APPENDIX. 297 



year (1856) been altogether in the hands of a speculating and 

 rapacious American, who employed the spear of the Indian to 

 furnish him with mutilated salmon, several boxes of which he 

 brought to Quebec, in the month of September when they were 

 out of season, unfit for food, and flavourless, having previously 

 glutted the markets of Portland, Boston and New York with more 

 palatable fish. 



There can be but little doubt that many of the salmon streams 

 in Lower Canada would be as productive, under proper manage- 

 ment, as rivers in Europe for which large annual rents are paid ; 

 but it must be admitted that the great distance at which they are 

 situated from civilisation, the want of the means of intercourse 

 between them and the inhabited parts of the country, the 

 liability to trespass by armed ruffians, and the dreadful rigor of 

 the climate in winter, present very serious obstacles to those who 

 might wish to undertake such management : for obviating some 

 of which I see no better method than the employment, during the 

 summer months, of one or two armed steamers of light draught 

 of water, such as are used for a similar purpose on the east coast 

 of Denmark. These steamers should each have a commander on 

 board, who should be a magistrate and empowered by parliament 

 to act summarily in cases of infraction of the Fishery Laws, and 

 besides supplying the lighthouses and other public works with 

 stores, oil, building materials, etc., conveying the workmen man- 

 agers and fishermen to their several stations, and protecting the 

 lessees of the province, might also be profitably employed as the 

 means of transporting the fresh caught salmon from the several 

 rivers, packed in ice, to the Railroad Stations at St. Thomas 

 and Quebec; from whence they could be distributed to the 

 markets of Canada and the United States. Two Bills for the pro- 

 tection of salmon and trout in Lower Canada have recently become 

 Acts of Parliament. These may possibly be productive of some 

 good in civilised and inhabited districts, but must be utterly in- 



