710 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 
In the village stores salmon, shad, and alewives were bought and sold, and the merchants’ 
books give us some information about prices.* The storekeeper paid for fresh salmon 2d. per 
pound, for salt salmon 24d. and sold salt salmon at all seasons of the year for 4d. per pound. 
A half barrel of salmon is charged at £1 4s. Shad were bought in May and June at from 1} to 
3d. each, and sold in March at Gd. each. The selling price of a barrel of shad was from 308. 
to 36s. Alewives are bought in May at 3s. per barrel, and retailed in December and February 
at £14s. The same merchant was retailing dry codfish at 4d. to 6d. per pound; salt pork at 
10d. ; salt beef at 4d. ; flour at 6d.; corn at 8s. per bushel; sugar at 1s. per pound; sheeting at 2s. 
6d. per yard. Thus the fisherman bartering his salmon for store goods would give 2 or 3 pounds 
of salmon for a pound of codfish ; 5 pounds of salmon for a pound of pork ; 2 pounds of salmon for 
a pound of beef; 3 pounds of salmon for a pound of flour ; 48 pounds of salmon for a bushel of corn ; 
6 pounds of salmon for-a pound of tea, and 15 pounds of salmon for a yard of sheeting. A com- 
parison with the modern prices for these articles shows us that when salmon are sold by the 
fisherman at 12 cents per pound (and the price rarely goes lower) their purchasing power has 
increased, in exchange for codfish about 6 times; for pork, 5 times; for beef, 2 times ; for ftour, 10 
times; for corn, 8 times; for sugar, 6 times; for sheeting, 22 times. 
Shortly after the year 1800 weirs with three pounds, substantially of the modern form, were 
introduced. They were constructed wholly of stakes and brush, or in some cases partly of woven 
cedar mats. They had no floor but the bottom of the river, and were not extended beyond low- 
water mark because the fisherman must take his catch out with a dip-net. Such a weir in latter 
days would be a total failure, but in those times took a great abundance of fish. Their introduc- 
tion is attributed by several authorities to one Hawley (or “ Hollis”) Emerson, of Phippsburg, in 
1811 or 1815. The latter year he appears to have built such a weir at Treat’s Point, on the west 
side of Marsh Bay, and it inclosed at one time such a mass of fish that its sides burst open and let 
them out. This form of weir came into immediate use, and in the river from Castine and Sears- 
port to Orrmgton supplanted set-nets generally, though these have never passed wholly out of 
use. About the same time, or a few years later, floors were made for the fish-pounds, and one 
Halliday, said to be a Scotchman, and to have come from New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, intro- 
duced the use of netting for the walls of the fish-pound. To him is also by some attributed the 
introduction of floors. He built a weir on the west side of Orphan’s Island (now Verona), and that 
was the first weir with “marlin” (netting), or with a floor, that was built in that neighborhood 
The use of netting was, however, only gradually adopted, and we know that as late as 1829 some 
productive weirs were built at Bucksport without it. In Penobscot Bay, below Castine and 
Searsport, weirs were never adopted, but set-nets continued in use until comparatively recent times, 
when they were gradually transformed into the “traps” or pound-nets of the present day. 
About the date of the introduction of three-pound weirs there sprung up a better demand for 
shad, which now became the leading fish for sale. Small vessels from Southern New England, 
some also from Portland, came and passed the fishing season in the Penobscot, buying salmon and 
shad to smoke and salt, and also buying the cured fish, not ouly of these species, but of alewives, 
salted or smoked. A considerable part of the catch found its way to market through their 
hands. 
Fish were not continuously plenty; 1820 was a year of great scarcity, which continued several 
years after that date. In 1822 fish were scarce in Marsh Bay, but about the 1st of July, there 
was an extraordinary run of salmon which gave good fishing in Penobscot Bay, and as far up the 
* Data from the books of Mr. Robert Treat, who kept a store in Bangor from 1786 to 1790. 
