88 



SALMON FISHERY OF BRITISH AMERICA^ 



The salmon, shad, and alewive fisheries are not embraced in the plan 

 of this report ; but a brief account may be given of the foiTner, as the 

 most important of these, and of the rivers generally. 



Canada. — This fishery, at the present time, is very small. In 1786, 

 however, the export was considerable. In parts of the country where, 

 in former years, the catch was large, a few barrels of pickled salmon 

 only were shipped in 1848. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence there were 

 once extensive establishments for the prosecution of this business; but 

 some have been broken up, and others have become unprofitable. 

 Streams that half a century ago afforded sufficient for domestic con- 

 sumption, and thousands of barrels for export, now yield only hundreds 

 of barrels, and the quantity is rapidly diminishing. 



Nova Scotia. — The loyalists, who went to this colony at the peace of 

 1783, depended very much upon this fishery, and carried it on to ad- 

 vantage. The quantity of salmon exported for some years was suffi- 

 cient to purchase many articles of comfort, and to save them at times 

 from the miseries of pressing want. The salmon has entirely disap- 

 peared in some parts of the colony, and has ceased to be plentiful m 

 all of its rivers and streams. The export of salmon caught in the col- 

 ony is not large. The whole produce of the fishery in 1851 appears to 

 have been but 1,669 barrels. 



Newfou7idland. — The fishery is still worthy of attention, as reference 

 to the accompanying statistics will show. The export in 1843 was 

 even larger than in 1814. 



Labrador. — Captain Henry Atkins, of Boston, who made a voyage 

 to Davis's Straits in the ship Whale in 1729, and who visited the coast 

 a second time in 1758, found salmon very abundant. In " Salmon 

 river" both he and his men caught many while wading, and with their 

 hands. They took all they had salt to cure, and one that measured 

 four feet ten inches in length. Atkins's account, after his return, seems 

 to have induced no attention to the fishery on the part of his townsmen. 

 In 1831 the exports amounted to 2,430 tierces of the pickled fish, of 

 the value of $35,650. 



^New Brunswick. — The loyalists and other early settlers found the 

 salmon in almost every river and stream in the colony. 



At present it is never seen in some, is becoming scarce in most, and 

 is of importance as an article of export in the St. John alone. 



The catch at Salmon Falls, in the St. Croix, thirty years ago was 

 two hundred in a day, on the average, for three months in a year. A 

 person standing on a "jam of logs" caught there at one time one hun- 

 dred and eighteen with a dip-net ; and a boy fifteen years old took 

 about five hundred in a season. But such has been the decline, that it is 

 said only two hundred were taken during the entire year of 1850 by all 

 who engaged in the business on the river. It is stated that the dams 

 erected across the river have produced this change in the fishery, and 

 facts appear to sustain the position. The few salmon that now appear 

 in the Oromocto, the Nashwaak, the Maduxnakeag, and the Mispech, 

 as well as in Emerson's and Gardner's creeks, in Great Salmon river, 

 and Goose creek, is attributed to the same cause. In two or three of 



