appeased their suffering, in the absence 

 of bread, by feasting on fish obtained from the seas; how 

 women went daily to the flats for clams; with what pride 

 they viewed their children "fat and lusty with feeding 



i F. Higginson, New England's Plantation. 



