108 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



books, some of which I have seen. The best of these 

 is in a letter of Mahlon Stacy, who wrote " From the 

 Falls of Delaware, in West New Jersey, the 26th of the 

 4th month, 1680." He says : " Fish, in their season, are 

 very plenteous. My cousin Hevell and I, with some of 

 my men, went last third month into the river to catch 

 herrings ; for at that time they come in great shoals 

 into the shallows. "We had neither rod nor net, but, 

 after the Indian fashion, made a round pinfold, about 

 two yards over and a foot high, but left a gap for the 

 fish to go in at ; and made a bush to lay in the gap to 

 keep the fish in ; and w r hen that was done, we took two 

 long birches and tied their tops together, and went 

 about a stone's cast above our said pinfold : then haul- 

 ing these birch boughs down the stream, where we 

 drove thousands before us, but so many got into our 

 trap as it would hold. And then we began to haul 

 them on shore as fast as three or four of us could, by 

 two or three at a time ; and after this manner, in half 

 an hour, we could have filled a three-bushel sack of as 

 good and large herrings as ever I saw. . . . And though 

 I speak of herrings only, lest any should think we have 

 little other sorts, we have great plenty of most sorts of 

 fish that ever I saw in England, besides several other 

 sorts that are not known there as rocks, catfish, shads, 

 sheep's-heads, sturgeons." 



As my boat rested upon the steadily widening cush- 

 ion of untracked mud, I looked carefully for any signs 

 of life peculiar to such an environment. There seemed 

 to be nothing except minute forms that would need a 



