226 AMERICAN FISHES. 



long Salmon-rod, via Augusta, Norridgewock, and the magnificent 

 gorges of the Kennebec, for that land of the Moose, the Deer, the 

 Trout, and the lordly Salmon, there to encamp for days or weeks, as 

 his taste for excitement and his manly hardihood should dictate, floating 

 by day in the birch-bark canoe over the bright transparent waters, 

 sleeping by night on the fragrant and elastic shoots of the green hem- 

 lock, winning his food from the waters and the wilds by his own skill 

 and daring, and earning the appetite whereby to enjoy it, by the toil 

 which is to him a pleasure. 



Such in feet is at present the only mode by which the angler can 

 enjoy truly fine Salmon fishing, unless indeed he be a man of such 

 liberally endowed leisure that he can fit his own yacht, and visiting 

 the estuaries of those Salmon-freighted rivers, which, from the St. 

 John's, round all the eastern and northeastern shores of New Bruns- 

 wick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward's Island, to the vast mouth of 

 the St. Lawrence, and up that splendid river and its great northern 

 tributaries, the Mingan and the Saguenay, so far almost as the heights 

 of Cape Diamond, offer the largest temptations to the adventurous 

 angler. 



Within a few years, indeed, the rivers close around Quebec, the 

 Montmorenci, the Chaudiere, and the Jacques Cartier, abounded with 

 Salmon ; and a drive of a few hours in the morning from the Plains 

 of Abraham, set the fisherman on waters where he could confidently 

 count on filling his creel, even to overflowing, before night-fall ; but 

 latterly these streams have failed almost entirely, and a sail of many 

 miles down the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Saguenay or the 

 lordship of Mingan, has now become necessary to ensure good sport. 



In the upper province of Canada, although Salmon run up the river 

 into Lake Ontario, and frequent many of the streams falling into it 

 from the northern shore, as the Credit and others, they are very 

 rarely fished for or taken with the fly, and it is said confidently that 

 in the lake itself they will not take the fly under any circumstances. 



Within my own recollection, Salmon were wont to run up the 

 Oswego, and so find their way into all the lesser lakes of the State of 

 New York ; but the dams on the river, erected, I believe, in order to 

 the construction of the canal, have completely shut them out from 

 these waters. I may here observe that it is very greatly to be deplored 



