Saumur

“ N a circular hollow in the clean, bright gravel of the river-bar the tiny egg of the great Quahdavic salmon stirred to life. For months it had lain there among its thousands of fellows, with the clear, cold, unsullied current streaming over it ceaselessly. Through the autumn the wilderness sunshine and the bracing wilderness air, playing on the unshaded shallows of the wide stream, had kept the water highly vitalized,—though this was hardly necessary in that pure and spring-fed current. ”

“ The bar on which the parent salmon had hollowed their round gravel nest was far up the Great South Branch of the Quahdavic, not many miles from the little cold spring lake that was its source. The Great South Branch was a stream much loved by the salmon, for its deep pools, its fine gravel spawning-beds, the purity and steady coldness of its current, and the remoteness which protected it from the visits of greedy poachers. ”

“ When they come from the deep to spawn in the streams, they invariably return to the same river in which they themselves have been spawned. Fish from, the same water average the same size. A river known for the lustiness of its salmon may rise from the same source as another stream in which only small fish are found. The salmon of the Atlantic coast, contrary to the habit of its Pacific cousin, takes the fly in fresh water. Why they rise to bait at all is an enigma since it has been proven that while in river pools for months at a time they maintain a rigid fast. ”

“ Nature loves to enter a door another hand has opened; a mountain view, or a waterfall, I have noticed, never looks better than when one has just been warmed up by the capture of a big trout. If we had been bound for some salmon stream up the Saguenay, we should perhaps have possessed that generous and receptive frame of mind-that open house of the heart—which makes one “eligible to any good fortune,” and the grand scenery would have come in as fit sauce to the salmon. ”

“ Having last year paid a visit to one of these beautiful rivers, I propose to give an account of my introduction to the art and mystery of salmon-fishing, to the end that other anglers, whose exploits have hitherto been confined to the capture of a pound trout or a four-pound pickerel, may know the joy of feeling the rush of a twenty-pound salmon fresh run from the sea—the most brilliant, active and vigorous of the finny tribes, the king of the river, using the term in its original sense—the strongest, the ablest, the most cunning. ”

“ Our camp was pitched at the Round Rocks, the lowest fishing station on the Nipisiquit, whither we drove with our luggage in a wagon, and met the canoes. Our rods were hastily put together, and in Rock Pool, at the second cast, I took a fine grilse. Others followed, and next day came the salmon. Splendid fellows just from the sea, their scales resplendent with the reflected light of their ocean homes; solid, strong and brave, leaping again and again, madly disdaining restraint, and fighting fiercely till the last. The water was strong; in some places the rapids were impassable. ”

“ Let the upper proprietors of Salmon rivers bestir themselves so to amend the law as to give them a chance of having a supply of Salmon when they are in season. They cannot and will not have a more efficient ally than Salmo Salar. Salmo Salar is in my opinion quite right when he says that the fish kept in ponds will not be quite so well able to take care of themselves as fish which have been bred and lived all their lives in the river. ”

“ Foure miles Northeast from Saugus lyeth Salem, which stands on the middle of a necke of land very pleasantly, having a South river on the one side, and a North river on the other side: upon this necke where the most of the houses stand is very bad and sandie ground, yet for seaven yeares together it hath brought forth exceeding good corne, by being fished but every third yeare; in some places is very good ground, and very good timber, and divers springs hard by the sea side. Here likewise is store of fish, as Basses, Eeles, Lobsters, Clammes, &c. ”

“ Everyone conversant with the habits of Salmon knows that they never ascend rivers except when they are in a state of flood; and in average summers, partly owing to droughts, and partly to the rapid evaporation and absorption of moisture by vegetation, these twenty-eight days may fairly be reduced by two-thirds, to give the true time allowed for the ascent of the fish. But say ten days, which are supposed to give an adequate supply of fish to a hundred miles of river,—the extent of the Ribble and its Salmon-breeding tributaries. ”

“ Not a salmon was seen in those waters until seventy years later, when, in 1871, a single artificially bred fish was caught at Saybrook. I could show you a map prepared by an associate of mine, in which the present and former limits of the shad are shown, and you would see how they once ranged clear up into the mountains, far up the Susquehanna into New York State, up the Connecticut into New Hampshire and Vermont, and how now, in many rivers, they are confined to very restrictive stretches at the river mouths. ”

“ One could pick out the Indian section of the village, because not far from it was the Indian graveyard, with its scaffolding of poles and brush and its offerings for the dead. There were almost interminable rows of scaffolding on the river’s edge and upon the high bank where hung the salmon drying in the sun. The river, as it ambled along, here over shallows, there over rapids and tiny waterfalls, was the pathway for millions and millions of salmon upon a pilgrimage to the West and North—to the happy hunting grounds of spawn. ”

“ But still, if 500,000 are bred, in addition to all that are reared naturally, it will represent a larger proportion of the whole than Salmo Salar seems to suppose; otherwise, how is it that in rivers where Salmon are protected, or still more in unsettled countries, the Salmon are so numerous? The Salmon in the Columbia river, on the north-west coast of America, are cast dead upon the shores by myriads after the spawning season, and these are merely the fish dying from exhaustion, as a small portion always do here. ”

“ Fish they capture in the greatest abundance, and the variety is quite fair. Salmon is the staff, and is found in all of the thousand and one lakes and sluggish or rapid streams that run from them into the greater rivers, where a mighty rush of the same fish is annually made up in June and July from Bering Sea. In all of the deeper lakes, and the big rivers, a variety of large white-fish and trout are found, especially prized and searched for by these people in midwinter, when they are trapped there in wicker-work baskets and pole weirs under ice. ”

“ All the fish of the salmon tribe have their hindmost dorsal fin fleshy. At an early season of the year salmon begin to leave their winter haunts in the ocean, and to pass up the fresh water rivers, sometimes to vast distances, to deposit their spawn. And it is in these peregrinations that they are chiefly caught. The British rivers that are most celebrated for salmon are the Tweed, the Tyne, the Trent, the Severn, and the Thames. Sometimes they are taken in nets, sometimes in traps or engines, and sometimes by harpoons. ”

“ Shaw having thus traced the spawn of the salmon up to this point, it will now be necessary to pursue our inquiries until we find the matured fish. The descent of these little fish takes place much about the same time in all rivers, commencing in March, and continuing through April, and part of May. They first keep in the slack water, by the side of the river; after a time, as they become stronger, they go more towards the mid-stream; and when the water is increased by rain, they move gradually down the river. ”

“ The Guardsman was bent on shooting an alligator, and having heard that these pleasant saurians swarmed in a swamp beyond the town, went there at dusk with his rifle, and I, very foolishly, was induced to accompany him. There is something most uncanny in these tracts of swamp at nightfall. The twisted, distorted trees, the gleaming, evil-smelling pools of water, and the immense, snake-like lianes hanging from the branches all give one a curious sense of unreality, especially on a moonlight night. It is like a Gustave Dore drawing of a bewitched forest. ”

“ When they are cut open their flesh is pink, and all the other fish have white flesh. King Salmon was taking a little exercise one day, dashing about in the salt sea or sailing up the river, perhaps, when he ran his great stupid head into a net, and the more he struggled the worse it was, and strong as he was—as strong as a fairly big dog—he could not break that net, and so he was hauled out and brought to shore, where he died. ”

“ In spite of increasing volume from various small affluents—the Meole at Shrewsbury, the Condover brook and the little river Tern which joins it just below—the Severn still retains, in subdued fashion, the qualities of a big hill-born stream running from long pike-haunted deeps into shallow rapids, where persevering anglers still catch occasional trout, and up which the salmon run in high water as they head for their breeding-grounds among the Montgomery Hills. ”

“ By-and-by men came in boats and hauled up the gill-net and threw the helpless salmon into a pile on the bottom of the boat, and the others saw them no more. We that live outside the water know better what befalls them, and we can tell the story which the salmon could not.
All along the banks of the Columbia River, from its mouth to nearly thirty miles away, there is a succession of large buildings, looking like great barns or warehouses, built on piles in the river, and high enough to be out of the reach of floods. ”

“ The giant lay down to sleep in the middle of the cave. Fin spitted the salmon, and held it over the fire.
The minute the giant closed the one eye in his head, he began to snore. Every time he drew breath into his body, he dragged Fin, the spit, the salmon, Bran, and all the goats to his mouth; and every time he drove a breath out of himself, he threw them back to the places they were in before. Fin was drawn time after time to the mouth of the giant with such force, that he was in dread of going down his throat.
When partly cooked, a blister rose on the salmon. ”

“ Under the skin roofs of their log-cabins and on the scaffoldings upon the gravel beach were many hundred salmon that had been caught in this curious way. The only plausible theory which I could evolve within the limits of the non-marvelous, was, that the salmon came along near the top of the water, so as to show or indicate the dorsal fin, and that as it approached the canoe, the sight of it, or more likely some slight noise, made with that intention, drove the fish to the bottom without any considerable lateral deviation, whereupon they were inclosed by the net. ”

“ Our creek was now alive with salmon; we could, with a long-handled shovel, scoop one out whenever we liked. They were so closely packed that they crowded each other out. In places many had been forced on to the land, where they lay rotting by the hundred: crows and ravens, jays, magpies, and hawks were numerous, feeding on dead fish, and several times we noticed bears dragging the salmon out and gorging themselves with them—not one bear only, often we saw several at once catching and eating them, or lying, surfeited with food, on sunny banks asleep. ”

“ The Salmon, the various species of Trout, some of them little inferior in magnitude or strength to that kingly fish; the brilliant Grayling, with his dorsal like a butterfly's wing, and the Charr, with its refulgent sides, "the aristocracy of the finny race," inhabit these elevated streams and lakes; and for these does the enterprising fly-fisher visit the most remote and least accessible parts of our country. ”

“ Once the salmon stream extended far beyond that point of rock. There was a great fall there and a deep pool below it, and here for years great schools of king salmon came crowding up to the foot of that fall. To spear them or net them was very easy; they were the fattest and best salmon among all these islands. My household had abundance of meat for the winter's need. But the cruel spirit of that glacier grew angry with me, I know not why, and drove the ice mountain down towards the sea and spoiled my salmon stream. ”

“ If too rapid a stream was chosen, the eggs and gravel were all washed away; and if too calm and still a place was selected, the gravel was filled up with sand and mud, and the eggs rotted instead of hatching. I am even of opinion that where there is already a breed of Salmon fry in a river, it is not absolutely necessary that any male Salmon should come up the river in the spawning season, the male Par, or Penks, as we call them in the Ribble, being sufficient to fecundate the eggs. If this is doubted, I would ask how it happens that in the autumn they have fluid milt in them? ”

“ But in every case where a salmon was taken in the tideway or saltwater,46 I invariably found the remains of small fish and marine animals in its stomach; and in the estuaries and long inland canals that so strangely intersect the coast-line of British Columbia, salmon are readily and easily caught with hook and line; clearly showing to my mind, that whilst in salt and brackish water the North-western spring-salmon feed and fatten, but, after quitting their ocean-haunts for the cold fresh-water, they starve, waste, and die, as a lamp goes out from sheer want of oil. ”

“ It is well known that Salmon are very fond of particular streams, their instinct no doubt informing them which are suitable to their purpose; and when one pair of fish have finished spawning, another pair will come and occupy the same place. Now, what takes place under such circumstances? The ova which were deposited by the first pair are rooted up by the second, and their specific gravity is so near that of the water, that they roll down out of the loose gravel and are picked up by the Trouts, Par, and other fish that are always lying in wait just below for that purpose. ”