A SETTLEMENT OF FISHERMEN. 217 



for our departure on the Victoria. Our passage was very 

 agreeable, and on the morning of the fourth day we were 

 landed at the mouth of the St. John, some six hundred miles 

 from Quebec, and with the hazy outline of the island of An- 

 ticosti in sight to the south. 



We were rejoiced at finding a hamlet of huts, where resid- 

 ed the cod fishermen of the station, who employed some sixty 

 smacks, and were in full tide *of operation, fishing with hand- 

 lines on the banks between the main shore and Anticosti. 

 The salmon-fishers of the estuary also resided there, and were 

 fishing with gill-nets fastened to stakes which were fixed in 

 the bottom of the river, but not technically called stake-nets. 

 Mr. J. Beaulieu, a superintendent or fishery warden, resides 

 also at the mouth of the St. John during the salmon season. 

 The doctor, with the general and his lady, having arrived two 

 days previously, had ascended the river with canoes to the 

 plateau where we designed encamping, twenty-seven miles 

 up the river, and had sent back two canoes and guides for us. 

 While the grocer was preparing our breakfast of fried sal- 

 mon, with salt pork, bread, butter, and English breakfast tea, 

 I concluded to reconnoitre, and soon found that curiosity 

 called the black fly, who left his mark on my nose. I saw 

 also the salmon -netters land with their boats, containing 

 many salmon which were either headless or showed signs of 

 having been bitten in different parts of the body, and so mu- 

 tilated by the seals, and perhaps otters and minks, as to be 

 entirely valueless. I therefore concluded that either the seals 

 should be destroyed, or that salmon should not be taken with 

 gill-nets fastened to stationary stakes in the stream, where 

 all water- vermin can feast on the struggling salmon, helpless- 

 ly fastened in the meshes, from whence many of them, bitten 

 in pieces, necessarily drift down the current to pollute the 

 river, and warn salmon just entering to seek some other 

 spawning-ground. 



