FISHERIES OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC 31 



DENTS' ACCOUNT OF COD FISHERIES. 



By far the most complete and most authoritative descrip- 

 tion which we have of that fishing for cod in the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence and Baie des Chaleurs, which played so large a 

 part in the early relations between Europe and North-eastern 

 America, is to be found in the second volume of Denys' 

 Description and Natural History of the Coasts of Nortk 

 America. 1 From 1633 to 1688, with a few breaks, Nicolas 

 Denys was largely interested and personally engaged in the 

 sedentary cod fishery of the waters adjacent to Acadia, which 

 was the name then employed to include the Gaspe peninsula, 

 as well as the territory 

 now comprising New 

 Brunswick, Nova Scotia, 

 Cape Breton and Prince 

 Edward Island. 



One of his biographers 

 well says, "With excellent 

 arrangement and all com- 



, .., , , Autograph of Nicholas Denys 



pleteness, and withal by 



aid of many a vivid phrase, happy turn and illustrative in- 

 cident, he brings before us with the greatest clearness every 

 detail of that business of which he was a thorough master, 

 and a master in love with his work. It is only under pressure 

 of limited space that I resist the temptation to dwell further 

 upon his picture of the life of the summer fisherman, but I 

 commend these chapters to the reader in the confidence that 

 they will make him say with me, 'would that I too might 

 have been a fisherman. ' ' ' 2 



1 Description Geographique et historique des costes de-V 'Amerique 

 Septentrionale, Avec VHistoire naturelle du Pais, Par Monsieur 

 Denys, Gouverneur- Lieutenant General pour le Roy, & proprietaire 

 de toutes les Terres & Isles qui sont depuis le Cap de Campseaux, 

 jusques au Cap des Roziers. A. Paris, M. D. C. LXII. 



2 William F. Ganong, Ph.D., in his Introduction to Denys' Des- 

 cription and Natural History of Acadia. Toronto, The Champlain 

 Society, 1908, p. 30, 31. 



