A SrrtitemMent oF FisuerMen. 217 
for our departure on the Victoria, Our passage was very 
agreeable, and on the morning of the fourth day we were 
landed at the mouth of the St. John, some six hundred miles 
from Quebec, and with the hazy outline of the island of An- 
ticosti in sight to the south. 
We were rejoiced at finding a hamlet of huts, where resid- 
ed the cod fishermen of the station, who employed some sixty 
smacks, and were in full tide of operation, fishing with hand- 
lines on the banks between the main shore and Anticosti. 
The salmon-fishers of the estuary also resided there, and were 
fishing with gill-nets fastened to stakes which were fixed in 
the bottom of the river, but not technically called stake-nets. 
Mr. J. Beaulieu, a superintendent or fishery warden, resides 
also at the mouth of the St. John during the salmon season. 
The doctor, with the general and his lady, having arrived two 
days previously, had ascended the river with canoes to the 
plateau where we designed encamping, twenty-seven miles 
up the river, and had sent back two canoes and guides for us. 
While the grocer was preparing our breakfast of fried sal- 
mon, With salt pork, bread, butter, and English breakfast tea, 
I concluded to reconnoitre, and soon found that curiosity 
called the black fly, who left his mark on my nose. I saw 
also the salmon-uetters land with their boats, coutaining 
many salmon which were either headless or showed signs of 
having been bitten in different parts of the body, and so mu- 
tilated by the seals, and perhaps otters and minks, as to be 
entirely valueless. I therefore concluded that either the seals 
should be destroyed, or that salmon should not be taken with 
gill-nets fastened to stationary stakes in the stream, where 
all water-vermin can feast on the struggling salmon, helpless- 
ly fastened in the meshes, from whence many of them, bitten 
in pieces, necessarily drift down the current to pollute the 
river, and warn salmon just entering to seek some other 
spawning-ground. 
