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Indians by the earlier settlers. In rapid shoal streams "slides" and dipping wheels are used, the sweep of the current in the former sliding the fish on a polished inclined surface out of reach of the water, and in the other revolving a series of dip nets, which, as they pass over, empty the fish into a box. The greater supplies are taken in nets, this term including seines, pound nets, drift nets, stake nets (which are gill nets hung upon stakes), and the skim nets (a large dip net). Seines are used in all of the rivers frequented by shad. The pound nets are used successfully at the mouth of the Connecticut River, and for alewives they are quite successful in several other places, but do not answer as well for shad. The drift net is found from the Delaware southward. Stake nets prevail in the Hudson River. Skim nets are used near the Falls of the Potomac and on some rivers southward.

VOL. LX.-No. 360.-54

The art of netting twine is an old one. In the neolithic age of Europe it was one of the higher arts. It is remarkable that the fragments of flax nets found in the lake villages of Germany and Switzerland have the same knot-the "fisherman's knot," or becket hitch-which pre

FISHERMAN'S KNOT.

vails in our day. In the earlier days of our fisheries all the nets were made by hand. The floor of a fisherman's house in the interval of household work was rarely free from the presence of a net. The women and old men netted, while

the young and able-bodied went fishing. | later years shad have been found in some Along the northern shores of the Great Lakes many of the squaws are accomplished netters, and work diligently, usually for the French Canadians. In later years machinery has been devised, and manufacturers furnish the nets to nearly all fishermen.

The larger number of these two fishes are taken in seines: haul seines they are often called, to distinguish them from purse seines. The shorter ones are often not more than one hundred yards long. The longest seine known is one at Stony Point, on the Potomac, which in 1871 measured thirty-four hundred yardsnearly two miles in length. The lines and seine had a linear extent of five miles, and the seine, drawn twice in twenty-four hours, swept twelve hundred acres of the river-bottom, each time inclosing the larger number of the fishes. Seines are drawn to land hand over hand, by windlasses turned by men or by horses, and some of the largest by steam machinery.

From the St. Johns River of Florida, in the months of February and March, to the Androscoggin River in July and August, and intervening rivers between these months, the colonies of the alewife and the shad are entering their native streams from the Atlantic. A few come into the St. Lawrence a little after this, and in

of the rivers of the Gulf of Mexico. In the Merrimac, the Connecticut, the Hudson; in Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle Sound, Pamlico Sound, the rivers tributary to these, and most of the rivers southward-a large and long-continued migration occurs yearly.

In the two bays and two sounds referred to, and in their tributary rivers, are the large seines. The common dimension is one thousand fathoms' length. Horse-power and steam-power are required for these, the lines running into sheaveblocks bedded in the beach, and from time to time shifted to the blocks nearer the centre of the seining shore as the net draws together. The lines lead up from these to the windlasses or the drums. In most regions the seine is loaded upon one large boat, with sometimes as many as twenty-four oarsmen pulling long heavy sweeps. In this method the end of the "land line" remains on shore, and the boat goes entirely round the berth, the lines and seine being thrown out, while the boat moves on, until the end of the "boat line" is brought in. In Albemarle Sound (from which the following description of seine-hauling was derived), with greater economy of time, two boats are used, and the seine is loaded from-each end, while the middle is being worked up to the shore. When the two boats have

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the seine and lines on board, they move out to the outer boundary of the berth, and the bag of the seine is "shot" between them as they are pulled in opposite directions. As they throw out the wings, the boats curve inward to the shore, and when the last of the net has gone overboard, the lines are run out until the bows grate upon the gravel. An active fellow, in waist boots, from each crew, wades ashore with the end of the line, and quickly fastens it to another lying in the farthest sheave block. The engine starts instantly, and the line. begins to come in, straining upon the seine, with its leads lying on the bottom a mile away. Like a moving fence, it advances shoreward, turning back the bewildered fishes, which in the great grasp of the net do not become much frightened until it has closed upon them on three sides, after which few of them find their way around the ends. Steadily the wet lines come in to the monotonous music of cogwheels and steam puffs, or the cries of the driver urging his mule. The seine, as its ends approach each other, has first the form of a printer's bracket, later of a circumflex, and at the last, of a letter U. At intervals the lines are shifted to nearer sheave-blocks. In these large seines of Albemarle Sound a line runs all round the lead line, called the toggle line, from its being secured to the seine at certain distances by toggles. These are unfastened as they approach the sheave-block, allowing the line to run in without interruption.

The crews, preparing for the next haul, take the lines into the boats as fast as they are unreeled from the drums, and lay them in a series of great imbricated coils along the bottom of the boat, under the feet of the rowers. As soon as the ends of the wings reach the shore the reloading of the seine begins. The engines, by means of the toggle line, steadily haul the seine to the shore, and the

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THE SHEAVE-BLOCK.

men are employed taking the seine into the boats.

The negro hands have the habit, so common with the race, of singing at their work.

At a point near the bag of the seine, facetiously termed "wet-foot," the hauling by hand begins, many of them standing in the water. A common refrain they have while keeping time to the pull on the net is:

"Haul, boys, haul in, haul all day;
Don't you hear de fish a-floppin'
Far away?
"Haul, boys, haul in, haul all day;
Massa wants de shad and herrin'
In de bay."

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One voice sings the intervening line, and all join in the chorus. At this time the two sides of the net are in close proximity. As the bunt of the seine nears the shore, silence prevails, partly because it is a critical moment, and the orders with regard to handling the net must be promptly obeyed, and partly from the common hope that it may be a great haul of fish. This hope that the next haul may be the fortunate one is long sustained, and as often revived as each disappointment is met. The fisherman's imagination populates the waters with wandering shoals of fishes, which may at any moment crowd into the seine berth and reward the hopes which the fortune of the season has not before fulfilled.

The half-moon area of the water inside the line of corks now begins to show an agitated appearance. At first occasional irregular waves and dull movements of patches of water, and later, little quick swirls and ruffled wavelets, cover the surface.

Now and then a large fish makes a rapid curve shoreward, and out again. Soon the splashing begins, and increases as the mass of fish is pulled and crowded on the beach, until the spray obscures them, and whoever ventures too near is sprinkled with flying drops, and spangled with adhering scales. Often the huge form of a sturgeon slides heavily through the glistening mass, and endangers the

net, as he is apt to tear an outlet through its meshes. Some one steps into the flurrying heap, and, blinded with the spray, strikes the cruel gaff-hook into its side. In its maddened struggles to get away it sometimes drags the man from his feet, floundering among the slimy fishes. It is at last dragged out, and curves its great body, and slaps its tail against the sand, staring sullenly out of its little pig-like eyes, which have not at all a fishy expression. Half exciting pity, you surmise that there may be more of dull brute mind in this clumsy inhabitant of the water than man is able to know in the present state of animal psychology. He is said to know enough to reconnoitre the upper edge of a pound net above water before he jumps lumberingly, though with considerable precision, over it. erything is pulled out, high and dry, the flapping soon ends, the eyes assume a dull look, and a dead mass lies in the place of the active, brilliant shoal of fishes which came up in the net. The boats are soon again on their way.

Ev

The shad and rock-fish are now picked out, and sent away to be boxed with broken ice for the daily shipment. The "herring" are thrown on the tables, to be dressed by the long line of bedraggled but merry black women, who, with wonderful skill and rapidity, keep up a continued shower of fish into the hand-barrows, dis

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criminating with a touch between " herring," "roe herring," and "herring." These are afterward washed, and sent to the salting-house. When a great haul comes in, the enthusiasm spreads, and all gather round to see the fish. At Avoca Beach, on the great Capehart Plantation, one hundred and sixty-five thousand "herring" were brought in at one haul of a seine twenty-four hundred yards long. It required four hours of severe labor for fifty men to get them ashore, after the bag of the net came to land. The pile, when on the dock, measured eighty feet front, twenty-two feet wide, and averaged about eighteen inches deep. Only a few hundred shad and rock-fish were found among them.

The management of a great seine might well employ the talent of a skillful civil engineer, there are so many mechanical forces to put in operation, and so much skill and judgment to be used in structures and appliances. The seining ground has to be cleared up, requiring divers, giant

GAFFING A STURGEON.

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