6 ON THE DECBEASE, RESTORATION AND 



in the depths of the ocean. But no portion of this system is prac- 

 tised in our American rivers. There is not a salmon weir in the 

 province ; and the consequence is, that young and old, kelt and 

 grilse, worthless and unwholesome, the fish are killed by the undis- 

 criminating 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 apper- 

 taining to the fur trade which is far more profitable. The approach- 

 ing termination of their lease and the consequent uncertainty of their 

 tenure may perhaps appear a sufficient 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 existence of Salmon in Canada. 

 I am persuaded that tvere that protection withdrawn for one sum- 

 mer, without the substitution of some other as effective, this no- 

 ble fish toould be utterly exterminated from our country. Fish- 

 ermen from Gaspe, Rimouski, New Brunswick, Labrador, Newfound- 

 land, 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 

 every fish that ventured into the rivers. Already has this been 

 attempted. For the last two or three years schooners from the United 

 States, have regularly arrived, in the salmon season, at the Bay of 

 Seven Islands, their crews well armed, and have set their nets in the 

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

 cumstances have occurred at other fishing stations in the tributaries 

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

 resorted to for punishing the aggressors or preventing a repetition of 

 their outrages. The river Bersinies has this year (1856) been alto- 

 gether in the hands of a speculating and rapacious American, who 

 employed the spear of the Indian to furnish him with mutilated sal- 

 mon, several boxes of which he brought to this city, in the month of 

 September, when they were out of season, unfit for food and flavor- 

 less, having previously glutted the markets of Portland, Boston and 

 Xew York with more palatable fish. 



There can be but little doubt that many of the salmon streams 

 in Lower Canada would be as productive, under proper management, 

 as rivers in Europe for which large annual rents are paid ; but it must 



