134 NOVA SCOTIA. 



the forest, and studded with pretty wooded Mets, are 

 thickly sprinkled over the whole province. These are not 

 muddy ponds, but real lakes and lakelets, with rocky 

 banks, with beds of gravel and sand for spawning on, with 

 boulder rocks for shelter, such as the Salmonidse delight 

 in. Thousands of sparkling streams, many of them never 

 fished, save by the kingfisher, flow from these lakes into 

 the rivers, which discharge their waters into the sea. 

 The rivers are to look at all that the salmon fisher could 

 desire. There are no impassable falls, as in many of the 

 rivers that discharge into the St. Lawrence ; no natural 

 obstructions to impede the ascent of the Salmonidge to ten 

 thousand spawning beds. They form a succession of 

 rocky rapids and glorious pools. Thirty years ago the 

 salmon fishing in Nova Scotia was superb. But where 

 nature is so bountiful in her gifts man rarely appreciates 

 them. As with the forest so with the fish. It would reallv 



w 



seem as if Nova Scotians hate the salmon, and have deter- 

 mined by every possible means to deny them access to 

 their rivers. Over-fishing is bad enough, but to shut the 

 fish out of the rivers altogether is little better than 

 insanity. Hundreds of miles of river stream and lake are 

 closed against the Salmonidse by horrid milldams, many of 

 which are of no industrial value. By-and-by, when the 

 forests have been utterly destroyed and the rivers ren- 

 dered barren, Canadians will spend large sums of money 

 in, perhaps, fruitless efforts to bring back that which they 

 could now so easily retain. The rivers are not leased to 

 anglers as in New Brunswick and Lower Canada. They 

 are nominally protected by the Government. A club of 

 sportsmen was formed in Halifax for the protection of the 



