234 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



custom with regard to the hiring of labourers similar t< 

 that once existing in some parts of England — a stipulation 

 that not more than a certain proportion of salmon should 

 enter into their diet. Now, the salmon having passed the 

 ordeal of bag-nets, with which the shores of the long 

 harbours are studded, and arrived in the fresh water, 

 vainly loiters in the pool below the monstrous wooden 

 structure called a mill-dam, which effectively debars his 

 progress to his ancestors' domains in the parent lakes, 

 and before long falls a prey to the spear or scoop-net of 

 the miller. From wretchedly inefficient legislation the 

 salmon of Nova Scotia is on the verge of extinction, 

 with the gaspereaux and other migratory fish, which 

 once rendered the immense extent of fresh water of 

 .this country a source of wealth to the province and of 

 incalculable benefit to the poor settler of the backwoods, 

 whose barrels of pickled fish were his great stand-by for 

 winter consumption. 



One of the noblest streams of the Nova Scotian 

 coast is the Liverpool river, in Queen's County, which 

 connects with the largest sheet of fresh water in the 

 province, Lake Eossignol, whence streams and brooks 

 innumerable extend in all directions through the wild 

 interior, nearly crossing to the Bay of Fundy. All 

 these once fruitful waters are now a barren waste. The 

 salmon and gaspereaux are debarred from ascent at the 

 head of the tide, where a series of utterly impracti- 

 cable mill-dams oppose their progress to their spawning- 

 grounds. A pitiful half dozen barrels of salmon taken 

 at the mouth is now shown against a former yearly 

 take of two thousand. 



A few miles to the eastward we come to the Port 



