106 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



though every precaution was taken not to injure them, 

 they quickly succumbed. The mere act of lifting them 

 from the water and immediately returning them proved 

 a shock, and twenty seconds exposure to the atmos- 

 phere was fatal. 



The kingfishers for many a mile seemed to know of 

 this school of fish, and they followed it as closely as 

 gulls do the moss-bunkers along our sea-coast. Again 

 and again these voracious birds would dart into the 

 midst of the young shad, and swallowed them usually 

 without preliminary butchering. 



I followed these fish a short distance, when, as though 

 the tide had turned, they very suddenly reversed their 

 positions and moved slowly towards the river. Consid- 

 ering their helplessness, it is a marvel that any of their 

 number should ever reach the ocean. Not simply for 

 the reason that the kingfishers followed them so closely, 

 but because they were also attended by numbers of pike, 

 perch, water - snakes, and had even to run the gantlet 

 of scores of hungry turtles. This in the creek where I 

 saw them. What their experiences in the river were to 

 be can be imagined. 



Nevertheless, centuries ago, the cunning Indian fish- 

 ermen, at this very bend of the creek, captured thou- 

 sands of shad by methods of their own — perhaps be- 

 neath the larger of the oaks still standing here. 



Loskiel records, " There is a particular manner of fish- 

 ing which is undertaken in parties, as many hands are 

 wanted, in the following manner : when the shad-fish 

 (Alosa clupea) come up the rivers, the Indians run a dam 

 of stones across the stream, where its depth will admit 



