HISTORY OF DERRYFIELD. 7I 



escapes unhurt, perhaps to furnish food for another of these ter- 

 rible freshwater sea-serpents. 



Under the head of fishes we can make only brief mention of 

 the commoner sorts remaining. The salmon, shad, sturgeon, 

 ale-wife and lamprey-eel will be considered later, observing here 

 only that their great abundance in these waters led to an occu- 

 pation and settlement much earlier than that usually assigned 

 by historians. The rivers once abounded with the red roach or 

 bearded chub, the white chub or dace, suckers, shiners, silver 

 eels, etc., the lakes and ponds with pout, perch and pickerel, and 

 the contributing streams hereabout were fairly alive with the 

 speckled trout. More than forty years ago the writer caught 

 the red roach in the rapids of the lower canal weirs, and great 

 pickerel, weighing from six to seven pounds each, were in those 

 days caught from the end of a short plank wharf on the Offutt 

 shore of the Massabesic. Several alewife brooks run into this 

 lake and in recent years large numbers of alewives have been 

 taken from them in the annual spring runs. Their presence is 

 an anomaly, and like land-locked salmon they must be referred 

 to a time when the sea covered a large part of the state. Sixty 

 years ago silver eels were so plentiful in the Massabesic that 

 they were salted down by the barrel for winter use. To-day a 

 native fish worth the catching in brook, lake or river is almost a 

 curiosity. We still have a few fine trout streams, some of which 

 have been restocked ; the removal of the timber, however, has 

 so reduced their volume that we can never hope, even under 

 "protection," that the brooks will again offer to anglers more 

 than a shadow of the old-time sport. The lakes have also been 

 stocked — with bass which no one wants, with wall-eyed salmon 

 which no one can catch. Meantime lake, pond, river and brook 

 grow less yearly and threaten by and by to dry up; meanwhile 

 the work of felling the woods along the water-courses and upon 

 the sloping shores of lakes goes on, and people begin to wonder 

 if our water-supply will fail, and why. Massachusetts has in the 



