236 BAY OF CHALEUX. 



part of it is manufactured in tins. One American firm 

 puts up as mufh as 280,000 Ibs. in a season. Lobsters 

 are manufactured in the same way ; they are worth 

 about $1 per hundred here. Herring abound in count- 

 less shoals. Anyone not familiar with northern waters 

 will suspect me of romancing when J say that I have 

 seen 600 barrels taken in one sweep of a seine net. 

 Often sufficient salt cannot be procured to save them, and 

 they are used as manure. An American schooner struck 

 a school of mackerel somewhere in the bay at 8 o'clock 

 in the morning, and before midnight, fishing with hook 

 and line, the crew had 100 barrels caught and cured. Fish 

 are destroyed and wasted in the most reckless way, -but the 

 supply never fails. For a week in the spring of the year 

 smelts run up the rivers in one unceasing stream. It is 

 an astonishing sight to paddle down the Kestigouche at 

 this season and see the farmers " smelting " scooping up 

 the little fish in hand-nets. The amount they take is in- 

 credible, and most of the potatoes grown near the river 

 spring from this fishy manure. Now that the railway is 

 completed, fish of all kinds can be sent to market in 

 ice, and the value of the fisheries is consequently much 

 enhanced. 



White porpoises (Delphinus lieucus) visit the bay in 

 considerable numbers every summer. These huge mon- 

 sters, measuring from 25 to 30 feet in length, go in shoals, 

 probably in pursuit of the salmon, and may be seen from 

 a great distance disporting themselves on the surface of 

 the water. I am told that one of these fish will yield 

 oil to the value of $100, yet no means of capturing them 

 has yet been devised. I have mentioned a few of the 



