AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1129 



2. That out of this harbor there are abont forty boats and six or seven 

 schooners^ en gaged in fishing. The number of boats nas increased very 

 much. The boats are now larger than they used to be, and are decked 

 boats. The cause of the increase is that fishermen have prospered here 

 during the last ten years. There is a class of people who go in for fish- 

 ing and nothing else. They live better than those who go in for both 

 farming and fishing, but fishing is a help to them all round. 



3. That these boats carry on an average about four men each as crew ; 

 that would be clear of the men employed on shore, who here are about 

 thirty in number. 



4. That these forty boats catch, in the aggregate, about three thousand 

 quintals of codfish and four thousand quintals of hake, in the season, 

 on an average. Codfish are worth about three dollars and hake two 

 dollars a quintal. There are about seven thousand pounds of sounds in 

 these, the price of which varies from thirty-five cents to one dollar a 

 pound. The oil amounts to about three thousand five hundred gallons, 

 worth, all round, forty cents a gallon. The catch of mackerel here 

 varies from three to six hundred barrels in the season. The fishermen 

 do not go into mackerel fishing so much as into cod fishing. There are 

 also a few herring taken on this shore for bait. 



5. That the codfish are caught along the shore and on the Banks, 

 principally on Fisherman's Bank. They are all caught in the Straits. 

 The mackerel are caught along shore. 



6. That of late years I should estimate the number of American ves- 

 sels fishing in the Straits at abont two hundred sail. They fish their 

 mackerel principally along the shore, and the codfish on the Banks. 

 There are not many of them cod fishing here, they are mostly mackerel 

 fishermen. Some of them make two trips to the Straits, transshipping 

 the first trip at the Gut of Canso. I should average their mackerel 

 catch in the Straits at about three hundred barrels to a vessel. 



7. That the American fishermen do a very great injury to our boat- 

 fishing. They come up among our boats, when the latter are getting 

 mackerel, and throw large quantities of bait and glut the mackerel, so 

 that the fish stop biting and the boats can get no more of them. This 

 is what is called lee bowing. The Americans also clean their fish on the 

 grounds, and this practice does great harm. In cod-cleaning the offal 

 is thrown overboard, and I believe the fish eat the offal and bones, and 

 the water is poisoned around. At any rate, the fish are driven away 

 from the grounds when the offal is thrown overboard. I should say the 

 mackerel offal has the same effect, but there is not so much of it. 



8. That fishermen are all opposed to the coming of the Americans, on 

 account of the harm the latter do to the fishing. The coming of the 

 Americans is looked upon as the end of the good boat-fishing for the 

 season. They also injure the morals of the fishermen, as they have no 

 regard for Sunday or any other day. They also sometimes come on 

 shore and break and destroy many things about our villages and shores. 



9. That the lobster-fishery is now a large business here. There are a 

 number of lobster-preserving factories on this island now. They are 

 caught along the shore in three or four fathoms of water, or about half 

 a mile from the shore. I do not know that there are any Americans, 

 except one in Souris, engaged in this business here at the present time, 

 but there are a good many of them along the Nova Scotia shore. This 

 fishery everywhere is all carried on and the lobsters caught close to the 

 shore. 



10. That a good many of the American cod-fishermen get bait at the 

 Magdalen Islands aud ice at Canso. They have not bait on their own 



