THE OYSTER INDUSTRY. 509 



bight lies Prince Edward Island, between which and the mainland flow the shallow currents of 

 Northumberland Strait. 



The shores of this region are, for the most part, low bluffs of reddish soil and sloping meadows. 

 .Many rivers come down out of the interior, and at the mouth of each there is a shallow estuary or 

 inlet, usually protected from the swell of the outer sea. This condition of things seems highly 

 favorable for oyster growth, since nearly all of these inlets contain colonies of these mollusks, 

 both on the mainland and engirdling Prince Edward Island, except at its western end. On Cape 

 Breton oysters were plentiful throughout the Bras d'Or, and their remains exist at several points 

 on the ocean coast of Nova Scotia. 



Probably many of these beds had ceased to be productive long before Europeans arrived, and 

 the region now seems to be slowly becoming less adapted to oyster growth. 



THE GULF OP MAINE. Having passed the peninsula of Nova Scotia we enter what has been 

 called the Gulf of Maine, that great inward bend of coast between Cape Sable and Cape Cod. 

 Between tbese limits oysters were so rare that so well informed a naturalist as A. A. Gould, in his 

 " Invertebrates of Massachusetts," expressed himself in doubt as to whetber they ever had been 

 indigenous north of Cape Cod. 



The evidence that this is a mistake, and that formerly oysters grew naturally in the Gulf of 

 Maine, is found partly in the allusions of the early chroniclers, but more strongly in the remains 

 of beds now extinct, and in the relics of Indian oyster-fishing. 



When the earliest explorers landed upon the shores of North America, they found that the 

 Indians ate all the various shell-fish we now make use of. They understood the superior value of 

 the clam and oyster, and everywhere along the New England coast were accustomed to assemble 

 at favorable points and have feasts of mollusks and maize, with much merry-making. That fine 

 old institution of Rhode Island and Connecticut, the clam-bake, almost the only thing that was 

 allowed to warm the cockles of a Puritan's heart, and still the jolliest festival in summer experi- 

 ence alongshore, perpetuates this practice of the aborigines. 



The red men along the Gulf of Maine were not so blessed as those of more southerly latitudes 

 in respect to a supply of this food, bat utilized their privileges as well as they could, and found it 

 worth while to eat some things their more fortunate kinsman rejected. At the mouth of the 

 Damariscotta there exists the greatest of monuments to the antiquity of the oyster in these waters, 

 and a remarkable evidence of how important a food resource it formed to the primitive inhabit- 

 ants. I refer to that enormous heap of shells, estimated to contain no less than eight millions of 

 cubic feet, which was heaped up by the Indians as the refuse from their long feeding upon oysters 

 at this spot. 



But Damariscotta is only one of many places on the Gulf of Maine where these shell-heaps, 

 or extinct deposits under water, show that the oyster once flourished. They are to be found at 

 suitable points all along the coast. More than this, there is abundant evidence that at the time 

 of the coming of Europeans to that coast, beds of living oysters were flourishing (or had very 

 recently become extinct) about the inlets into the Bay of Fundy; at Mount Desert Island, in 

 George's, Damariscotta, and Sheepscot Rivers; throughout the upper and sheltered parts of Casco 

 Bay ; probably off Scarborough Headlands, N. H. ; in Portsmouth Harbor and the Great Bay of 

 Durham River, Brainford County, N. H. ; in Newbury (Parker and Rowley Rivers), Ipswich, Bos- 

 ton (both Charles and Mystic Rivers), Weymouth, Barnstable and Wellfleet, Mass. So far as I 

 can find out, however, there were no other localities of oyster growth north of Cape Cod; and in 

 most of these it was exterminated at a very early day. 



One point calls for more particular mention. The limited sea-coast of New Hampshire pro- 



