248 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



Not a single salmon was captured at any time while the ship was in the river. 

 The Half moon entered the mouth of the river September 3 and anchored inside Sandy 

 Hook, and the next day, the 4th, the fishing was done. The ship ascended to the 

 present site of the city of Hudson, and a boat's crew was sent up the stream to about 

 where Waterford now stands, or a little north of the present city of Albany. The ship 

 and its master returned and set sail for Europe on the 23d of September, so that all 

 told Hudson was in the river twenty days in the month of September. Had there 

 been salmon in the river he must have seen them between Sandy Hook and Water- 

 ford, and they would not have been in that portion of the river at that time, as their 

 spawning habits would have taken them 50 miles farther up the river than Waterford, 

 to Bakers Falls, to which point shad ran until stopped by the building of the Troy dam 

 in 1825. 



In some of the Canadian rivers there is a late run of salmon, the fish running as 

 late as October, but this was not true of the Connecticut or of other New England 

 salmon streams, nor has it proven true of the Hudson since it was stocked by artificial 

 means. Hudson being an Englishman, and possibly more or less familiar with salmon 

 in the rivers of his own country, and Juet being born at Linkehouse, on the river 

 Thames, where salmon were then common, it is perhaps fair to assume that seeing 

 schools of large fish of some sort, one or the other associated them with the fish of 

 his home waters and called them salmon in the log. 



In a description of New Netherland, printed in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1671, 

 occurs this sentence: "The streams and lakes, rich with fishes, furnish sturgeon, 

 salmon, carp, bass, pike, roach, bleak, all sorts of eel, sunfish which resemble the 

 bullhead in taste, and codfish which are caught near waterfalls." It will be observed 

 that European common names are applied to the fishes, and doubtless the writer was 

 familiar with the fishes of the old country and applied their names to the fishes in the 

 new country that to him resembled those of the old. To this day codfish are not 

 caught near waterfalls, and it is more than doubtful if salmon existed in the lakes and 

 streams any more than bleak and roach. 



New Netherlaud is bounded " on the south by Virginia, northeast by New England, 

 north washed by the river Canada, and on the coast by the ocean." Besides codfish 

 at the waterfalls and salmon in the streams and lakes, the writer found that " New 

 Netherland hath, moreover, a wonderful little bird scarcely an inch long, quite bril- 

 liant in plumage, and sucking flowers like the bee; it is so delicate that ;i <Iash of 

 water instantly kills it. When dried it is preserved as a curiosity." The humming 

 bird is a little larger now and more hardy, but the description is perhaps as accurate 

 as the statement that codfish are taken at waterfalls and salmon in hikes within the 

 boundaries as given of New Netherland. 



In 1680 Jasper Danker and Peter Sluyter, members of the society of Labadists 

 in Holland, visited this country, and they record of the Mohawk, a tributary of the 

 Budson: "There are no fish in it, except trout, sunfish and other kinds peculiar to 

 rivers, because the Cahoos stop the ascent of others." They dined in state " with 

 Madam Rensselaer, at Albany, and had to eat exceedingly good pike, perch and other 

 fish," but no salmon. 



New York had salmon streams on the north, flowing into the St. Lawrence, Lake 

 Champlain, and Lake Ontario, for I have found laws for their protection enacted in 

 1801 and later, and mentioning the Oswego, Grass, Racket, St. Regis rivers, and Fish 



