222 GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OP THE FISHERIES. 



lake in immense numbers, until the erection of numerous factories has completely barred their 

 progress with dams, as well as poisoned the water somewhat by the free use of large quantities of 

 vitriol. 



The fishing privilege of this brook is yearly leased by the authorities for a nominal sum, the 

 lessee being obliged to place 10,000 alewives in the headwaters each spring, usually about May 1. 

 The brook has no fish ways, and the fish are carried in tanks past the dams. The lessee has the 

 sole right to take fish from the brook, though the privilege is not worth much, only about 100 

 barrels of alewives being the annual catch. Eels were formerly so plenty as to do much damage 

 to the dams, which had to be sheathed with tin, in many cases. The small, iron turbine water- 

 wheels have often been choked and stopped by eels, and large quantities were caught in traps, 

 until the passage of a law in 1877 preventing their catch, except by spearing, or in pots made of 

 withes. 



But little can be said of the fishing industry at the present time. In company with most of 

 the old fishing towns of Massachusetts, with the advent of railroads came numerous new indus- 

 tries, the cordage, shoe, thread, nail, print, and other factories, drawing yearly from those engaged 

 in the fisheries, so that the number of fishing vessels shows a yearly decrease, until against seventy 

 vessels from this town in 1839, we find but thirteen in 1879. , 



Lobsters are taken in considerable numbers, but the catch of late years shows a decrease in 

 numbers aud size. They are taken near shore, not over 1 miles out, from Cut River on the north 

 to Sandwich on the south. One-half of the catch is marketed at home, supplying the near towns, 

 and one-half sold to smacks from Boston, New York, and New Haven. Not much attention is 

 paid to the law as to size. About all the lobsters found in the traps are saved, those under size 

 being sold to the smacks from out of the State, and only those of the legal length are landed or 

 sent to Boston. 



Clams were the chief support of the Puritans during their first winter here, and probably pre- 

 vented the starving of the infant colony. The daily prayer of the devout Brewster was that they 

 might "suck of the abundance of the seas, and of the treasures hid in the sands." The supply con- 

 tinues good, and clam-digging gives employment at the present time to thirty men during half of 

 the year. 



Boneless fi^h is cut to a small extent, 250,000 pounds the pant year. A small amount of fish 

 is exported via Boston and New York, but not any direct from here since 1878. A small amount 

 of cooperage, half and quarter barrels and kits, to the amount of $15,000 worth was manufactured 

 during 1879; one-fourth of this cooperage went to New York aud Philadelphia, the rest to Boston 

 and near home towns. 



It is an interesting historic fact that to the fisheries of the old Plymouth colony we owe the 

 binh of the free-school system of Massachusetts, the Colony Court in 1603 making the following 

 proposition: 



"It is proposed by the court unto the several townships in this jurisdiction, as a thing that 

 they ought to take into serious consideration, that some course may be taken in every town, that 

 there may be a schoolmaster set up to train children to reading and writing." 



In 1670 "the court did freely give and grant all such profits as might or should accrue annually 

 to the colony, for fishing with nets or seines, at Cape Cod, for mackerel, bass, or herring, to be 

 improved for and towards a, free school, in some town of this jurisdiction, for the training up of 

 youth in literature for the good and benefit of posterity, provided a beginning be made within one 

 year after said grant." 



