10 THE SALMON FISHERIES. 
These are no hearsay stories, no mythical rumours of 
the days when apprentices were said to be so surfeited with 
salmon that they stipulated with their masters not to be 
supplied with this diet more thana limited number of days 
a week. The fish are there now, and can be seen by any 
one who goes to look for them ; and they are an indirect 
confirmation of the ancient reputation of this country as a 
land of salmon: for there is nothing beyond their size in the 
rivers of the Pacific slope that gives them any natural 
advantage over those of Great Britain, and the marvellous 
stories which reach us of the abundance of salmon in 
America may in all probability have applied with equal 
truth to the rivers of this country in former days— 
“When wild in woods the noble savage ran ; ” 
when a few thousands of our blue-stained ancestors were, 
like the scattered Red Indians of the North American 
plains, the only inhabitants, and when the “resources of 
civilisation” had not yet been thrown into the scale against 
the powers of Nature. 
