DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 315 



bait, It would be a question entirely beyond your honor's consideration. We 

 have a right to buy it where we please, even here, and we certainly need not 

 catch it. 



******* 



I now call your attention to mackerel. It is a word that we have heard be- 

 fore. It is a word that we have become familiar with, and one which I hope we 

 shall not view with disgust or distaste for its frequency when we shall have left 

 this hospitable coast, and scattered ourselves to our far distant homes. 



The mackerel, may it please your honors, is a deep-sea fish. He does not lurk 

 about anybody's premises. He does not live close into the shore. He is a fish 

 to whose existence and to whose movements a mysterious importance is attached. 

 A certain season of the year he is not to be seen, and at other times they are so 

 thick upon the waters that, as one of the most moderate of the British witnesses 

 said, you might walk upon them with snow-shoes, I believe it was from East 

 Point to North Cape. I do not know that I have got the geography quite right, 

 but it is something like that. 



Mr. THOMPSON. You are only sixty miles out of the way. 



Mr. DANA. Well, that is not very far for such tales as these. Still, 

 the story is as improbable with the limitation that my learned friend 

 puts on it as it was in the way I put it. However, I do not doubt 

 that the number is extraordinary at times, and at other times they 

 are not to be seen. We do not know much about them. We know 

 they disappear from the waters of our whole coast, from Labrador 

 down to the extreme southerly coast, and then at the early opening 

 of the spring they reappear in great numbers, armies of them. They 

 can no more be counted than the sand of the sea, and are as little 

 likely to be diminished in number. They come from the deep sea, or 

 deep mud, and they reappear in these vast masses, and for a few 

 months they spread themselves all over these seas. A few of them are 

 caught, but very few in proportion to the whole number, and then 

 they recede again. Their power of multiplication is very great 

 indeed. I forget what Professor Baird told us, but it is very great 

 indeed. Methods have been taken to preserve their spawn, that it 

 may be secured against the peril of destruction by other fish and the 

 perils of the sea. They are specially to be found upon the banks of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Bradelle or Bradley Banks, the 

 Orphan, Miscou, Green, Fisherman's Bank, and off the coast of 

 Prince Edward Island, and especially, more than anywhere else, 

 about the Magdalen Islands ; and in the autumn, as they are passing 

 down to their uncertain and unknown homes, they are to be found in 

 great numbers directly off the western coast of Cape Breton, near the 

 highlands opposite the group of Margaree Islands, and near Port 

 Hood ; but in the main they are not to be found all over the deep sea 

 of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is full of 

 ledges, banks, and eddies formed by meeting tides, which Professor 

 Hind described to us, and there the mackerel are especially gathered 

 together. The map drawn on the British side, in the British inter- 

 est, shows this enormous field for the mackerel fisheries, and though 

 very few comparatively of the banks and ledges are put down, yet, 

 in looking over this map, it seems as if it was a sort of great directory 

 showing the abodes of the mackerel, and also the courses that the 

 mackerel take in passing from one part of this great sea to another. 

 There is hardly a place where mackerel-fishing-grounds are not 

 marked out here, and they are nearly all marked out at a considerable 

 distance from the shore, all around the Magdalen Islands, for many 

 miles, and at a distance from Prince Edward Island and on the various 



