Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $i a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. |^ 
Six Months, $2. | 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1901. 
1 
VOL. LVI.— No. 9. 
No. 846 Broadway, New York 
THE RUIN OF A RIVER. 
The Dennj's River in Maine was one of the three rivers 
of that State which until very recentljr afforded capital 
salmon fishing, the others being the Penobscot and the 
St. Croix. Of these the Dennys was the most famons, 
and the proud claim was made for it by the residents of, 
Dennysville that it was the first American river where 
(in 1832) salmon were killed with a -fly. In its pools have 
fished some of the best known salmon anglers of this 
country — Rev. Dr. Bethune. Walter M. Brackett, Marimer 
A. Wilder and Charles Hallock. In addition to the sal- 
mon fishing, the river yielded of its abundant resources a 
large contribution to the support of the people dwelling 
on the banks. The weir owners derived a legitimate in- 
come from the salmon in the estuary; the inhabitants for 
miles along the river depended upon the annual run of 
alewives for a good supply of winter food, salted, smoked 
and pickled ; and the river made a most entrancing pic- 
ture in the landscape of the beautiful village of Dennys- 
ville, and did its share to attract and retain the summer 
visitor. 
Writing in 1899 in the Forest and Stream, Mr. Charles 
Hallock gave an enticing picture of the river as he knew 
it— its clear water at low tide scurrying over the rocks 
with rapid flow, showing whiteness and flecks of foam ; 
and at the full tide flowing in an even, almost ma- 
jestic, volume, hiding the boulders and forming a de- 
lectable plunge bath and swimming pool for the sportive 
salmon. 
Lured by Mr. Hallock's description, Dr. Robert T. 
Morris, of this city, in the following summer of 1900 re- 
paired to Dennysville for the salmon fishing, and this is 
the condition of things he found there, as he described it 
in the Forest and Stream : 
As a salmon stream the name of the river is Dennys. Sccwmilla 
fecit. Until very recently the river was full of salmon. There' 
are half a dozen fine pools within the first, two miles, and the 
salmon took the fly freely. They tell of Mr. Prime and Mr. 
Brackett taking eight or ten salmon a day. Shad came up the 
river in June in large schools, and furnished an abundance of 
toothsome fare for the people. Alewives crowded the ripples, and 
the poorer people laid up barrels of them against a snowy day. 
But these things are all spoken of in the past tense, because the 
lumber company has a sawmill at the head of tide water, and the 
artificial iishway will not allow breeding fish to pass. The natural 
iishway, a narrow channel running around the dam, has been 
closed because it allowed too much mill water to escape. Every- 
thing has been turned to utility for a few men, and the rest of 
the people are most naturally left out. In addition to barring 
the river against anadronious fish, the mill runs night and day, 
and fills the river with such a pudding of sawdust and shavings 
that few fish can even get vip to the chief obstructions. 
The salmon and shad and alewives still attempt to get past the 
dam, but in constantly diminishing numbers, and in two or three 
years more the mill will have accomplished In a free country what 
is not permitted in any old despotic civilization. Canada, with 
the effete ideas of European experience, requires mill owners to 
dispose of mill rubbish in a harmless way, and derives a great 
income from salmon properties. 
The two or three years have not elapsed, but the ruin 
of the river has already practically been wrought. No 
more salmon, nor alewives, run up the stream, because 
the dam and the slabs and the sawdust drive all fish back. 
The banks of the river once so beautiful and attractive in 
the village are now so covered with sawdust and slabs 
that the stream has become an eyesore, and the summer 
visitor is driven away. Even the bass and perch that 
flourished in Meddybembs Lake, some sixteen miles up 
the river, are deprived of their food supply of young 
alewives. 
And all of this wicked destruction has been wrought 
by a handful of capitalists, who are too greedy and too 
brutally indifi'erent to the rights of others to expend the 
insignificant amount required to put in a proper fishway 
and to provide for the burning of the sawdust and the 
slabs. The Dennys River is an example of those streams, 
of which the name is legion in America, whose valuable 
food resources and scenic attractiveness have been as 
shamelessly as needlessly destroj'ed by mill owners. These 
men who have built up and are to-day maintaining this 
public nuisance in the Dennys River belong to a class 
which has cursed the continent from one shore to the 
other, of individuals and corporations whose profit from 
the waters has been gained at the public expense. They 
have ignored or defied and have deliberately destroyed 
the public's rights in the rivers and streams, ^hey have 
poisoned the waters, destroyed the fish and made the 
banks a forbidding desolation. The Dennys River is a 
fresh and timely example of this ruination, but is Rot 
the latest; read in another column Mr. Brady's letter, tell- 
ing of the impending destruction of the South Branch of 
the Potomac; the same callous disregard of popular rights 
and public interests in the waterways shown in the Maine 
case marks the West Virginia outrage. 
This system has been the rule so long in the United 
States that it is extremely late in the day to agitate for any 
general reform. In scores and hundreds and thousands of 
cases the ruin has already been wrought past any pos- 
sible hope of restoration. All the more reason then for 
seeking to save what may yet be rescued and pre- 
served from destruction. The evil work wrought by the 
Dennys River sawmill has not been carried so far that 
interv^ention by the authorities might not even now avail 
to stop the destruction and in time restore the stream, if 
not wholly at least in part, to its old-time condition of 
usefulness and value to the people. If the Maine Fish 
Commissioners have authority under the existing laws to 
compel these mill owners to put in an adequate fishway 
and to dispose of their rubbish in some other way than by 
throwing it into the river, the Commission should act 
without delay. If no such authority exists for abating 
the Dennys River public nuisance, the Legislature should 
without delay make provision for this. It is an outrage 
that the conditions now existing should go on un- 
checked. 
SPRING SHOOTING AGAIN. 
The bill to abolish spring shooting in the State of New 
York, now before the Legislature, seems to have a reason- 
able prospect of passing. Should it become law. its proper 
enforcement will undoubtedly cause a very great improve- 
ment in the autumn and winter duck shooting in this 
State and in other localities far away. We believe that 
not for many years has the prospect of having such a 
law passed been so good as it is at present Besides the 
many considerations which influence sportsmen and all 
who care for the bettering of game conditions in this 
country to work in favor of such a law, there is one 
which has not yet been brought up, but which should 
carry weight in the minds of thoughtful people. The 
Province of Ontario recently enacted a law prohibiting 
the shooting of wildfowl in the spring, and the observance 
of that law gives residents of New York — and others — 
during the season when ducks may be shot a greater 
abundance of birds than would be had if the fowl were 
shot in spring in Ontario, instead of being allowed to 
rear their young there unmolested, as is now the case. 
We are thus the direct beneficiaries of Ontario in this 
respect, and it would seem that good faith and good 
fellowship demand that we should protect the birds as 
Ontario is doing, in order that she may receive from us 
some measure of the benefit which she gives to us. 
What is true of New York in this regard is just as 
true of Connecticut, Masaschusetts and Maine. Those 
States also should bestir themselves about spring shooting. 
It would be a great step forward for game protection, and 
for sportsmanship generally, if this winter these three 
New England States were to enact laws prohibiting the 
shooting of wildfowl in spring. This would come verj' 
near making the north Atlantic coast solid in favor of 
legitimate shooting for wildfowl, and would have an 
eft'ect on the country at large which can hardly be over- 
estimated. To-day, of all the New England States, with 
their wealth, their intelligence and their culture, Rhode 
Island alone of those possessing any considerable seaboard 
prohibits spring shooting: although New Hampshire and 
Vermont, as has been said before, have been on the 
right side of this question for years. 
Is it not practicable for the sportsmen of Maine, Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut to carry through this season an 
anti-spring shooting law? The same reasons which ap- 
peal to the New York gunners appeal to those of New 
England ; and while it is hard to imagine the members of 
the branting clubs of Cape Cod being willing to give up 
their shooting, yet it is conceivable that, for the general 
advantage, they might consent even to do this. The op- 
portunity for concerted action in this matter is one which 
should be taken advantage of, and there seems a reason- 
able probability that a strong effort in each of these three 
States might be crowned with success. 
The good work done for general game protection in 
Maine is well known ; Massachusetts' success last year in 
passing the bill forbidding the sale of ruffed grouse and 
woodcock reflected the greatest credit on the energy apd 
self-denial of her sportsmen, while it is but a few years 
.since Connecticut, in order to preserve her waning supply 
of quail, ruffed grouse and woodcock, cut thirty days off 
the open season. Is it not worth while for these States 
now to follow the example set them by those newer States 
of the Northwest which have abolished spring shooting? 
BREEDING OF WILD DUCKS IN NEW YORK. 
i\M:ONG the arguments advanced b3' the advocates of 
Senator Brown's bill to prohibit spring shooting is one 
on which it is desirable that more light should be thrown, 
and evidence on the point is desired from ortiithologi.sts 
and older readers of Forest and Stream. 
It is of course a well understood fact that in the days 
before the settlement of the country, and above all be- 
fore the great increase in gunners, wild ducks bred all 
through the northern portion of the United States, and, as 
has been said, all the country from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific and north of the latitude of the Ohio River was 
their breeding grounds. Many persons can remember 
when the prairie lakes of Minnesota, North and South 
Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho swarmed in sum- 
mer with breeding fowl. We have visited wild swans' 
nests in Nebraska and wild goose nests in many States 
and Territories, while twenty-five or thirty years ago it 
seemed as if every pool in the Northwest held one or more 
broods of birds, as some of them, in more unfrequented 
localities, still do. 
To come down to more local matters, since the question 
of the birds breeding within the United States has been 
brought up in connection with the proposition to abolish 
spring shooting in New York, it is well known that over 
much of New York State wild ducks formerly bred in 
great numbers, and within the memory of men .still living 
they were abundant in the great marshes of the northern 
and western central portion of the State. Major Pond 
tells us that ducks bred abundantly thirty or forty years 
ago in the Adirondacks, the Montezuma marshes and 
in the lake region in the central portion of the State, and 
years ago we have seen boats come from excursion trips 
into the marshes of Cayuga Lake containing fifteen, 
twenty or thirty flappers, which had been taken with a 
gun and a push pole. 
At the hearing last week before the Fisfh and Game 
Committee of the New York Legislature, statements; to 
the effect that wild ducks used to breed on Long Island 
did not appear to be credited by the gentlemen who 
appeared in opposition to the bill. Nevertheless we have 
the printed testimony of the older ornithologists that 
black ducks and bluewinged teal bred there, Moreover, it 
is well known to ornithologists that the wood duck still 
breeds in the vicinity of Sayville, L. I., and probably all 
through the wild portion of the center of the island. The 
black duck still breeds regularly on Montauk and Gardi- 
ner's Island, and the individuals composing the group of 
black ducks in the American Museum of Natural History, 
showing a pair of old birds with their young, were actu- 
ally taken on Gardiner's Island only a few years since. 
It is not doubted that if spring shooting were put an 
end to more birds of these species would breed on Long 
Island, while other species would breed throughout the 
State. 
It would be gratifying to receive from correspondents 
who possess any knowledge on the question of ducks 
breeding within the borders of the United States, detailed 
accounts of such occurrences. 
The report by Secretary Wilson, commending the pro- 
posal to set apart an area of the Southern Appalachians 
as a national forest reserve, and the message of Presi- 
dent McKinley, recommending the Secretary's report to 
the favorable consideration of Congress, had encouraged 
the members of the Association and the friends of the 
movement to indulge the hope that the bill to. establish the 
reserve might become law at this session of Congress. 
But this hope is now shown to have been without good 
foundation. The measure has come to such a point in the 
proceedings of Congress that it could go further only by 
the unanimous consent of the Senate. To this unanimous 
consent Senator Teller is opposed. This means that 
the Appalachian forest reserve project must go over to 
another Congress. We believe that this is simply a post- 
ponement, not a defeat, of the scheme. The reserve, there 
is abundant confidence for believing, will ultimately be, 
established. 
