216 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



we took out of this lake twenty-one sturgeon, that were from eight to twelve feet 

 in length. One of them measured twelve feet two inches from its extreme points, 

 four feet eleven inches round the middle, and would weigh from five hundred and 

 fifty to six hundred pounds. All the sturgeon that we have caught, on this side of 

 the mountain, are far superior in flavour to any I ever saw in any other part of the 

 world. 



" The Carrier Indians reside a part of the year in villages, built at convenient 

 places for taking and drying salmon, as they come up the rivers. These fish they 

 take in abundance with little labour; and they constitute their principal food 

 during the whole year. They are not very unpalatable when eaten alone, and with 

 vegetables they are very pleasant food. Towards the middle of April, and some- 

 times sooner, the natives leave their villages, to go and pass about two months at 

 the small lakes, from which, at that season, they take white fish, trout, carp, &c, 

 in considerable numbers. But when these begin to fail, they return to their vil- 

 lages and subsist on the small fish which they dried at the lakes, or on salmon, 

 should they have been so provident as to have kept any until that late season ; or 

 they eat herbs, the inner bark or sap of the cypress tree (pinus Banksiana) , ber- 

 ries, &c. At this season few fish of any kind are to be taken out of the lakes or 

 rivers of New Caledonia. In this manner the natives barely subsist, until about 

 the middle of August, when salmon again begin to make their appearance in all 

 the rivers of any considerable magnitude ; and they have them at most of their 

 villages in plenty until the latter end of September, or the beginning of October. 

 For about a month they come up in crowds, and the noses of some of them are 

 either worn or rotted off, and the eyes of others have perished in their heads ; yet 

 in this maimed condition they are surprisingly alert in coming up rapids. These 

 maimed fishes are generally at the head of large bands, on account of which the 

 natives call them mee-oo-tees, or chiefs. The Indians say that they have suffered 

 these disasters by falling back among the stones when coming up difficult places 

 in the rapids which they pass. The Carriers take salmon in the following manner. 

 All the Indians of the village assist in making a dam across the river, in which 

 they occasionally leave places to insert their baskets or nets of Avicker-work. These 

 baskets are generally from fifteen to eighteen feet in length, and from twelve to 

 fifteen feet in circumference. The end at Avhich the salmon enter is made with 

 twigs in the form of the entrance of a Avire mouse-trap. When four or five hun- 

 dred salmon have entered this basket, they either take it to the shore to empty out 

 the fish, or they take them out at a door in the top, and transport them to the shore 

 in their large wooden canoes, which are convenient for this purpose. When the 



