PROTECTION OF FISH. 185 



plenishment from, the mighty ocean, the same dimi- 

 nution is visible, while many of our confined inland 

 waters are absolutely depopulated. The insatiable 

 maw of New York market swallows alike the trout 

 from Maine, the bass from Lake Erie, or the white- 

 fish from the Sault Ste. Marie, while the parvenus 

 that have acquired sudden fortunes in that wonder- 

 ful city, endowed with the instincts of neither gen- 

 tlemen nor sportsmen, think it magnificent to devour 

 trout in Autumn and black bass in Spring, judging 

 by their extravagant price that they must be rare 

 and therefore good. The rapidity with which a 

 section of country can be fished out by energetic 

 pot-hunters where the law .places inadequate re- 

 straint, aud often in spite of the law's restraint, has 

 been remarkably evidenced in the history of Sulli- 

 van County. "When the Erie Railroad was still in- 

 complete, and the tide of ex[)lorers had just com- 

 menced to penetrate beyond Goshen, and only occa- 

 sional stragglers reached the land of promise and 

 performance beyond Monticello ; the swamps were 

 alive vvith woodcock and the streams with trout. 

 But as the railroad advanced aud gave improved 

 facility of travel, so-called sportsmen poured over 

 the country in myriads, following up every rivulet 

 and ranging every swamp, killing without mercy 

 thousands of trout and hundreds of birds, boasting 

 of their baskets crowded to overflowing, and count- 

 ing a day's sport by the hundred ; till Bashe's Kill, 

 where the pearly-sided fish once dwelt abundantly, 

 was empty, and the broad Mongaup, the wild Calli- 



