Travels In The United States Of America; Commencing In The Year 1793, And Ending In 1797. With The Author's Journals Of His Two Voyages Across The Atlantic By William Priest
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There Is Also A Small Fish Which Comes Up The Rivers With The Shad; The
Shoals This Year Have Been Uncommonly Large; Upwards Of Ten Thousand Have
Been Taken At One Hawl.
Like the shad, it takes salt well; and, from it's
having some resemblance to a _herring_, they give it that name, though
very different from the herring which visits the shores of Europe.
I
believe there is no instance of a herring running a hundred and fifty
miles up a fresh water river, or existing at all in water perfectly fresh.
The above particulars you may depend upon; they were communicated to me by
Mr. West, who is proprietor of the largest shad-fisheries on the Delaware.
This river also abounds in cat-fish, perch, jack, eels, and a great
variety of others; above all, in sturgeon; which are frequently caught by
accident in the shad-nets, and either boiled for their oil, or suffered to
rot on the, shores, being very seldom sent to market: when this is the
case, they are sold for a mere trifle, chiefly to emigrants. The Americans
have conceived a violent antipathy to this fish. I recollect no instance
of seeing it at their tables. They have every externals appearance of the
european sturgeon, but in other respects must be _very different_, or
the Americans lose one of the best fisheries in the world.
Enclosed is an extract from general Lincoln's letter on the migration of
fish. He endeavours to prove, that river fish, after their passage to the
sea, whatever time they remain there, always return to the original waters
in which they were spawned, unless some unnatural obstructions are thrown
in their way.
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