fl7j EARLY saU) FISHERIES OF SUSQUEHANNA RIVER. 635 



or a bull-bead was taken; no small fish, as the meshes of the seine were 

 large enough to let them through. 



The shad were worth fiom 10 to 25 cents each, according to size. I 

 have seen them caught here weighing nine pounds; ordinarily their 

 weight was from four to seven pounds. If we could have that old shad 

 trade here again it would make us all, if not rich, merry again. But 

 very few are now left among us who saw those glorious old fishing days. 

 The fishing for black bass of these days does not begin to compare with 

 those old fishing days. 



1 can recollect of but one fishery between Wyalusing and Towanda, 

 and only two between Wyalusing and Tunkhannock. 



11. Statement of 8. JenJcins, Wyoming. 



The present inhabitants of Wyoming have but a faint idea of the 

 value of fish to the early settlers. They performed as important a part 

 at Wyoming as they have in the history of all new settlements. A care- 

 ful study of the advance of immigration and the settlement of new re- 

 gions shows that those settlements have been guided and controlled by 

 the streams and waters in which fish abounded, and hence were made 

 along their shores. Fish furnished the people a plentiful and healthful 

 supply of food; easily attainable, until the forests could be hewn down, 

 clearings made, crops raised, and cattle could increase and multiply. 



It is unquestionable that the early progress made in settling up of 

 our country was due in a large measure to the presence of fish, which 

 furnished food in absolute abundance in the midst of desert lands ; and 

 it would be as idle to attempt to disparage-the value in the economy of 

 those times as it would be to prove the value now beyond the mere 

 mention of the fact. 



The fish that attracted the most attention and were the most highly 

 considered in the early times were shad. The knowledge of these excel- 

 lent fish in the Susquehanna, at Wyoming, has become almost entirely 

 historical, if not entirely so. But few persons now resident at Wyoming 

 have a personal knowledge of the shad fisheries there and their value 

 to the people in the early days, and hence some of the stories told of 

 the immense hauls of them made in ''ye olden time" seem to thei^resent 

 generation more fabulous than real. 



That we may the better understand the subject I will give extracts 

 from the writings of strangers, and then conclude with an account or 

 two of our own jjeople and what I myself have seen. 



In 1779, when General Sullivan passed through Wyoming on his 

 western expedition against the Indians, a portion of his advance were 

 located at Wyoming from May to the last of July. Many of his offi- 

 cers kept diaries, in which tbey noted their movements from day to day 

 and touched slightly upon such objects of interest as attracted their at- 

 tention. I will give a few extracts from these diaries relating to fish at 

 Wyoming. 



