1678 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



\rhich I hope we shall not view with disgust or distaste for its fre- 

 quency when we shall have left this hospitable coast, and scattered our- 

 selves to our far distant homes. 



The mackerel, may it please your honors, is a deep-sea fish. He does 

 not lurk about anybody's premises. He does not live close into the 

 shore. lie is a fish to whose existence and to whose movements a mys- 

 terious importance is attached. A certain season of the year he is not 

 to be seen, and at other times they are so thick upon the waters that, 

 as one of the most moderate of the British witnesses said, you might 

 walk upon them with snow-shoes, I believe it was from East Point to 

 North Cape. I do not know that I have got the geography quite right, 

 but it is something like that. 



Mr. THOMSON. You are only sixty miles out of the way. 



Mr. DANA. Well, that is not very far for such tales as these. Still, 

 the story is as improbable with the limitation that my learned friend 

 puts on it as it was in the way I put it. However, I do not doubt that 

 the number is extraordinary at times, and at other times they are not 

 to be seen. We do not know much about them. We know they disap- 

 pear from the waters of our whole coast, from Labrador down to the 

 extreme southerly coast, and then at the early opening of the spring 

 they reap|M?ar in great numbers, armies of them. They can no more be 

 counted than the sand of the sea, and are as little likely to be diminished 

 in number. They come from the deep sea, or deep mud, and they reap- 

 pear in these vast masses, and for a few months they spread themselves 

 all over these seas. A few of them are caught, but very few in proportiou 

 to the whole number, and then they recede again. Their power of mul- 

 tiplication is very great indeed. I forget what Professor Baird told us, 

 but it is very great indeed. Methods have been taken to preserve their 

 spawn, that it may be secured against the peril of destruction by other 

 fish and the perils of the sea. They are specially to be found upon the 

 banks of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Bradelle or Bradley Banks, the 

 Orphan, Miscou, Green, Fisherman's Bank, and off the coast of Prince 

 E<iward Island, and especially, more thau anywhere else, about the 

 Magdalen Islands; and in the autumn, as they are passing down to 

 their uncertain and unknown homes, they are to'be found in great num- 

 bers directly off the western coast of Cape Breton, near the highlands 

 opposite the group of Margaree Islands", and near Port Hood ; but in 

 the main they are not to be found all over the deep sea of the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is full of ledges, banks, and 

 eddies formed by meeting tides, which Professor Hind described to us, and 

 there the mackerel are especially gathered together. The map drawn 

 on the British side, iu the British interest, shows this enormous field for 

 the mackerel fisheries, and though very few comparatively of the banks 

 and ledges are put down, yet, in looking over this map, it seems as if it 

 was ;i sort of great directory showing the abodes of the mackerel, and 



bo the courses that the mackerel take iu passing from one part of this 

 great sea to another. There is hardly a place where mackerel-fishing 

 grounds are not marked out here, and they are nearly all marked out at 

 a considerable distance from the shore, all around the Magdalen Islands, 



r many miles, and at a distance from Prince Edward Island and on 



e various banks, ledges, and shoals that are to be found; and it is 

 shall have the honor to point out to the court more particu- 

 larly hereafter, that they have always been caught in the largest quail- 



and the best of them, by American fishermen. 



I here are one or two experienced witnesses from Gloucester who have 

 t with the subject carefully for their own interests, not testifying for 



