86 THE RIVER AND LAKE FISHERIES 



The Norsemen, who, beyond a doubt, were the first visitors of America, 

 at least since the Christian era, spoke with scarce less enthusiasm of the 

 shoals of salmon — a fish with which they were well acquainted, as swarming 

 in their own wild Norwegian fiords and rivers — than of the grapes and 

 maize of Vinland — fruits of the earth which, denied to the rigours of their 

 native climate, they had yet learned to know and value, by their inroads on 

 the sunny shores of southern France, and the vintage-laden soil of Italy 

 and the Sicilian islands. 



Within two years after Sebastian Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland, in 

 the year 1497, sea fisheries were established on the coast and banks of that 

 island ; and these fisheries " formed the first link between .Europe and 

 North America, and for a century almost the only one." * 



The gallant St. Malousin mariner, Jacques Cartier, the discoverer and 

 namer of the bays of Gaspe and Chaleurs, of the St. Lawrence and the isle 

 of Mont Real, was forcibly struck, as he could not fail to be, by the innu- 

 merable multitudes of salmon and sea-trout with which those waters a. e 

 literally alive during the season — since, after above two centuries, during 

 which the reckless extravagance and wanton cruelty of the white settler, 

 more than his greed (for he has slaughtered at all seasons, even when the 

 fish is worthless), have waged a war of extermination on the tribe, their 

 numbers still defy calculation, and afford a principal source of rich, cheap, 

 and abundant nutriment to the colonists, as well as the material for a profit- 

 able export trade. 



Further to the west, the waters of all the New England rivers — the 

 mighty flow of the Penobscot, the silvery Kennebeck, the tumultuous 

 Androscoggin, the meadowy Connecticut, so far as to the lordly Hudson and 

 the rivers of New Jersey, which enter into its beautiful bay — were found 

 by the first settlers to abound with the sea-salmon ; and to their plenteous 

 supply the early Puritan settlers, in no small degree, owed their preserva- 

 tion during the hard and trying times which followed their first attempts at 

 colonisation. That the Delaware likewise abounded in this noble fish 

 can in no manner be doubted, for, of all the rivers on this side of the con- 

 tinent, there is no water so well adapted to their habitation, both from the 

 absence of any material fall or chute, which should hinder their ascent, and 

 from the purity and gravel bottom of its upper waters, as well as of its 

 numerous tributaries, all of which are admirably qualified for the propa- 

 gation of this species. 



South of the Capes of the Delaware, it would seem probable that the true 

 sea-salmon never existed. In the first place, because it appears that, on 

 this continent,"} - the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude is, on both coasts, 

 the extreme southern limit of the true sea-salmon ; and secondly, because, 

 in the Susquehanna and rivers still further south, even so far as the Vir- 



* " Hildreth's History U.S.," vol. i., p. 37. 



f Oil the continent of Europe it does not extend southwardly below 4A n north lati- 

 tude, if — of which we have some doubts — it is taken south of the Isle d'Ouessant, in 

 the Bsy of Biscay. 



