FISHES AND FISHING. 295 



Recent authors confirm the fact, that there are 

 tribes of human beings who live mostly on fish, and 

 some who seldom partake of other food, yet they are 

 strong, healthy, and active. 



The savage aborigines of a portion of New England 

 were formerly entirely supported during a great por- 

 tion of the year, by the immense quantity of herrings 

 they took at the mouth of one of their large rivers, 

 which they dried in the sun, and used instead of 

 bread. So numerous are the salmon, and its varieties, 

 in the rivers of Kamschafcka, that they provide an 

 abundant supply of food for the inhabitants, and the 

 elegantly - formed, resplendent silver - scaled keta, 

 which forms the toukola or household bread of the 

 inhabitant's, with all the others, ascend their rivers 

 in summer, and diffuse plenty in these dreary parts 

 of the world. The natives have, during many months, 

 a variety of different species of fish, which not only 

 swarm in different rivers, each choosing its own, but 

 they penetrate to the inland lakes, &c. ; and Provi- 

 dence has kindly provided most abundantly, upon the 

 sea shore, two plants of most excellent anti-scorbutic 

 properties, as necessary correctives of constitutions 

 feeding so entirely on fish, much of it dried and 

 salted. 



Siberia and Greenland owe much of their food to 

 the salmon, which in one instance force their way up 



