14 



except the amount sold smoked, which is very large. In 1870. 

 this fishery was commenced on the coast of Greenland with 

 success, and has been followed more or less since. The hali- 

 but caught there is fietched, that is, strips taken from the 

 Ifish, clear of bone, to be dried and smoked. 280,000 lbs. were 

 brought from there last year by two vessels ; only one prose- 

 cuting it this year. In 1876, halibut were caught on trawls in 

 water 250 fathoms, or over quarter of a mile deep, having 

 been found for the first time in the deep water off Georges' 

 Bank. Trawling for them or for codfish is pursued now on 

 nearly all the banks. T 



The Mackerel fishery in British waters has been almost 

 wholly abandoned by vessels from this county and also I think 

 from the State. It having been found unprofitable to prose- 

 cute it so far frwm home when better fishing is found on the 

 American coast- 

 Herring voyages have been prosecuted since 1856, to supply 

 ou!" cities with cheap food and our fishing vessels with bait, 

 the herring having been caught by the fishermen of Newfound- 

 land and sold to our vessels, where they are frozen, and in 

 that state brought home in bulk, like potatoes, by the cargo. 

 After the award on the Washington treaty, an attempt was 

 made by American fishermen to catch their own bait with 

 their own seines, and having got them full, the only day that 

 tJaey had '* struck in," their seines were destroyed and their 

 voyages broken up by a mob of the natives, and the business 

 has been wholly abandoned except by purchase, and but few 

 vessels engaged, compared with what there had been. Recently 

 vessels there from the Banks after bait, while catching squid in 

 one of the coves, were mobbed by some 250 natives, their 

 lives threatened if they did not desist ; in one case in- 



