368 BULLETIN OP THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



at their hatching places till late in the^ fall when they would follow the 

 old shad to the salt water. During the summer they would grow from 

 three to four inches in length. The Susquehanna shad constituted the 

 principal food for all the inhabitants. No farmer, or man with a family, 

 was without his barrel or barrels of shad the whole year round. Besides 

 furnishing food for the immediate inhabitants, people from Mahantongo, 

 Blue Mountains, and, in fact, for fifty miles around, would bring salt in 

 tight barrels and trade it for shad. They would clean and salt the shad 

 on the river shore, put them in barrels, and return home. The common 

 price of shad was three and four cents each. Besides shad there were 

 many other kinds of food fish. The most noted among them was the old 

 Susquehanna salmon, weighing as high as fifteen pounds. These sal- 

 mon were considered even superior to the shad and commanded a higher 

 l)rice. They were caught in seines, on hooks and lines, and were the 

 sport to the gigger at night. Nescopeck Falls, directly opposite Berwick, 

 near where the Nescopeck Creek empties into the river, was a noted place 

 for salmon fishing with hook and line. Men standing on the shore with 

 long poles and lines would often, in drawing out the fish, lodge them in 

 the branches of the trees, giving them the appearance of salmon-pro- 

 ducing trees. The shad fisheries, which I have alluded to, were not com- 

 mon property. The owner of the soil was the owner of the fishery, and 

 no one was allowed to fish without a permit. The owners of the fishery 

 also had the seines, and when not using them they would hire them out 

 to others and take their pay in shad. The seiner's share was always 

 one-half the catch. Shad were caught both night and day in seines. 

 At the Webb fishery I have known eleven and twelve thousand shad 

 taken at one haul. These fisheries were always considered and used as 

 a source of great pleasure, value, and profit, and everybody depended 

 on them for their annual fish and table supply. It was considered the 

 cheapest and best food by all. Immediately after the erection of the 

 river dams the shad became scarce, the seines rotted, the people mur- 

 mured, their avocation was gone, and many old fishermen cursed Nathan 

 Beach for holding the plow, and the driver of the six yokes of oxen, that 

 broke the ground at Berwick for the Pennsylvania Canal. The people 

 sufifered more damage in their common food supply than the State prof- 

 ited by her " internal improvement," as it was called. Although eighty- 

 nine years old to-day, I still hope to live long enough to see all the ob- 

 structions removed from one end of the noble Susquehanna River to the 

 other, and that the old stream may yet furnish cheap food to tWo mil- 

 lions of people along its banks, and that I may stand again on the shore 

 at the old Webb fishery and witness another haul of ten thousand shad. 

 All of which is most respectfully submitted for the consideration of the 

 honored society which you have the honor to represent. 



GILBERT FOWLER. 

 Harrison Wright, Esq., 



Secretary of the Wyoming Historical 



and Oeological Society, WilJces BarrCy Fa. 



