Fish Culture in Inland Waters 207 



the Connecticut River for many days, and no finite being can num- 

 ber them." Such accounts, of which there are many, pertain to the 

 coastal streams accessible to the fish from the sea, but the impression 

 prevails that inland waters were likewise replete with fish. There 

 may be a question as to what extent such a behef is justified. 



Authentic accounts of the fish Hfe of inland waters are rare. 

 Some fifty years ago, Watson ('76), writing of salmon in Lake 

 Champlain, says : "When the writer first became a resident of the dis- 

 trict in 1824, many of the original settlers of the country were yet 

 living, who were men of respectability and position, and of undoubted 

 veracity. Their tales of the abundance of the salmon which pre- 

 vailed at that time for their acceptance exercised the strongest faith 

 in the truthfulness of the narrators. Coming from the unimpeach- 

 able sources they did, and corroborated by uniform traditions, and 

 the current of universal testimony, by actual observers or participants 

 of the incidents, there was no hesitation in receiving the statements 

 as authentic and true. I have heard accounts from several of these 

 individuals that when they immigrated many streams were so 

 thronged by the salmon that it was unsafe, at particular seasons, to 

 ride a spirited horse into them for the reason that the fish were so 

 abundant and bold that they would fearlessly approach the horse 

 and strike him with great force by the powerful muscular action of 

 their bodies. It was often represented that it was a common pastime, 

 as well as a most desirable means of obtaining food at that time, to 

 drive a team into some of the shallow tributaries of the river, and 

 from the wagon spear the salmon with pitchforks, and thus obtain 

 in a few minutes all the fish needed for consumption. Many of the 

 salmon taken in this primitive method would reach twenty pounds 

 in weight." 



The same author cites records of 1776 and 1777, which indicate 

 that a pioneer in the Champlain basin had " complimented the Ameri- 

 can Army with 1,500 salmon in one year." Another incident, related 

 by " so intelligent and reliable authority " that it corroborated the 

 " almost incredible traditions of the former copious prevalence of 

 the salmon in these waters," was to the efifect that about the year 

 1800 or possibly a year or two earlier, as he was fording the Little 

 Au Sable, a small shallow stream, near its mouth, the passage of his 

 w.agon was largely impeded by the throng of salmon which was in 

 the stream, and he readily caught and threw upon the bank all he 

 wished to take. Another account was that early in the past century 

 five hundred salmon were taken in a single afternoon from the River 

 Boquet, a tributary of the lake. Still another authentic account was 

 that of 1,500 pounds of salmon having been taken by a single haul 

 of the seine, near Port Kendall in the year 1823. These facts, the 

 author thought to be " sufficient to sustain the proposition that the 

 waters and the tributaries of Lake Champlain were teeming at a 

 former epoch with salmon to an extraordinary, if not unexampled, 

 extent." It is further stated that in 1838 one man caught 50 or 60 

 salmon in the Ausable River, where no salmon had been seen for 



