Fish, Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania. 7 



stretched across the entrance. Thus the fish were imprisoned to be 

 slaughtered at leisure by .their captors. 



In 1680, Mahlon Stacy, one of the first settlers of New Jersey, wrote 

 a letter to a brother in England, in which he gave a somewhat similar 

 method used by the Indians for fish catchings. The letter is so interest- 

 ing that, though it contains some other matters not germaiu to the sub- 

 ject of this work, it is herewith given entire : 



"But now a word or two of those strange reports you hear of us and 

 our country : I affirm they are not true, but fear they were spoke from 

 a spirit of envy. It is a country that produceth all things for the sup- 

 port and sustenance of man in a plentiful manner; if it were not so, I 

 should be ashamed of what I have before written. But I can stand, 

 having truth on my side, against and before the face of all gain-sayers 

 and evil spies, I have traveled through most of the places that are set- 

 tled and some that are not, and in every place I find the country very 

 apt to answer the expectations of the diligent. I have seen orchards 

 laden with fruit to admiration, their very limbs torn to pieces with the 

 weight, and most delicious to the taste and lovely to behold. I have 

 seen an apple tree, from a pippin-kernel, yield a barrel of curious cider; 

 and peaches in such plenty that some people took their carts a peach 

 gathering; I could not but smile at the conceit of it. They are a very 

 delicate fruit and hang almost like our onions that are tied on ropes. I 

 have seen and known, this summer, forty bushels of bold wheat off one 

 bushel sown, and many more such instances I could bring, which would 

 be too tedious here to mention. We have, from the time called May 

 until Michaelmas, great store of very good wild fruits, as strawberries, 

 cranberries and hurtleberries, which are like our bilberries in England, 

 but far sweeter ; they are very wholesome fruits. The cranberries are 

 much like cherries for color and bigness, which may be kept till fruit 

 come again ; an excellent sauce is made of them for venison, turkeys and 

 other great fowl, and they are better to make tarts than either goose- 

 berries or cherries. We have them brought to our houses by the In- 

 dians in great plenty. My brother, Eobert, had as many cherries this 

 year as would have loaded several carts. It is my judgment, by what I 

 have observed, that fruit trees in this country destroy themselves by the 

 very weight of their fruit. As for venison and foAvls we have great 

 plenty; we have brought home to our houses by the Indians, seven or 

 eight fat bucks a day, and sometimes put by as many, having no occa- 

 sion for them. And fish, in their season, are very plentious. My cousin, 

 Eevell, and I, with some of my men, went last third month into the 

 river ("The Delaware") to catch herrings, for at that time they came in 

 great shoals into the shallows. We had neither rod nor net, but, after 

 tlie Indian fashion, made a round pinfold, about two yards over and a 

 foot high, but left a gap for the fish to go in at, and made a bush to lay 

 In the gap to keep the fish in ; and when that was done, we took two 



