280 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Lobsters, Clams, Flouke, Lumps or Podles, and Alewives; afterwards for Bass, Cod, 

 Rock, Blew-fah, Salmon, and Lampres, &c. 



" The Lobsters they take in large Bayes when it is low water, the wind still, 

 going out in their Birchen- Canows with a staff two or three yards long, made 

 small and sharpen'd at one end, and nick'd with deep nicks to take hold. When 

 they spye the Lobster crawling upon the Sand in two Fathom water, more or less, 

 they stick him towards the head and bring him up. I have known thirty Lob- 

 sters taken by an Indian lad in an hour and a half, thus they take Flouke and 

 Lumps ; Clams they dig out of the Clambanks upon the flats and in creeks when 

 it is low water, where they are bedded sometimes a yard deep one upon another, 

 the beds a quarter of a mile in length, and less, the Alewives they take with Nets 

 like a pursenet put upon a round hoop'd stick with a handle in fresh ponds where 

 they come to spawn. The Bass and Blew-fish they take in harbours, and at the 

 mouth of barr'd Rivers being in their Canows, striking them with a fisgig, 

 a kind of dart or staff, to the lower end whereof they fasten a sharp jagged bone 

 (since they make them of Iron) with a string fastened to it, as soon as the fish is 

 struck they pull away the staff, leaving the bony head in the fishes body and 

 fasten the other end of the string to the Canow : Thus they will hale after them 

 to shore half a dozen or half a score great fishes : this way they take Sturgeon ; 

 and in dark evenings when they are upon the fishing ground near a Bar of Sand 

 (where the Sturgeon feeds upon small fishes [like Sals'] that are called Lances 

 sucking them out of the Sands where they lye hid, with their hollow Trunks, 

 for other mouth they have none) the Indian lights a piece of dry Birch-Bark 

 which breaks out into a flame & holds it over the side of his Canow, the Sturgeon 

 seeing this glaring light mounts to the Surface of the water where he is slain and 

 taken with a fisgig. Salmons and Lampres are catch'd at the falls of Rivers." 

 (Page 140, etc.). 



" Ships they have none, but do prettily imitate ours in their Birchen-pinnaces, 

 their Canows are made of Birch, they shape them with flat Ribbs of white Cedar, 

 and cover them with large sheets of Birch-bark, sowing them through with strong 

 threds of Spruse-Eoots or white Cedar, and pitch them with a mixture of Turpen- 

 tine and the hard rosen that is dryed with the Air on the outside of the Bark of 

 Firr- Trees. These will carry half a dozen or three or four men and a considerable 

 fraight, in these they swim to Sea, twenty, nay forty miles, keeping from the 

 shore a league or two, sometimes to shorten their voyage when they are to double 

 a Cape they will put to shore, and two of them taking up the Canow carry it 

 cross the Cape or neck of land to the other side, and to Sea again ; they will 

 inclure an incredible great Sea, mounting upon the working billowes like a piece 

 of Corke ; but they require skilful hands to guide them in rough weather, none 

 but the Indians scarce dare to undertake it." (Page 144, etc.). 



