238 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



Midsummer, its season being announced, as the ol( 

 fisherman who lived on it and by it, generally known 

 as " Old Hopewell," told me, by the arrival of the fire- 

 flies. He has taken nineteen salmon, of from eight to 

 eighteen pounds weight, in one morning with the fly. 

 It offers no sport to speak of now ; the saw mills and 

 their obstructive dams have quite cut off" the fish from 

 their spawning grounds. 



To the eastward, between Halifax and Cape Canseau, 

 occurs a succession of fine rivers, running through the 

 most extensive forest district in the province. The 

 salmon rivers of note are the Musquodoboit, Tangier 

 river, the Sheet Harbour rivers, and the St. Mary's. 

 There are no important settlements on the sea-coast, 

 • which is very wild and rugged to the east of Hah fax, 

 and consequently they are less looked after and more 

 poached. Formerly they teemed with salmon. Besides 

 the mill-dams, they are netted right across, and the pools 

 are swept and torched without mercy by settlers and 

 Indians. The St. Mary's is the noblest and most beau- 

 tiful river in Nova Scotia, and its salmon are the largest. 

 The nets overlap one another from either shore through- 

 out the long reaches of intervale and wild meadow, 

 dotted with groups of elm, which constitute its noted 

 scenic charms, and the lumbermen vie with the Indians 

 in skill in their nightly spearing expeditions by the light 

 of blazing birch-bark torches. 



There are many other fine rivers besides those men- 

 tioned discharging into the Atlantic, which the salmon 

 has long ceased to frequent, being completely shut out, 

 and which would swell the dreary record of the ruin of the 

 inland fisheries of Nova Scotia. In these waters, at a 



