EEL SPEAKING. 301 



the brook/ I don't think I should care about tommy-cod 

 fishing on a regular good fishing day." 



Bidding adieu to this interesting group, I made my way 

 towards another figure that I observed in the distance, 

 apparently churning j but on approaching closer I found 

 that he, too, was a fisherman. His appliances were an 

 ice-chisel and a four-pronged barbed spear, with a 20-foot 

 handle. With the latter he was diligently prodding the 

 mud through a hole in the ice, now bringing up an eel 

 on the point of his spear, now a stick ; and the ice around 

 him for many yards was covered with eels in three different 

 stages of preservation, viz. some alive and wriggling 

 briskly along, some frozen as hard as sticks, and some 

 half-frozen half-wriggling. I thought it was the most 

 wonderful take of eels I had ever seen ; but this fisher- 

 man complained bitterly of his luck. Formerly, he said, 

 he could spear two hundred or three hundred through 

 the same hole ; now he had to cut a dozen holes to catch 

 the same number. It seems that some new settlers came 

 to Bathurst, who fished on Sundays, and fought for the 

 best places. Since this unseemly work commenced the 

 eels had gone somewhere else. I need not say that the 

 discovery of this amiable trait in the character of the eel 

 afforded me, as a naturalist, the greatest satisfaction, and 

 I pursued my way rejoicing. 



In some Canadian rivers large quantities of bass are 

 taken in scoop-nets through the ice. In the Miramichi 

 alone, I am informed that over 100 tons of these fish 

 have been taken in a winter. Smelts, a most delicious 

 little fish, are taken in great numbers at the mouth of 



