Sept. 88, 1886.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



16B 



penalties in nearly half its cases upon declarations of 

 Ignorance or pronrise of amendment, and I doubt if its 

 total receijits for prosecutions equal its expenses. It lias 

 on several occasioas derLired that il ^v< add not enforce 

 unwise enactments, and hus always considei-ed the interest 

 of the dealers and tlieir customers, and enjoys, I believe, 

 the general respect. Nor is this tht:' first time that a Com- 

 missioner of Fisheries has expressed a decided opinion 

 about ill-considered legislation. ISIot.ably was tins the case 

 when the law forbidding the sale of stri pod bass in the 

 spring was up for oiifoi-cernent. Tlie Commission have 

 been in the habit of trapping, snaring and kdling in any 

 surreptitious maimer at llioStato hatchery the kingfislier, 

 that arch enemy of fisli fry, but hereafter they will have 

 to let him severely alone or incur the disapproval of some 

 of their own game ijrotectors. In conclusion let me ask 

 you how mairy of the Legislatm-e do you think even 

 knew that the bobolink was the reed or rice bird in liis 

 summer male habiliments? 



EoBERT Barnwell Roosevelt. 



NEW YORK GAME AND BIRD LAWS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



The last Legislatm-e made some remarkable changes in 

 the law. As the public oxight to know wha.t the law is, I 

 desire to call attention to certain points. 



1. It is now unlawful to kill any crow, hawk, crow 

 blackbird, bluejay or owl. So careful has the Legislatm-e 

 been to protect the eggs and young of song birds, game 

 birds and poultry! 



2. It is now unlawful to have in possession any wild 

 bird (except game bii-ds) or any part thereof. Any person 

 who retams a stuffed bu'd in Ms possession, or Aveai's any 

 part of a bird, provided it is not a game bii'd or part of 

 one, is liable to a fine not exceeding $50, and to imprison- 

 ment in a county jail or penitentiary not more than 80 

 days. This provision is certainly radical enough, but its 

 effectiveness is another matter. 



3. It is mrlawful to kill, have in possesion, or sell any 

 wild pigeons or wild doves. 



4. It is forbidden to sell or have in possession, during 

 the month of January, any ruffed grouse, pinnated gimise, 

 or woodcock. This prohibition may or may not be a good 

 thing in itself; but it is an. outra.ge in vie w of the fact that 

 quail are still allowed to be sold in January. The natural 

 result is that a special premium is offered for the 

 destruction of that one of our game birds most deserving 

 of ijrotection, and most needing it. 



0. It is unlawfid to sell venison or have it in possession 

 from the 1st to tlie loth of November. Before and after 

 that period it is lawful, under certain restrictions. To 

 search for the reason of this provision would imply gross 

 flattery of the legislators. Samuel Huntington. 



New York, Sept. 16, 1886. 



Squirrels.— Point of Rocks, Md., Sept. 18.— Squm-els 

 are quite abundant this season in the woods near the Poto- 

 mac River in Virginia and Maryland. Several times while 

 fishing this week I have heard the nimble climbers bark- 

 ing in the trees along shore, and a number of persons 

 Kving here have brought in from five to ten as the result 

 of a morning's limit. For those who are fond of that sort 

 of sport there is lots of it.— J, C. B. 



The President's Deer Hunting.— Several correspond- 

 ents have witten in protest against a supposed violation 

 of the deer law by President Cleveland this year. So far 

 as we are informed they are in error. The hounding 

 season opened Sept. 1, and according to the reports in the 

 papers the deer killed by the Cleveland party were 

 hounded in the lawful season. 



Adirondacks. — Indian Point, Chateaugay Lake. — 

 Three of my guides have just returned from a week's 

 hunt at Wolf Pond, where they secured four large bucks 

 out of seven deer that they rail into the pond with dogs. 

 They report three deer killed at -Elbow Pond, 3 miles 

 above, and fom- killed 6 miles below. — R. M. Shutts. 



Havre de Grace Wildfowl.— In a stay at Havre de 

 Grace last week we foimd blue wings, gray and baldiiates 

 plenty. Box boats killing 25 to 75 per day. Law allows 

 shooting imtil Oct. 1; then close season until Nov. 1; then 

 the regular season, three days in the week.— Geo. Wild. 



Long Island.— Oakdale.— Mr. A. A. Fraser has leased 

 the premises of Col. W. H. Ludlow (containing one 

 thousand acres) for shooting puri30ses. 



Bay Birds on Lotg Island have been more than 

 usually abundant this yeai-, and the gunners assign it to 

 the stopping of spring shooting. 



All neiasdealers sell Forest and Stream Fables. 



!N SEPTEMBER MAILS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I get your paper from a newstand regularly, and am well pleased 

 with it, especially its cleanness. G-. B. W. 



Sajsta Rosa, Cal., Sept. 7. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Have taken your paper for a long time, first by single piu-chase 

 and later as subscriber. It is almost needless to add that I have 

 derived much solid pleasure from its pages, although not a believer 

 of many things that it has advocated. U. R. Williams. 



Salem, Mass., Sept. 20. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



The Forest and Stream is now qnite as near perfection as 

 human agency can make it. It is most carefully, enterprisingly 

 and successfully edited, I take pleasure in saying, for I know that 

 while editors receive many thumps, tjiey hut seldom receive 

 merited kind words. j)_ Brtjge. 



Syracuse, N. Y., Sept. 16. 



Editor Pnrcsfc and Stream: 



1 have been reading the Forest and Stream for some time, and 

 am very much pleased with it, and especially admire the 'bold 

 stand you take at all times in advancing the law in favor of the 

 protection of fish and game. Few seem to reaUze ]iow oecessary 

 t is to protect and shield the fish and game at the proper time, 

 and thereby save to ourselves and those to foUow us the great 

 jleasures of the woods. Oassids Thayer 



Grand Rapids, Mich., Sept. 13, 



§m mid ^iver ^mhing. 



Address all communicat'ions to the Forest (vnd Sb'eam, Fuh. Co. 



THE PORPOISES OF RIVIERE QUELLE. 



BY J. M. LE MOINB. 



Author of "Quebec Past and Present," "Maple Leaves," "The 

 Okronicles of tlie St. Lawrence," etc. 



I^iyiEEE QUELLE, sevonly iiine miles from Quebec, 

 A) is a flourishing village — with a ])ort for schooners — 

 forming part of tin.' populous comity t)f Kfimoiira-ska, for 

 a (piarter of a century famous as the arena of most turbu- 

 lent electioneering campaigns. 



Here, more than once, met at the hustings two sturdy 

 champions— the Hon. Jean Charles Ohapais, a Conserva- 

 tive, and the Hon. Luc Letellier de Saint Just, a Liberal — 

 both Senator; the latter, as Lieutenant-Governor of Que- 

 bec, well remembered for the coup d'etat of 1878; and 

 truly when they did meet, then began the tug of wax. 



Governor Letellier's residence may yet be seen at a spot 

 called Les Coteaux, about a mile from the parish cljiu'ch. 

 There devoted friends and loving j elatives closed Ids eyes 

 in the welcome slumber of deatli on the 38th of January, 

 1881. One mile and more past the bridge, on the banks of 

 the St. Lawrence, occurs a well-known landmark for 

 marmers — a promontory projecting in the St. Lawrence, 

 styled La Pointe de la Rividre Quelle, during more than 

 a century a busy fishmg stand for the capture of the 

 lordly porpoise, found there in droves during the summer 

 months. 



Before describing this important industry, be it known 

 that liiviere Quelle gave birth to one of the most indus- 

 trious and brilliant members of tlie group of savants and 

 htterati, selected by the Marquis of Lome in 1883 to con- 

 stitute the Royal Society of Canada— the Rev. Abbe Henri 

 Raymond Casgrain. Close to the parish church, on the 

 river bank, still stands the antique manor of the respected 

 Seigneur Casgrain,. the father of the Abbe. 



Riviere QueUe, sung in prose and verse by its gifted 

 son, is known far and wide, as much for its weii'd Indian 

 legends as it was, until lately, from being the haunt and 

 landing place par excellence of the white porpoises of the 

 northern portion of this continent. 



Among the innumerable pajiers penned by the learned 

 Abbe, there is one on the Riviere Quelle porpoise fishery, 

 from which I intend to draw copiously. It would apjiear 

 that this branch of industry dates as far back as the end 

 of the seventeenth century— 1680-1699— when King Louis 

 XIV. granted M. de Vitry, a member of the Sovereign 

 Council of Quebec, authority to place nets at this spot for 

 tlie cairture of the porpoise, together with a subsidy "in 

 rope one or two inches thick, rO,0001bs. of cod line," and 

 what was still more handy, "500 livi-es" in hard casli. 



Though this munificent grant was repeated for M. de 

 Vitry more than once, tlie ventm-e failed. In 1705 another 

 attempt was made; since that date weir fisheries for por- 

 poise have always continued in use at this locality. The 

 first regular grant of the right to fish at the Pointe at 

 Riviere Quelle, was registered by Intendant Raudot, on 

 the 20th July, 1707, in favor of a co-partnership composed 

 of six iidiabitants — all neighbors, who were authorized to 

 catch this unwieldy fish on the river frontage of their 

 lands by the King of France, the seignior of the fief, le 

 Sieur de Boishebert, consenting; the company was com- 

 posed of the following: Jean Delavoye, Etieiine Bouchard, 

 Pierre Soucy, Jaccjues Gagnon, Pierre Boucher and Fran- 

 qois Gauvin. With the lapse of years, tlie fishery privi- 

 leges of these holders became divided among so many de- 

 scendants of the six original grantees that it became 

 impossible to trace them all to their som-ce; to obviate 

 the misunderstandings and law suits likely to spring from 

 such chaos, an act of the Legislature in 1870 was passed, 

 constituting the representatives into a legal corporation. 



The tenth part of the porpoise oil paid over to the seign- 

 iors of Riviere Quelle since 1748, is not a seigniorial due; 

 the first seigneurs having consented to divest themselves 

 of the fishery right, droit de peclie, in favor of the first 

 occupants of the soil. It is a volimtary tribute, paid under 

 a special agTeement between tlie tenants and Madame de 

 Boiseherbert, the widow of tlie son of the first seigneur, 

 M. de la Boutheilleris, in consideration of sendees rend- 

 ered them by the said seignior in a contestation as to ter- 

 ritorial limits which had arisen between themselves and 

 the inliabitants of Ste. Anne, and also in consideration of 

 a further promise on the seignior's part to continue to 

 help them. 



In June, 1752, Intendant Bigot published a singular 

 ordinance, imposing heavy fines on any sportsman who 

 would have the audacity to discharge his gun on the 

 Point of Rivdere Quelle, and also on proprietors allowing 

 their cattle to stray anywhere near the beach. The pro- 

 ducts of these fines reversible to the church fimd of the 

 parish. 



Qn the 25th of January, 1798, Messrs. Lymburner and 

 Crawford, leading Lower Town (of Quebec) merchants of 

 the day, took a lease of the Riviere Quelle porpoise fish- 

 ery. Instead of looking after this important undertaking 

 themselves, they intrusted it to careless agents, who, by 

 their profuse expenditure, luxurious or riotous mode of 

 living, entailed on their emjiloyers losses so great, that 

 Lymburner and Crawford were glad to ask, in 1804, for a 

 cancellation of the lease. 



Marvelous and endless were the stories related touching 

 the firm's magnificent mansion on the wild-wooded, some 

 said haunted, point of Riviere Quelle; the spot was also 

 a favorite resting place for the canoes of the numerous 

 Indians then ascending or descending the St. Lawrence. 

 This, doubtless, gave rise to some of the most sensational 

 legends of the locality; but history also fm'nished its 

 quota of stirring traditions during the sieges of 1690 and 

 1759. 



The oldest inhabitant could relate how some of the 

 yawls and pinnaces attached to Admiral Phip's fleet in 

 attenipting to land at the point, in Qctober, 1690, had 

 sustained a witheiing fire from some unseen foes hid by 

 the rocks on the shore— the youthful chasseurs of the par- 

 ish, led on and placed in ambush by their warlike priest, 

 M. de Francheville! 



Who has not also heard of the weird old pictm-e so 

 gushuigly described by the Abbe Casgrain, now existing 

 in a lateral chapel of the parish church. Though value- 

 less as a work of art, it is prized ex vote, presented to 

 the church by the son of a French officer, charged by the 

 Governor of New France to carry despatches in the depth 



of winter to the French posts on the Lower St. Lawrence. 

 This youth had seen his aged parents succumb to the 

 wintry blast after losing in an encounter with the Iroquois, 

 his pocljet compass and viewing his Indian guides shot 

 down before his eyes; the aged warrior before expiring 

 had made his son vow to present a pictm-e to the first 

 chm-ch he sliould meet, and he himself had been rescued 

 from a most miserable death — starvation in the woods — 

 by a traveling missionary, passing by. How graphically 

 all this is told by the talented abbe. 



"It was by mere chance," says Casgrain, "that the dis- 

 covery was made how stakes could be utilized. to arrest 

 the progress of tl ie gigantic fish — the jiorpoises." The ap- 

 paratus is composed of a weir of stakes from 18 to 20ft. 

 long, planted about one foot apart in the mud, about one 

 mUe and a half from high-water mark and which is dry 

 at \o\v water. Each spring 7,200 jjoles or stakes are used. 

 Formerly these stakes were held together with ropes. The 

 semi-circle forming the fishery is a mile and a third in 

 length and ends in a curve, five acres from the extreme 

 end of the Riviere Quelle pointe. There lies the entrance, 

 for the fish to come in — called raceme. The weir is built 

 out between the 5th and 35tli April, when the caplin and 

 smelt come to spawn close in shore. The spawning takes 

 place at the flood. The hour of flood for the porpoise is 

 his dinner hour, when he gorges himself on caplin and 

 smelt. A meager, famished creature on his arrival, he 

 becomes, after eight or ten days feasting, bloated with 

 fat even to eight inches thick. 



A wonderful guzzler he gets to be, with digestive 

 powers which nothing will appall. 



Caplin and smelts are a sleep-producing food; after a 

 square meal on such, tlie porpoise naturally feels languid 

 and sleepy — an easy prey to his captor. 



In the school of porpoises there occur some cunning 

 veterans, which the fishermen style savant.-^ or courexirs 

 de loehes. These sly old sea foxes have escaped from 

 dangers innumerable, and can steer their way fearlessly 

 tlirough the stakes. Qccasionally one may be seen sta- 

 tioned at the entrance of the fishery, warning Ids com- 

 rades to shun the treacherous stakes", and when they dis- 

 regard his note of alarm, bandng their passage. Should 

 the giddy youths persist in entering, old reynard will 

 show them how to creep out of the stakes. These vete- 

 rans can only be trapped when a long course of over- 

 feeding makes them fat, stolid and stupid. 



Nothing more striking than to watch from the point of 

 Riviere Quelle a drove of porpoises, on a calm summer 

 day, gulping down in myriads the small fish within a 

 stone's throw from the beach, swimming in hundreds 

 close to the sm-face and ^tipouting from their air holes the 

 briny surf, which falls back, in the sun like a glittering 

 shower of pearls, into the sea_ 



It is while securing thus their prey that the porpoises, 

 heavy and sleepy, rush heedlessly into the fishery en- 

 trance. Qnce inside, instinct tells them to seek deep 

 water; they thus cross the fishery diagonally and meet 

 the lofty stakes which look to them like a waU, whose 

 points, set in motion by the tide, scare them. They then 

 retrace their course and seek to escape in deep water, but 

 the excm-sion takes them back to what is known as the 

 raeeroc, where the shallow water warns them of im- 

 pending danger. They then appear like dazed and do 

 not show themselves at the surface. After a few more 

 attempts to escape they seek the deepest water within the 

 stakes and swim round slowly; this is called sounding. 

 During all this time the tide is running out and the huge 

 creatures— some of them 25ft. long — ^remain an easy prey 

 to the harpooners. 



During the high tides porpoises occasionally drift ashore 

 on the beach, but this does not happen during neap tides. 

 As many as 500 have been formerly caught at one tide, 

 and the catch of one season has reached the figure of 

 1,800. 



In 1867 100 porpoises were killed in one night, tliis was 

 considered remarkable; harpoons and lances are used to 

 despatch them. The harpoon has projections which open 

 out and the harpoon er stands erect in the bow of Ms canoe 

 or boat; the fish when struck rushes away, along with 

 the boat, which is caiTied through the water with the 

 rapidity of an arrow. 



For some years past, the white porpoise seems to have 

 deserted its old haunt at Riviere Quelle; by some the fre- 

 quent noise of the jjassing steamers is assigned as a cause. 

 They have been pretty plentiful this summer at the 

 entrance of the Saguenay River and on the north shore of 

 the St. Lawrence — where tliey are not caught in weirs 

 and harpooned — but shot with a rifle from a boat and 

 hai-pooned. 



Abbe Casgrain mentioned the curious human foot prints 

 on the rock of the point, where also can be seen the in- 

 denture and marks of snow shoes, in the solid shelving 

 rocks; another fruitful subject of mysterious surmise for 

 the legend-loving dwellers in Riviere Quelle. "The foot 

 prints of the d— 1," said one fisherman. "But why should 

 Lucifer have left his warm home," said another, "to 

 ramble in winter on snow shoes over the rocky shore?" 

 Mystery! mystery! but all in keeping with the weird 

 and tragical legend of Madame Houel, the widow of M. 

 Houel, a controleur general, under the French regime 

 who gave his name to the parish and furnished Abbe 

 Casgrain the frame work for his fascinating legend "La 

 Jongleuse," of which more anon. 



Potomac Bass Fishing.— Point of Rooks, Md., Sept. 

 18.— I have spent a few days here very pleasantly catch- 

 ing black bass and an occasional eel, rowing over eel 

 dams, and shooting the rapids on the way back, exploring 

 islands, and otherwdse filling out a brief outing. Have 

 had good luck with the bass, notwithstanding moonlight 

 nights and quite hot days. Ilave caught fifty, averaging 

 somet h i n g over a pound (none over two pounds), eels, 

 fallfish, and a turtle. The fishing will be better in 

 Qctober, and any one can have a good time at almost any 

 point on the Potomac, and fish weigliing from one to four 

 pounds may be caught. Bait, minnows and small cat- 

 fish. — Burnett. 



Black Bass in Maine.— Duriag August I successfully 

 angled many days for black bass in Long Pond, situated 

 on the boundary of Mt. A^ernon and Belgrade, Me. When 

 the black bass were di-essed it was found that quite a 

 large number contained spawn, proving to me very con- 

 clusively that the open season for black bass should not 

 be extended in the State of Maine. The ice does not lea v« 

 the ponds tdl late in the spring and the water is oold till 

 well into the summer. — J, W. T. 



