132 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



the navigation of the estuary so dangerous, that some of his 

 people, who had been driven upon it in the night by the force 

 of the tide, had nearly lost their lives), to be removed, without 

 any application to legal authority, which in that country was 

 so partial and corrupt, that any such application would have 

 been useless, while the danger was immediate and pressing ; 

 yet Mr Kennedy, while he introduced the prosecution, with 

 which (being a private matter) the public had no concern, in 

 order to throw discredit upon the evidence of the witness as a 

 river fisher and an enemy to stake-nets, which he himself so 

 ardently patronised, never once put a single question to him 

 for the purpose of explaining this jdanger a circumstance 

 deserving of particular remark ; and when another witness, 

 Mr Sheppard, stated that, in the bay of Cork, a boat's crew, con- 

 sisting of eight men, had been DROWNED upon a similar engine, 

 instead of farther examination into so material a point, the 

 fact was suppressed in the proceedings, that it might not meet 

 the public eye. 



It has been maintained by the stake-net owners that those 

 engines are useful to navigation. That they point out the 

 banks to large vessels, may be true, though a single stake, or 

 buoy, placed upon a bank, would serve the purpose equally 

 well ; * but no man will say that, if the coasts of the estuaries 

 and the sea were barricaded with engines, of perhaps a mile in 

 length, formed of strong stakes (and they must be necessarily 

 of great strength, to support such a weight of heavy net, and 

 to resist the action of the wind and tide), it would not prove 

 both a serious and dangerous obstruction to the navigation of 

 boats and small craft, by depriving them in stormy weather of 

 the shelter of the land, and forcing them to go round them at 

 the risk of being carried out to sea? Besides, at flood-tide 

 these engines are nearly level with the surface of the water, 

 and would not be observed by a strange boat till she came 

 upon them, when she would be upset or swamped. Even Mr 



* In 1816 the sloop Speedwell of Aberdeen, laden with timber, was driven 

 upon a stake-net in the frith of Cromarty, and the stakes went through her 

 bottom which was the cause of considerable dispute between the owners and 

 the underwriters. 



