SALMON RIVERS 365 



night, which I estimated at about eighteen thou- 

 sand pounds weight, as no small fish are speared. 

 For many years this went on without any appar- 

 ent decrease in the number of salmon, but three 

 or four years after the establishment of the Ber- 

 simis Lumber Mills by Messrs. Girouard & Beau- 

 det, a falling off was noticed. The Indians 

 placed the blame on the mill owners, and these in 

 their turn said that the Indians were themselves 

 to blame by their continual spearing on the 

 spawning beds. There is no doubt that both con- 

 tributed to the decrease. In any case, from an 

 annual yield of about eighty thousand pounds 

 of salmon, the production dropped to twenty 

 thousand, which is about the figure at the present 

 day. 



Last year (1908) I had a talk with the present 

 Chief Moise and he seemed to think that sal- 

 mon have increased during the past few years, 

 that is to say since the mills were closed. The 

 present value of the salmon taken at Bersimis by 

 the Indians for local consumption and sale is 

 about one thousand dollars a year. Now, I am 

 quite sure that this river could be made to yield 

 double that amount of revenue if the Indian De- 

 partment at Ottawa were at all willing to deviate 

 from the old rut. There are some fine tributar- 

 ies and two nice pools on the river that would rent 

 for far more than the value of the fish that the 

 Indians get out of the river. The Indians would 



