WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 61 



ment to the fact that the salmon were not then in the river 

 in any such numbers as they have been since, and for this 

 reason : 



Twenty years ago that river and all others were open to 

 all comers, whether with net, rod or spear, and because of 

 this fact it had not only been thinned out, but by the mer- 

 ciless way in which the fish were hunted in season and out 

 of season in the estuary, in the pools and on the spawning 

 beds they were given no opportunity to multiply. By this 

 persistent slaughter, continued for years in all riveis acces- 

 sible to the salmon purchaser and packer, the kingly fish in 

 the lower Provinces would very soon have shared the fate of 

 their predecessors in the Upper Canada waters and in our 

 own rivers on the south shore of Lake Ontario and the St. 

 Lawrence. For it is not simply from far-back tradition that 

 we know that salmon were once abundant in these Lake 

 Ontario tributaries. I have myself (when a lad) seen canoe 

 loads of salmon brought into "Little York," now Toronto, 

 by the Indians, who had captured them in the rivers "Hum- 

 ber" and "Credit" at the head of the lake. 



A venerable gentleman of Keesville (Mr. Arnold, now de- 

 ceased) once told me that in 1818, he had purchased a salmon 

 freshly caught at Oswego for a " York shilling," and that 

 for several years afterward they continued to be taken in 

 great numbers in that neighborhood. And you may remem- 

 ber that Mr. Weed was moved by the recollections awakened 

 by the account I gave of "my first salmon," to publish in 

 the Tribune some years ago, the account of his capture of a 

 salmon in Onondaga Creek, near the present site of the 

 city of Syracuse. He then lived in that neighbor- 

 hood. One night he observed the flashing of bright lights 

 along the creek, and on going out to see what was up, he 

 found a party of Indians with spears and clubs, killing sal- 

 mon as they were trying to force their way over the shal- 

 lows of that stream. It was then and there, borrowing a 

 spear from a friendly Indian, he killed Ji-is first salmon. To 

 us of to-day this fact seems incredible. Nevertheless, that 

 incident was but one of a thousand like it occurring in the 



