BAY OF CHALEUR. 



them manufactured as much as 200,000 Ibs. weight of 

 salmon in the season. It is a pretty sight to see the fish 

 coming in of a morning. Canoe after canoe discharges its 

 load of silvery beauties fresh out of the nets. Sometimes 

 in the early part of the season whole canoe loads will 

 average 25 Ibs. each, and I have seen fish here up to 56 Ibs. 

 in weight. As the fish come in, they are at once prepared, 

 and pass through a good many hands before they are done 

 up in the tins with which we are all familiar. The first 

 man into whose hands the fish comes lays it on a bench 

 and scrapes off the scales ; the next opens and cleans it, 

 washing it in a cistern provided for the purpose ; the third 

 cuts the fish into junks of the thickness of the length of 

 the tin. All this is done in an outhouse or shed, but the 

 pieces are now passed into the workshop, where they are 

 further cut up, weighed, and packed into the tins by a suc- 

 cession of hands. Another man wipes the tins and passes 

 them on to have the covers fitted on. In each of these 

 covers a small hole is punched. The soiderers next re- 

 ceive the cases, and seal them up carefully, including the 

 hole in the cover. They are now packed in perforated 

 trays and passed out of the workshop through a trap-door 

 to the boiling house, where they undergo a certain amount 

 of boiling. The trays are then raised out of the boilers, 

 and as each one comes out of the water, a tinsmith applies 

 a hot iron to the soldered hole in the lid of the tin. The 

 solder melts and the heated air fizzes out. The instant 

 this air has escaped, a second tinsmith finally seals up the 

 aperture. The cases are then doused in cold water and 

 passed into the storeroom, where they are painted, labelled, 

 and packed in boxes for exportation. But now that the 



