i96 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



no portion of this system is practised in our American rivers. 

 There is not a salmon weir in the province; and tlie consequence 

 is, that young and old, kelt and grilse, worthless and im- 

 wholesome, the fish are killed by the midiscriminating net and 

 the cruel spear. 



It appears to me that the Hudson's Bay Company set little 

 value on these fisheries, and maintain them merely as an accident 

 appertaining to the fur trade which is far more profitable. The 

 approaching termination of their lease and the consequent un- 

 certainty of their tenure may perhaps appear a sutficient reason 

 for their not incurring the expense of erecting weirs, by which 

 much more profit could be made of their fisheries. Unproductive 

 and wasteful as their mode of fishing is, the protection the Hudson^ s 

 Bay Company affords is the only present safeguard for the exis- 

 tence of Salmon in Canada. I am persiraded that were that pro- 

 tection icitlulrawn for one summer, ivithout the suhstitiition of some 

 other as effective, this noble fish ivould he utterly exterminated 

 from our country. Fishermen from Gasp^, Rimouski, Now Bruns- 

 wick, Labrador, Newfoimdland, the Magdalene Islands and the 

 United States — whose numbers and skill would enable them to do 

 thoroughly what the servants of the H. B. C. from their paucity 

 and inexperience do ineffectually — would swarm up our rivers, 

 and with nets, spears, torches, and every other engine of piscine 

 destruction, would kill, burn and mutilate ever^r fish that ven- 

 tured into the rivers. Already has this been attempted. For 

 the last two or three years schooners from the United States have 

 i:egularly arrived, in the salmon season, at the Bay of Seven Is- 

 lands, their crews well armed, and have set their nets in the 

 river Moisie, in despite of the officers of the H. B. C. Similar 

 circiunstances have occun-ed at other fishing stations in the tri- 

 butaries of the St. Lawrence ; no means, that I am aware of, 

 having been resorted to for prmishing the aggressors or prevent- 

 ing a repetition of their outrages. The river Bersinies has this 



