3J4 GEOGRAPHICAL BEVIEW OF THE FISHERIES. 



machinery for that work. With this steamer, which is to a large degree iudepeudent of wind aud 

 weatter, he can do three times the amount of work possible for the same number of dredges 

 worked without steam (500 bushels is not an uncommon day's result with two dredges), and do it 

 best on the 'dull' days, when it is too calm for his neighbors' sloops to work. Its owners often 

 find profitable employment for their leisure in chartering the steamer to other oystermeu, who 

 desire aid in dredging or in raking oif the starfish that infest some beds. One single instance of 

 the advantage the use of steam was to this firm will be pardoned. In the spring of 1879 a Ehode 

 Island planter sent a sloop, capable of carrying 1,500 bushels, to New Haven to buy small seed. 

 The Merwius were invited to contribute to the cargo, the captain of the sloop buying on the prin- 

 ciple of 'first come, first served,' until he had filled up, haste being the great desideratum. It 

 happened that upon the very day the sloop arrived a dead calm fell, aud not a sloop from Fair 

 Haven or Oyster Point could haul a dredge. Meanwhile Mr. Merwiu's steamer was puffing back 

 and forth through the quiet sea, without an hour's cessation, and in two days placed 1,200 bushels 

 of seed upon the sloop's decks. 



"There are two rivers which come down to the sea at Milford, the pleasant Wepawaug, along 

 whose banks the town lies, and whose upper waters turn numerous mills; and Indian River, which 

 empties into the harbor close by the mouth of the former stream. Indian River debouches in an 

 estuary called the Gulf, or Gulf Pond. Except in one little spot no oysters grow now, or ever did 

 grow, in this inclosed salt-water pond, although it would be the best possible place to cultivate 

 them. But the popular feeling of the town is so strongly against the utilization of these advan- 

 tages by private effort, that no ground is permitted to be set off, and any oysters put down there 

 are liable to be seized as public plunder. Once, indeed, the oyster committee assigned to Mr. 

 Merwiu a tract in the gulf; but as soon as it was found out, an indignation meeting was held aud 

 mob law was loudly threatened. Cooler judgment overruled that, but any cultivation of this 

 valuable ground, otherwise wholly useless, was sternly interdicted. 



"Inspired by Mr. Merwin's success and pluck, various persons have taken up ground in the 

 vicinity of his tract off Pond Point, amounting in the aggregate to about 750 acres, divided among 

 eight owners. One of these gentlemen, in addition to 100 acres here, has several smaller tracts at 

 different points along the shore to the westward; in all, about 400 acres, upon which some thou- 

 sands of bushels of young oysters are growing. There is plenty of good bottom still remaining off 

 this shore, however. 



"SEED OYSTERS AT STRATFORD AND VICINITY. Having passed to the westward of New 

 Haven and Milford Harbors, we come upon a new feature of the oyster business. This is the sys- 

 tematic dredging of natural beds in the sound and along the inlets of the shore, for seed to be 

 placed upon the artificial beds in the eastern part of the sound, in the East River, and on the south 

 shore of Long Island. This department of the business will demand more and more attention as 

 I progress toward its headquarters at Norwalk. The most easterly natural bed which these dredg- 

 ers attack is one off Clark's Point, just east of the mouth of Oyster River. (In Oyster River itself, 

 by the way, no oysters have ever been known within the memory of tradition, although that name 

 appears in a map drawn prior to 1700.) The next natural bed consists of a reef, 5 acres in extent, 

 on the western side of Pond Point. Beyond that, off Milford Point, at the mouth of the Housa- 

 tonic, lies the Pompey bed, which afforded sustenance to the sea-hut colony that used to frequent 

 Milford Point, aud where now a crop can be gathered about once in five years. 



"Upon the opposite side of the entrance to the Housatonic lies one of the principal seed- 

 grounds in the sound ; that side of the Housatonic River is one vast natural oyster-bed all the way 

 from Stratford Light up to the bridges, a distance of about 3 miles. There are many persons who 



