1C 14 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



So then, while the mackerel- fishing of our vessels in the gulf has been 

 diminishing, theirs has been largely increasing. What! all this, and 

 monev too! Is it not enough that two, three, or four times as much 

 tish is taken by them as before the treaty ? Is it not enough that they 

 an- prosperous, that those who have left them are returning home, and 

 everybody is going into the business? Can they claim that they are 

 losers by 'the Treaty of Washington ? Is it not plain that they have, in 

 consequence of its provisions, entered upon a career of unprecedented 

 prosperity ? 



Ar this point Mr. Foster suspended his argument, and the Commis- 

 sion adjourned until Tuesday, at noon. 



TUESDAY, November 6, 1877. 



The Commission met, according to adjournment, and Mr. Foster re- 

 sum* d his argument. 



GKNTLEMEN OF THE COMMISSION: At the adjournment yesterday, I 

 had been giving some description of the quantity of the mackerel fishing 

 since the Treaty of Washington by American vessels in the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence and in the vicinity of British waters. For the years 1873 and 

 1S74. I am content to rest upon the information derived from the Port 

 Mulgrave statistics. With reference to the subsequent years, 1875, 1876, 

 and 1877, there are one or two pieces of evidence to which I ought, per- 

 haps, specifically to refer. Your attention has already been called to 

 the fact that the Magdalen Islands and the Banks in the body of the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, of which Professor Hind says there are many not 

 put down on the chart ("wherever you find banks," he says, ''there you 

 exj>eet to find mackerel"), have been the principal fishing grounds of 

 the United States vessels for many years. The disastrous results of the 

 great gale of 1873, in which a large number of United States vessels 

 were lost, and in which more than twenty Gloucester vessels went ashore 

 on the Magdalen Islands, show where, at that time, the principal part 

 of the mackerel fleet was fishing. In 1876, the report of the Commis- 

 sioner of Fisheries for the Dominion speaks of the number of vessels 

 that year found at the Magdalen Islands. He says, "About one hundred 

 foreign vessels were engaged fishing this season around the Magdalen 

 Islands, but out of that number I do not calculate that there were more 

 than fifty engaged mackerel fishing, and, according to the best informa- 

 tion received, their catch was very moderate." 



We have also the statement of one of the Prince Edward Island wit- 

 nesses, George Mackenzie, on page 132 of the British evidence, who, after 



mates the number of the United States vessels seen off the island at 



ifty. We have also the testimony of Dr. Fortin on the subject, 



spent a number of weeks this year, during the height of the fishing 



MI, in an expedition after affidavits, that took him all around the 



ilf, where he could not have failed to see whatever American vessels 



isning there. He says he " may have seen about 25 mackereling 



? about," and that he heard at the Magdalen Islands there 



According to the best information that I can obtain, 



t far from correct. Joseph Tierney, of Souris, says that there 



wenty or thirty at Georgetown, fifteen or twenty at Souris, and he 



nk when he left home there were seventy-five. Ronald Mac- 



