532 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



of gravelly bottoms, are rapid iu their currents, and start from cool lakes 

 and ponds, and in their passages at that time were largely fed by cold 

 springs, and shielded in their whole progress by the canopying of heavy 

 umbrageous trees and bushes, which effectually shielded them from the 

 influence of the sun's rays and the warm air. A coolness of the water not 

 exceeding probably 45°, a temperature so delightful to the salmon, was 

 thus maintained. Each of these qualities of the streams, impetuosity 

 of the current, a gravelly bottom, a low temperature, to which may be 

 added great purity, is a condition of nature eminently attractive to the 

 salmon. They enjoyed repose and impunity amid the utter silence and 

 seclusion they loved. They were not hunted by the ruthless sportsman, 

 or even disturbed by the spears and nets of the Indian. They had easy 

 and safe access to their favorite breeding-grounds. When Champlaiu 

 entered the lake iu 1G09, he found its shores unpeopled and silent. The 

 smoke of not a single wigwam arose in the atmosphere on either shore. 

 The bloody and perpetual incursions, along the common highway it 

 afforded, of the Mohawks and Algonquins in their reciprocal attacks, 

 had driven the savages that once inhabited the beautiful territory into 

 the recesses of the interior for security. The region bordering on the 

 lake was a scene of total desolation, and continued iu that condition to 

 the middle of the succeeding century, and was but sparsely occupied 

 until near its close. In the view I have embraced, this aspect of nature 

 rendered the lake and its affluents singularly adapted to the habits of 

 the salmon, and attracted them in the remarkable abundance which we 

 shall see did exist. 



The fact of the exuberance of the salmon in these waters when the 

 environs were first occupied by civilized man is established by the most 

 ample and satisfactory testimony, and appears to me worthy of perpetua- 

 tion, as interesting in its relation to natural history, and as calculated 

 to aid and illustrate the future researches of the student of nature. 



The first historic notice of the prevalence of salmon in the region, I 

 think, appears in the correspondence between William Gilliland, the 

 pioneer of the Champlaiu Valley, and Arnold, who was cruising on the 

 lake with the American flotilla iu the summer of 1776. His letter 

 states that on a single occasion Gilliland had presented seventy-five 

 salmon to a petty-officer of Arnold, and asked the services of the ship's 

 carpenters to repair his "salmon-crib and apparatus, which had been 

 carried away by a great flood ". He also affirms, in a memorial to Con- 

 gress in 1777, that he " had complimented the American Army with 

 fifteen hundred salmon in one year ". When the writer first became a 

 resident of the district in 1824, many of the original settlers of the 

 country were yet living, who were men of respectability and position, 

 and of undoubted veracity. Their tales of the abundance of the salmon 

 which prevailed at that time demanded lor their acceptance an exercise 

 of the strongest faith in the truthfulness of the narrators. Coming 

 from the unimpeachable sources they did, and corroborated by uniform 



