APPENDIX. 319 
the whole muscular system, the fin-rays spread in a feeble quiver, 
and the once powerful fish dies literally without a struggle. During 
a single night from fifty to two hundred salmon may be thus slaugh- 
tered, and half as many more lacerated in their efforts to escape, 
the pools at such seasons being too shallow to afford certain safety 
in retreat. The bed of coarse boughs, the chill and hungry awaking 
at sunrise, the mixture of peril and fagging which form the return 
down a swift stream, broken by falls, and rocks, and rapids, with 
here and there a tedious portage, over which several hundred pounds 
of fish, and bruised and blistered canoes must be transported — all 
these exertions appear but natural to Indians, and not worthy of 
comparison as against the fruits of so much toil, converted at last 
into six, eight, or ten dollars' worth of provisions and store goods, 
or perhaps a demijohn of home-made rum. Speared salmon are 
sold to traders at their own price, as the deteriorating mode of cap- 
ture so much depreciates the fish. The illegality of the purchase or 
exchange, also, often is pleaded as a risk for which a further propor- 
tional deduction in the value of barter must be made. 
That the Indians must suffer starvation by being deprived of the 
" native liberty " to ruin our salmon fisheries, is a very flimsy apo- 
logy on the part of those who still desire to perpetuate so flagrant 
an abuse. With the exception of some families or Naskapis, who 
have imprudently left their upland hunting-grounds and wandered 
toward the rocky coasts, where sickness soon debilitates and cuts off 
whole encampments, the lower St. Lawrence Indians do not endure 
privations similar to many of the tribes in western Canada, This 
comparative immunity is certainly due in great measure to the pater- 
nal solicitude exercised by the exemplary missionaries of the Roman 
Catholic Church. Almost total abstinence from " fire water " is not 
the least of a beneficent improvement resulting from these self-deny- 
ing missions. Were there not another salmon to be caught between 
Quebec and Labrador, the extinction could not occasion to Indians 
one tithe of the misery depicted by persons whose interest or preju- 
dice it is to excite a sympathetic feeling favorable to the continu- 
ance of facilities for spearing. I make no mere vague assertion ; it 
is a deduction from practical observations and inquiry. The Indians 
themselves know this, and it makes them all the more reckless and 
disregardful of the future in their ravages. Trout are plentiful all 
along the coast, and the inner lakes swarm with them. Every bay 
and bank teems with codfish. The rod and line and bait will catch 
both in hundreds. Hooks and lines are cheap as spearing imple- 
ments. Seals are plenty everywhere. The product of one seal will 
buy the fishing-gear of a family for the entire year. But, it is 
argued, they need pork and flour, tea and sugar, guns and ammuni- 
tion, which can be bought with salmon carcasses. Yes, and all 
of these articles can be better had in exchange for trout, cod, seal- 
oil, skins and furs. Birch canoes, baskets, and other manufactures, 
