FOREST, LAKE, AND RIVER 



destructiveness of the aboriginal inhabitants, could 

 not long endure the higher civilization of the Pil- 

 grim Fathers and their descendants, and the salmon 

 of the New England streams have gone the way that 

 was to be later followed by the American bison. 



Nothing but their greater inaccessibility has 

 preserved many of the Canadian salmon rivers 

 from the same spoliation. Those whose banks 

 have sustained many generations of settlers are, 

 in several instances, as devoid of salmon as the 

 Connecticut. This is specially true of all the 

 tributaries of the St. Lawrence west of the Jacques 

 Cartier ; for a century ago all these streams, as 

 far as the head of Lake Ontario, were salmon 

 rivers. The extinction of the king of fishes in 

 other Canadian waters would have followed that 

 already described, but for the efforts, in more 

 modern times, of the legislatures, fish- wardens, 

 pisciculturists, and fish and game protection clubs. 

 In view of the awakening of the public conscience 

 to this important subject in recent years, there is 

 reason to look for the restocking of some of the 

 fished-out salmon rivers, both in Canada and the 

 United States ; while the criminal exhaustion of 

 existing salmon waters can never occur, except 

 through such malfeasance of office as our present- 

 day enlightenment is scarcely likely to permit. 



216 



