CHAPTER XIX. 



ARCTIC FISHING IN SUB-TROPICAL WATERS. 



NEW RIVER, N. C, in latitude 35 degrees, never had such a chill in its whole 

 fluvial history as it experienced last month. From the 9th to the 15th of February 

 the morning temperature oscillated between ten and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and 

 great sheets of ice and schools of torpid fish were floating all over the surface. 

 The greater proportion of these were sea trout (weak fish, of the marine family 

 Sciacnidae), weighing from ten to twelve pounds apiece, but there were many small 

 rock fish, besides a considerable variety of fresh-water pan fish. They were all so 

 benumbed with cold that they could be lifted out of the water with the hands, and 

 were practically within reach of all who chose to come and take them. 



To the poor and unemployed the occasion was a Godsend, while every one else 

 without distinction who could hire a boat or scow, or improvise a raft, went out 

 fishing. Those who were industrious and well equipped made big fares, for the 

 cold snap which pervaded the entire country from the Atlantic to the Pacific sent 

 prices up two or three hundred per cent., and the local fish dealers and packers had 

 to hump themselves to supply the great metropolitan markets. Ordinary business 

 was suspended, labor could not be hired at any price, steamboat crews dallied on 

 their regular trips and picked up hundreds. The big lumber mills at Jacksonville, at 

 the head of navigation, which had been running gangs of 150 men day and night, 

 were obliged to shut down because the saw logs froze up in the booms, and all went 

 fishing. Trains from Newbern and Wilmington brought down a good many fisher- 

 men. One lad of fourteen years earned $32 cash in two hours. One man caught 

 3,000 fish in five hours, which he sold to the dealers for $240. The aggregate catch 

 ran up to 50,000 fish. Regulation methods were discarded, white baskets, dip-nets, 

 small seines, rakes, pitchforks and oyster tongs were brought into use. Dealers 

 bought freely all that were offered. They did not so much mind enhanced prices 

 because they could procure unlimited supplies of ice at the cost of gathering it from 

 the rivers. Some boatmen earned three or four dollars a day at this work. Hun- 

 dreds of tons were obtained in upstream waters where the rivers were frozen solid 

 to the depth of three or four inches. These surfaces were covered with skaters of 

 both sexes, and assumed a truly Minnesota appearance ; orders for skates were sent 

 north by telegram and returns were impatiently awaited, but the amateurs were in 

 bad form and the execution below par. Such boreal phenomena are not likely to 

 be repeated in a hundred years, unless the sunspots enlarge and the solar heat be 

 minimized, for New River is not a fluvial freak subject to caprices of the frost king, 

 but a legitimate ward of the "Sunny South" (so named in poesy), whose shores are 

 clad with bright-leaved verdure the winter through, inviting picnics and siestas. 

 Magnolias, holly, bay, myrtle and thirty other evergreens simulate the summer 

 season, on those warm days when the haze and sunlight are upon it, and it is then 

 that the visitor from the north is wont to write letters of condolence to those 

 detained at home to shiver in frigid atmospheres. So much is one's enjoyment 

 enhanced by meretricious contrasts and comparison. 



From a point where the Wilmington, Newbern and Norfolk Railroad crosses 

 the river, the stream follows a sinuous course through the woods for a couple of 



(W) 



