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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Bounty of the Chesapeake, by James Wharton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+
+Title: The Bounty of the Chesapeake
+       Fishing in Colonial Virginia
+
+
+Author: James Wharton
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2008  [eBook #26632]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE***
+
+
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+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Research indicates that the copyright on this book
+      was not renewed.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
+
+Fishing in Colonial Virginia
+
+by
+
+JAMES WHARTON
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+JAMESTOWN 350TH ANNIVERSARY HISTORICAL BOOKLETS
+
+_Editor_--E. G. SWEM, Librarian Emeritus, College of William and Mary
+
+COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATIONS: JOHN M. JENNINGS, Director of the Virginia
+Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia, _Chairman_. FRANCIS L.
+BERKELEY, JR., Archivist, Alderman Library, University of Virginia,
+Charlottesville, Virginia. LYMAN H. BUTTERFIELD, Editor-in-Chief of the
+Adams Papers, Boston, Mass. EDWARD M. RILEY, Director of Research,
+Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., Williamsburg, Virginia. E. G. SWEM,
+Librarian Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg,
+Virginia. WILLIAM J. VAN SCHREEVEN, Chief, Division of Archives,
+Virginia State Library, Richmond, Virginia.
+
+ 1. _A Selected Bibliography of Virginia, 1607-1699._ By E. G. Swem,
+John M. Jennings and James A. Servies.
+
+ 2. _A Virginia Chronology, 1585-1783._ By William W. Abbot.
+
+ 3. _John Smith's Map of Virginia, with a Brief Account of its History._
+By Ben C. McCary.
+
+ 4. _The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London, with Seven
+Related Documents; 1606-1621._ Introduction by Samuel M. Bemiss.
+
+ 5. _The Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624._ By Wesley Frank Craven.
+
+ 6. _The First Seventeen Years, Virginia, 1607-1624._ By Charles E.
+Hatch, Jr.
+
+ 7. _Virginia under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660._ By Wilcomb E.
+Washburn.
+
+ 8. _Bacon's Rebellion, 1676._ By Thomas J. Wertenbaker.
+
+ 9. _Struggle Against Tyranny and the Beginning of a New Era, Virginia,
+1677-1699._ By Richard L. Morton.
+
+10. _Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ By George
+MacLaren Brydon.
+
+11. _Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth Century._ By Henry
+Chandlee Forman.
+
+12. _Mother Earth--Land Grants in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By W. Stitt
+Robinson, Jr.
+
+13. _The Bounty of the Chesapeake; Fishing in Colonial Virginia._ By
+James Wharton.
+
+14. _Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By Lyman Carrier.
+
+15. _Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By Susie
+M. Ames.
+
+16. _The Government of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ By Thomas
+J. Wertenbaker.
+
+17. _Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ By Annie
+Lash Jester.
+
+18. _Indians in Seventeenth-Century Virginia._ By Ben C. McCary.
+
+19. _How Justice Grew. Virginia Counties._ By Martha W. Hiden.
+
+20. _Tobacco in Colonial Virginia; "The Sovereign Remedy."_ By Melvin
+Herndon.
+
+21. _Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By Thomas P. Hughes.
+
+22. _Some Notes on Shipping and Ship-building in Colonial Virginia._ By
+Cerinda W. Evans.
+
+23. _A Pictorial Booklet on Early Jamestown Commodities and
+Industries._ By J. Paul Hudson.
+
+Price 50 cents Each
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
+
+Fishing in Colonial Virginia
+
+by
+
+JAMES WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The University Press of Virginia
+Charlottesville
+
+Copyright(C) 1957 by
+Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration
+Corporation, Williamsburg, Virginia
+
+Second printing 1973
+
+Jamestown 350th Anniversary
+Historical Booklet Number 13
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Just as a series of personal letters may constitute an autobiography,
+so the extracts from Colonial writings that follow tell the unique
+story of the fisheries of Virginia's great Tidewater. In them it is
+possible to trace the measured growth of a vital industry. The
+interspersed comments of the compiler are to be understood as mere
+annotations. This is the testimony, then, of those who from the
+beginning participated in one of the foremost natural resources of this
+country.
+
+I gratefully acknowledge guidance in research to Mr. John C. Pearson of
+the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, who masterfully surveyed the field
+and first brought the early fishery reports to public notice.
+
+JAMES WHARTON
+Weems, Virginia
+
+
+
+
+THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
+
+
+
+
+The Bounty of The Chesapeake
+
+
+The voyage to America in 1607 was like a journey to a star. Veteran
+rovers though the English were, none of them had any clear idea of what
+to expect in the new land of Virginia. Only one thing was certain: they
+would have nothing there but what they took with them or wrought from
+the raw materials of the country.
+
+What raw materials?
+
+They had reliable information that the climate was mild. Therefore,
+crops could be raised. They learned of inexhaustible timber: so ships
+and dwellings and industrial works could be built. They hoped for gold
+and dreamed of access to uncharted lands of adventure. But putting
+first things first, how would they eat in the meantime?
+
+When Sir Walter Raleigh established the first English colony in
+"Virginia"--on what is now Roanoke island, North Carolina--two good
+reporters, one a writer, the other an illustrator, were commissioned to
+describe what they saw. This was twenty-two years before Jamestown and
+naturally all the material consisted of Indian life and customs. Thomas
+Hariot wrote:
+
+    For four months of the year, February, March, April and May, there
+    are plenty of sturgeon; and also in the same months of herrings,
+    some of the ordinary bigness as ours in England, but the most part
+    far greater, of eighteen, twenty inches, and some two feet in
+    length and better; both these kinds of fish in these months are
+    most plentiful and in best season which we found to be most
+    delicate and pleasant meat.
+
+    There are also trouts, porpoises, rays, oldwives, mullets, plaice,
+    and very many other sorts of excellent good fish, which we have
+    taken and eaten, whose names I know not but in the country language
+    we have of twelve sorts more the pictures as they were drawn in the
+    country with their names.
+
+    The inhabitants use to take them two manner of ways, the one is by
+    a kind of weir made of reeds which in that country are very strong.
+    The other way which is more strange, is with poles made sharp at
+    one end, by shooting them into the fish after the manner as
+    Irishmen cast darts; either as they are rowing in their boats or
+    else as they are wading in the shallows for the purpose.
+
+    There are also in many places plenty of these kinds which follow:
+
+    Sea crabs, such as we have in England.
+
+    Oysters, some very great, and some small; some round and some of a
+    long shape. They are found both in salt water and brackish, and
+    those that we had out of salt water are far better than the other
+    as in our own country.
+
+    Also mussels, scallops, periwinkles and crevises.
+
+    _Seekanauk_, a kind of crusty shellfish which is good meat about a
+    foot in breadth, having a crusty tail, many legs like a crab, and
+    her eyes in her back. They are found in shallows of salty waters;
+    and sometimes on the shore.
+
+    There are many tortoises both of land and sea kind, their backs and
+    bellies are shelled very thick; their head, feet and tail, which
+    are in appearance, seem ugly as though they were members of a
+    serpent or venomous; but notwithstanding they are very good meat,
+    as also their eggs. Some have been found of a yard in breadth and
+    better.
+
+In a charming drawing of a group of Indian maidens John White, the
+artist associate, commented: "They delight ... in seeing fish taken in
+the rivers."
+
+Over and over the first visitors to the Chesapeake bay painted rosy
+pictures of its marine life, stressing the abundance, variety and
+tastiness of the fish and shellfish. Exploration and communication were
+chiefly by water: it was natural that emphasis be laid on water
+resources. Though it is proverbial that fish stories partake of
+fiction, in the case of John Smith and his successors, it is doubtful
+whether they were greatly exaggerated. This was a world where nature,
+especially in the waters, was immeasurably prolific.
+
+On the other hand, the conclusions drawn by many of those reading the
+reports were probably unjustified. The infinite plenty was one thing.
+Making constant and profitable use of it was another.
+
+Thus, although Smith cited an impressive roster of edible fish in the
+vicinity of Jamestown, it was not to follow that the settlers were
+always able to turn them to advantage. There were several good reasons.
+
+Long before Jamestown the fisheries off the coast of Northern America
+and Canada were known to be richly productive, with promise of an
+organized and dependable industry. But farther south conditions were
+found to be quite different. The fishing in the Chesapeake bay had
+frustrating ways. Sometimes there were hordes of fish. Again they
+stayed away in large numbers. They were usually present during warm
+weather when spoilage was worst. The first colonists had no ice at all
+and very little salt. Frequent spells of damp weather made sun-drying
+impractical. If more fish were caught than could be eaten at once, the
+excess was very likely wasted. Fishing gear was consistently
+inadequate. But from the very first, fishing and its development had
+been kept in mind by the promoters of the colony.
+
+Fishing rights were defined in 1606 in letters patent to Sir Thomas
+Gates, Sir George Somers and others, as recorded in the Charter granted
+in 1606:
+
+    They shall have all ... fishings ... from the said first seat of
+    their plantation and habitation by the space of fifty miles of
+    English statute measure, all along the said coast of Virginia and
+    America, towards the west and southwest, as the coast lies ... and
+    also all ... fishings for the space of fifty English miles ... all
+    along the said coast of Virginia and America, towards the east and
+    northeast ... and also ... fishings ... from the same, fifty miles
+    every way on the sea coast, directly into the mainland by the space
+    of one hundred like English miles.
+
+In the new fishing territory around Jamestown the Indians were the
+professionals and their methods were of great interest to the English
+novices. A description is furnished by William Strachey, secretary of
+state of the colony and author of _The Historie of Travaile into
+Virginia Britannia_:
+
+    Their fishing is much in boats. These they call quintans, as the
+    West Indians call their canoas. They make them with one tree, by
+    burning and scraping away the coals with stones and shells till
+    they have made them in the form of a trough. Some of them are an
+    ell deep and forty or fifty foot in length and some will transport
+    forty men, but the most ordinary are smaller and will ferry ten or
+    twenty, with some luggage, over their broadest rivers. Instead of
+    oars, they use paddles and sticks, with which they will row faster
+    than we in our barges. They have nets for fishing, for the quantity
+    as formerly braided and meshed as ours and these are made of bark
+    of certain trees, deer sinews, or a kind of grass, which they call
+    pemmenaw, of which their women between their hands and thighs, spin
+    a thread very even and readily, and this thread serves for many
+    uses, as about their housing, their mantles of feathers and their
+    [?] and they also with it make lines for angles.
+
+    Their angles are long small rods at the end whereof they have a
+    cleft to which the line is fastened, and at the line they hang a
+    hook, made either of a bone grated (as they nock their arrows) in
+    the form of a crooked pin or fishhook, or of the splinter of a
+    bone, and with a thread of the line they tie on the bait. They use
+    also long arrows tied on a line, wherewith they shoot at fish in
+    the rivers. Those of Accowmack use staves, like unto javelins,
+    headed with bone; with these they dart fish, swimming in the
+    water....
+
+    By their houses they have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised
+    like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered
+    with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft
+    of hurdles they lay forth their corn and fish to dry....
+
+    They are inconstant in everything but what fear constrain them to
+    keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in
+    their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take
+    their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed
+    in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the
+    water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish
+    cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by
+    chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey
+    to the fishermen the next low water which they fish with a net at
+    the end of a pole....
+
+The earliest observers reveal how intimately food from the waters was
+linked with the colonists' experiences. George Percy wrote in 1607:
+
+    We came to a place [Cape Henry] where they [natives] had made a
+    great fire and had been newly roasting oysters. When they perceived
+    our coming, they fled away to the mountains and left many of the
+    oysters in the fire. We ate some of the oysters which were very
+    large and delicate in taste.
+
+This was April 27 of that year. Oyster roasts have been a Virginia
+institution ever since. He continued:
+
+    Upon this plot of ground [Lynnhaven Bay] we got good store of
+    mussels and oysters, which lay on the ground as thick as stones. We
+    opened some and found in many of them pearls.
+
+The pearls would probably not have been worth mentioning, except as a
+novelty, if they had come from oysters alone. The Virginia oyster pearl
+lacks luster. But the mussel, particularly the one found in the James
+river, yields an iridescent pearl of some little value.
+
+A month later more oysters, in a form unknown in Virginia today, were
+obtained from Indians by Captain Christopher Newport in return for
+ornaments, according to Gabriel Archer in 1607:
+
+    He notwithstanding with two women and another fellow of his own
+    consort followed us some six miles with baskets full of dried
+    oysters and met us at a point, where calling to us, we went ashore
+    and bartered with them for most of their victuals.
+
+A letter from the Council in Virginia to the Council in England in 1607
+stated:
+
+    We are set down eighty miles within a river, for breadth, sweetness
+    of water, length navigable up into the country, deep and bold
+    channel, so stored with sturgeon and other sweet fish as no man's
+    fortune has ever possessed the like. And, as we think, if more may
+    be wished in a river it will be found.
+
+After various vicissitudes John Smith confessed:
+
+    Though there be fish in the sea, fowls in the air, and beasts in
+    the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wild, and we so weak
+    and ignorant, we cannot much trouble them.
+
+George Percy introduced a happier note:
+
+    It pleased God, after a while, to send those people which were our
+    mortal enemies [Indians] to relieve us with victuals, as bread,
+    corn, fish, and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of
+    our feeble men, otherwise we had all perished.
+
+John Smith tells about another crisis:
+
+    Our victuals being within eighteen days spent and the Indians'
+    trade decreasing, I was sent to the mouth of the river, to
+    Kecoughtan [Hampton], an Indian town, to trade for corn and try the
+    river for fish, but our fishing we could not effect by reason of
+    the stormy weather.... Only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon
+    our men would so greedily surfeit, as it cost many their lives.
+
+And still another:
+
+    From May to September, those that escaped lived upon sturgeon and
+    sea crabs.
+
+And this:
+
+    So it happened that neither we nor they had anything to eat but
+    what the country afforded naturally. Yet of eighty who lived upon
+    oysters in June or July, with a pint of corn a week for a man lying
+    under trees, and one hundred twenty for the most part living upon
+    sturgeon, which are dried till we pounded it to powder for meal,
+    yet in ten weeks but seven died.
+
+For once he paints a brighter picture:
+
+    The next night, being lodged at Kecoughtan, six or seven days the
+    extreme wind, rain, frost, and snow caused us to keep Christmas
+    among the savages, where we were never more merry, nor fed on more
+    plenty of good oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowl, and good bread.
+
+He describes further ups and downs:
+
+    Now we so quietly followed our business that in three months, we
+    ... provided nets and weirs for fishing.
+
+    Sixty or eighty with Ensign Laxon were sent down the river to live
+    upon oysters, and twenty with Lieutenant Percy to try fishing at
+    Point Comfort. But in six weeks, they would not agree once to cast
+    out their net.
+
+    We had more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog or man, of which
+    the industrious by drying and pounding, mingled with caviar,
+    sorrel, and other wholesome herbs, would make bread and good meat.
+
+Despite the privations much food is available, Smith avers:
+
+    In summer no place affords more plenty of sturgeon, nor in winter
+    more abundance of fowl, especially in time of frost. There was once
+    taken fifty-two sturgeon at a draught, at another draught
+    sixty-eight. From the latter end of May till the end of June are
+    taken few but young sturgeon of two foot or a yard long. From
+    thence till the midst of September them of two or three yards long
+    and a few others. And in four or five hours with one net were
+    ordinarily taken seven or eight; often more, seldom less. In the
+    small rivers all the year there is a good plenty of small fish, so
+    that with hooks those that would take pains had sufficient....
+
+    Of fish we were best acquainted with sturgeon, grampus, porpoise,
+    seals, stingrays whose tails are very dangerous, brits, mullets,
+    white salmon, trouts, soles, plaice, herring, conyfish, rockfish,
+    eels, lampreys, catfish, shad, perch of three sorts, crabs,
+    shrimps, crevises, oysters, cockles, and mussels. But the most
+    strange fish is a small one so like the picture of St. George's
+    dragon as possibly can be, except his legs and wings; and the
+    toadfish which will swell till it be like to burst when it comes
+    into the air.
+
+When Smith spoke of sturgeon he was most probably referring to the
+James river, the best waters for sturgeon in Virginia to this day. The
+"small rivers" were the fresh-water tributaries of the large salty
+ones. The small fish to be found there which would take the hook in
+winter were probably the non-migratory species like perch, catfish and
+suckers. If some of the names Smith gives seem puzzling today, it
+should be remembered that often the same fish name has applied
+throughout history to different fish at different times or in different
+areas. Contrariwise, different names, in regional usage, may apply to
+the same fish. Thus it is virtually impossible to say whether all the
+fish named by Colonial reporters are to be found in Virginia waters
+today. For example, though no "white salmon" are known in Virginia, it
+is possible that Smith referred to a fish that merely resembled a
+salmon without belonging to that family. On the other hand, it is
+conceivable that Virginia boats caught "white salmon" in the Atlantic
+Ocean. "Conyfish" can mean several different fishes, so that it is not
+possible to be sure what Smith had in mind; so with "brit." "Crevise"
+is an older name for crawfish. Seals still make rare appearances in the
+bay. As for the stingrays, he spoke from experience; he was spiked by
+one. Almost all of his list are still being caught off Jamestown. The
+"St. George's dragon" or sea horse, is among them.
+
+There are many more varieties of fish caught by Virginia fishermen
+today than were ever mentioned in Colonial records. This is due to
+superior gear and the more intensive use of it.
+
+Captain Christopher Newport was among the earliest observers confirming
+Smith. He wrote in 1607:
+
+    The main river [James] abounds with sturgeon, very large and
+    excellent good, having also at the mouth of every brook and in
+    every creek both store and exceedingly good fish of divers kinds.
+    In the large sounds near the sea are multitudes of fish, banks of
+    oysters, and many great crabs rather better, in fact, than ours and
+    able to suffice four men. And within sight of land into the sea we
+    expect at time of year to have a good fishing for cod, as both at
+    our entering we might perceive by palpable conjectures, seeing the
+    cod follow the ship ... as also out of my own experience not far
+    off to the northward the fishing I found in my first voyage to
+    Virginia....
+
+    The commodities of the country, what they are in else, is not much
+    to be regarded, the inhabitants having no concern with any nation,
+    no respect of profit.... Yet this for the present, by the consent
+    of all our seamen, merely fishing for sturgeon cannot be worth less
+    than L1,000 a year, leaving herring and cod as possibilities....
+
+    We have a good fishing for mussels which resemble mother-of-pearl,
+    and if the pearl we have seen in the king's ears and about their
+    necks come from these shells we know the banks.
+
+The crab "able to suffice four men" could scarcely have been other than
+the horseshoe. It has never been considered a delicacy.
+
+It is usually by contraries that the truth is determined. Even in the
+midst of the apparent plenty of fish, fishing crews sometimes came home
+empty-handed after continued effort. Often storms interfered.
+
+From personal experience John Smith was able to sound the warning about
+Chesapeake weather:
+
+    Our mast and sail blew overboard and such mighty waves overraked us
+    in that small barge that with great danger we kept her from sinking
+    by freeing out the water.
+
+    The winds are variable, but the like thunder and lightning to
+    purify the air I have seldom either seen or heard in Europe.
+
+As if struck by the helplessness of the settlers, a compassionate chief
+extended aid to them in 1608. A letter from Francis Perkins tells the
+story:
+
+    So excessive are the frosts that one night the river froze over
+    almost from bank to bank in front of our harbour, although it was
+    there as wide as that of London. There died from the frost some
+    fish in the river, which when taken out after the frost was over,
+    were very good and so fat that they could be fried in their own fat
+    without adding any butter or such thing....
+
+    Their own great emperor or the wuarravance, which is the name of
+    their kings, has sent some of his people that they may teach us how
+    to sow the grain of this country and to make certain traps with
+    which they are going to fish.
+
+A letter from the Council in Virginia to the Virginia Company in London
+in 1610 shows that such favors were returned:
+
+    Whilst we were fishing divers Indians came down from the woods unto
+    us and ... I gave unto them such fish as we took ... for indeed at
+    this time of the year [July] they live poor, their corn being but
+    newly put into the ground and their own store spent. Oysters and
+    crabs and such fish as they take in their weirs is their best
+    relief.
+
+Oysters occurred in vast banks and shoals within sight of the Jamestown
+fort. During the 1609-10 "starving time" a minimum force was retained
+at the settlement while everyone else was turned out to forage as best
+he could. Most sought the oyster grounds where they ate oysters nine
+weeks, a diet varied only by a pitifully negligible allowance of corn
+meal. In the words of one of the foragers, "this kind of feeding caused
+all our skin to peel off from head to foot as if we had been dead." The
+arrival of supplies ended the ordeal. But soon hunger descended again
+and the oyster beds would have been the natural recourse if it had not
+been winter and the water too cold to wade in. So the oysters were no
+help.
+
+That conscientious reporter, William Strachey, wrote in 1610:
+
+    In this desolation and misery our Governor found the condition and
+    state of the Colony. Nor was there at the fort, as they whom we
+    found related unto us, any means to take fish; neither sufficient
+    seine, nor other convenient net, and yet of their need, there was
+    not one eye of sturgeon yet come into the river.
+
+    The river which was wont before this time of the year to be
+    plentiful of sturgeon had not now a fish to be seen in it, and
+    albeit we laboured and hauled our net twenty times day and night,
+    yet we took not so much as would content half the fishermen. Our
+    Governor therefore, sent away his long boat to coast the river
+    downward as far as Point Comfort, and from thence to Cape Henry and
+    Cape Charles, and all within the bay, which after a seven nights
+    trial and travail, returned without any fruits of their labours,
+    scarce getting so much fish as served their own company.
+
+    And, likewise, because at the Lord Governor and Captain General's
+    first coming, there was found in our own river no store of fish
+    after many trials, the Lord Governor and Captain General dispatched
+    in the _Virginia_, with instructions, the seventeenth of June,
+    1610, Robert Tyndall, master of the _De la Warre_, to fish unto,
+    all along, and between Cape Henry and Cape Charles within the
+    bay.... Nor was the Lord Governor and Captain General in the
+    meanwhile idle at the fort, but every day and night he caused the
+    nets to be hauled, sometimes a dozen times one after another. But
+    it pleased not God so to bless our labours that we did at any time
+    take one quarter so much as would give unto our people one pound at
+    a meal apiece, by which we might have better husbanded our peas and
+    oatmeal, notwithstanding the great store we now saw daily in our
+    river. But let the blame of this lie where it is, both upon our
+    nets and the unskilfulness of our men to lay them.
+
+The matter of sturgeon was of prime importance not only for subsistence
+but for export, particularly of the roe. Caviar was in great demand in
+England. But with uncertainty as to when the sturgeon would appear in
+the river, plus hot weather, plus feeble facilities, the growth of the
+industry was impeded. When tobacco, first commercially grown by John
+Rolfe, appeared on the scene in 1612 and proved to be a sure money
+maker, the export of sturgeon products came to a standstill. It was
+having hard going anyway. Complaints from England regarding quality
+were familiar enough. According to Lord De La Warr in 1610, on the
+subject, "Virginia Commodities":
+
+    Sturgeon which was last sent came ill-conditioned, not being well
+    boiled. If it were cut in small pieces and powdered, put up in
+    cask, the heads pickled by themselves, and sent here, it would do
+    far better.
+
+    Roes of the said sturgeon make caviar according to instructions
+    formerly given. Sounds of the said sturgeon will make isinglass
+    according to the same instructions. Isinglass is worth here 13s.
+    4d. per 100 pounds, and caviar well conditioned is worth L40 per
+    100.
+
+Other instances stressed the undependable fishing. Lord De La Warr
+wrote to the Earl of Salisbury in England in 1610: "I sent fishermen
+out to provide fish for our men, to save other provision, but they had
+ill success."
+
+Captain Samuel Argall was specially commissioned by the authorities in
+England to deep-sea fish for the benefit of the Colony. After ranging
+over a wide area between Bermuda and Canada, he reported in 1610:
+
+    ... The weather continuing very foggy, thick, and rainy, about five
+    of the clock it began to cease and then we began to fish and so
+    continued until seven of the clock in between thirty and forty
+    fathoms, and then we could fish no longer. So having gotten between
+    twenty and thirty cods we left for that night, and at five of the
+    clock, the 26th, in the morning we began to fish again and so
+    continued until ten of the clock, and then it would fish no longer,
+    in which time we had taken near one hundred cods and a couple of
+    halibuts....
+
+    Then I tried whether there were any fish there or not [off Maine
+    coast], and I found reasonable good store there. So I stayed there
+    fishing till the 12th of August, [1610] and then finding that the
+    fishing did fail, I thought good to return to the island
+    [Jamestown]....
+
+Captain Argall also offered his opinion of the usefulness of the
+islands off Virginia's seacoast peninsula, later known as the Eastern
+Shore:
+
+    Salt might easily be made there, if there were any ponds digged,
+    for that I found salt kernel where the water had overflowed in
+    certain places. Here also is great store of fish, both shellfish
+    and others.
+
+The root of the trouble, so far as local fishing conditions were
+concerned, was the lack of adequate equipment together with ignorance
+of its proper use. Perhaps the ease with which fish were caught at
+certain times had spoiled the hardy settlers.
+
+A low opinion of their attitude in this vital pursuit came from Sir
+Thomas Gates in 1610:
+
+    A colony is therefore denominated because they should be coloni,
+    the tillers of the earth and stewards of fertility. Our mutinous
+    loiterers would not sow with providence and therefore they reaped
+    the fruits of far too dear bought repentance. An incredible example
+    of their idleness is the report of Sir Thomas Gates who affirms
+    that after his first coming thither he had seen some of them eat
+    their fish raw rather than they would go a stone's cast to fetch
+    wood and dress it.
+
+    Joined unto these another evil: There is great store of fish in the
+    river, especially of sturgeon, but our men provided no more of them
+    than present necessity, not barreling up any store against the
+    season [when] the sturgeon returned to the sea. And not to
+    dissemble their folly, they suffered fourteen nets, which was all
+    they had, to rot and spoil, which by orderly drying and mending
+    might have been preserved but being lost, all help of fishing
+    perished.
+
+Very few of them had come equipped for fishing. Their seines were as
+old-fashioned as those used by the Apostles in the New Testament, the
+simple kind you lowered from a boat and dragged ashore. The Indians had
+taught them how to spear large fish and erect weirs out of stakes and
+brushwood to entrap migrating schools. Such methods worked well enough
+during the season. But in cold weather, when provisions ran low,
+scarcely any fish were present in the bay proper.
+
+It was different in New England and Canada. There the fishing was good
+the year round. The sea bottom was dragged by efficient trawl-nets, and
+fished with gang-lines of baited hooks, as it still is today. The cool
+temperatures over many months of the year made the catches much less
+perishable. Conditions favored an organized fish-salting industry.
+
+Though the Jamestown people had easy access to some 3,000 square miles
+of inland tidal water and were only a little way from the open sea,
+they never developed their marine riches. One good reason was that
+their original aims were in other directions. When the first intentions
+to colonize New England came to the King's notice, he asked the leaders
+what drew them there. The one-word answer: "Fishing." If the Virginians
+had been similarly queried they would have given various replies, but
+certainly not that one.
+
+In describing the fisheries of New England, John Smith had enthused:
+
+    Let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will
+    afford us good gold as the mines of Guiana or Tumbata, with less
+    hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility.
+
+The need for fishermen in Virginia was officially recognized to only a
+slight degree. A 1610 memorandum from the Virginia Council to the
+authorities in London asked that an effort be made to include among the
+next immigrants 20 fishermen and 6 net makers. Select them with care
+was the word sent out in England by means of a broadside issued by the
+Council of Virginia, December, 1610:
+
+    Whereas the good ship called the _Hercules_ is now preparing and
+    almost in a readiness with necessary provisions to make a supply to
+    the Lord Governor and the Colony in Virginia, it is thought meet,
+    for the avoiding of such vagrant and unnecessary persons as do
+    commonly proffer themselves being altogether unserviceable, that
+    none but honest sufficient artificers, as carpenters, smiths,
+    coopers, fishermen, brickmen, and such like, shall be entertained
+    into this voyage. Of whom so many as will in due time repair to the
+    house of Sir Thomas Smith in Philpot Lane, with sufficient
+    testimony to their skill and good behavior, they shall receive
+    entertainment accordingly.
+
+It was only a question of time before the Virginia colonists would,
+though surrounded all the while by their own huge marine resources,
+subsist on salt fish from the North. Sir Thomas Dale, governor from
+1611 to 1616, perceived the trend. One of his first moves was to ask
+the President of the Virginia Company to provide men trained enough to
+build a coastal trade in furs, corn and fish:
+
+    Let me intreat that we may have both an admiral and hired mariners,
+    to be all times resident here. The benefit will quickly make good
+    the charge as well by a trade of furs to be obtained with the
+    savages in the northern rivers to be returned home as also to
+    furnish us here with corn and fish. The waste of such men all this
+    time whom we might trust with our pinnaces leaves us destitute this
+    season of so great a quantity of fish as not far from our own bay
+    would sufficiently satisfy the whole Colony for a whole year.
+
+There were no boats available even for simple oystering. During the
+term of the stringent Governor Dale some disaffected colonists tried to
+escape in a shallop and a barge, which were "all the boats that were
+then in the Colony."
+
+Ironically punctuating the sagas of hardship were the marveling
+descriptions publicized in England. Corroborating the mouth-watering
+tales of Smith, William Strachey wrote in 1612:
+
+    To the natural commodities which the country has of fruit, beasts,
+    and fowl, we may also add the no mean commodity of fish, of which,
+    in March and April, are great shoals of herrings, sturgeon, great
+    store commonly in May if the year be forward. I have been at the
+    taking of some before Algernoone fort and in Southampton river in
+    the middle of March, and they remain with us June, July, and August
+    and in that plenty as before expressed.
+
+    Shad, great store, of a yard long and for sweetness and fatness a
+    reasonable food fish; he is only full of small bones, like our
+    barbels in England. There is the garfish, some of which are a yard
+    long, small and round like an eel and as big as a mare's leg,
+    having a long snout full of sharp teeth.
+
+    Oysters there be in whole banks and beds, and those of the best. I
+    have seen some thirteen inches long. The savages use to boil
+    oysters and mussels together and with the broth they make a good
+    spoon meat, thickened with the flour of their wheat and it is a
+    great thrift and husbandry with them to hang the oysters upon
+    strings ... and dried in the smoke, thereby to preserve them all
+    the year.
+
+    There be two sorts of sea crabs. One our people call a king crab
+    and they are taken in shoal waters from off the shore a dozen at a
+    time hanging one upon another's tail; they are of a foot in length
+    and half a foot in breadth, having legs and a long tail. The
+    Indians seldom eat of this kind. There is a shellfish of the
+    proportion of a cockle but far greater [conch]. It has a smooth
+    shell, not ragged as our cockles; 'tis good meat though somewhat
+    tough.
+
+And, according to Alexander Whitaker in 1613:
+
+    The rivers abound with fish both small and great. The sea-fish come
+    into our rivers in March and continue the end of September. Great
+    schools of herrings come in first; shads of a great bigness and the
+    rockfish follow them. Trout, bass, flounders, and other dainty fish
+    come in before the others be gone. Then come multitudes of great
+    sturgeons, whereof we catch many and should do more, but that we
+    want good nets answerable to the breadth and depth of our rivers.
+    Besides our channels are so foul in the bottom with great logs and
+    trees that we often break our nets upon them. I cannot reckon nor
+    give proper names to the divers kinds of fresh fish in our rivers.
+    I have caught with mine angle, carp, pike, eel, perches of six
+    several kinds, crayfish and the torope or little turtle, besides
+    many small kinds.
+
+When Whitaker penned the word "torope," he was giving the
+English-speaking world a new term, new because the animal it defined
+was unknown in Europe. Later spelled "terrapin," it meant the
+diamond-back, the esoteric little creature that spread the fame of the
+Chesapeake bay around the world and became an indispensable course on
+menus designed for the entertainment of royalty and the discriminating
+elect. The colonists probably ate it prepared Indian fashion, that is,
+roasted whole in live coals and opened at table where the savory meat
+was extracted by appreciative fingers. Over generations of
+terrapin-fanciers it evolved into one of the stars of the gastronomic
+firmament. It is a wholly American dish and it was born at Jamestown.
+
+Contemporary Historian Ralph Hamor added his testimony in 1614:
+
+    For fish, the rivers are plentifully stored with sturgeon, porpoise,
+    bass, rockfish, carp, shad, herring, eel, catfish, perch, flat-fish,
+    trout, sheepshead, drummers, jewfish, crevises, crabs, oysters, and
+    divers other kinds. Of all which myself has seen great quantity
+    taken, especially the last summer at Smith's Island at one haul a
+    frigate's lading of sturgeon, bass, and other great fish in Captain
+    Argall's seine, and even at the very place which is not above
+    fifteen miles from Point Comfort. If we had been furnished with
+    salt to have saved it, we might have taken as much fish as would
+    have served us that whole year.
+
+The mention of carp will interest those who believe carp to have been
+introduced into Virginia much later. The jewfish is common in more
+southern waters but there may well have been some strays in the
+Chesapeake. Although croakers, one of the bay's most abundant fish in
+modern times, are not mentioned, it would not be unreasonable to assume
+that they were included under "drummers." So with spot, a member of the
+drum family bearing a superficial resemblance to a bass or perch. The
+term "spot," as applied to a Virginia fish does not seem to have become
+current till the late 19th century.
+
+An event of special interest to statisticians occurred in 1612. The
+first attempt made in the New World to require certain fish catches to
+be reported was among the regulations propounded by Governor Thomas
+Dale. The penalty for violation would shock today's delinquent record
+keepers:
+
+    All fishermen, dressers of sturgeon, or such like appointed to fish
+    or to cure the said sturgeon for the use of the Colony, shall give
+    a just and true account of all such fish as they shall take by day
+    or night, of whatsoever kind, the same to bring unto the Governor.
+    As also all such kegs of sturgeon or caviar as they shall prepare
+    and cure upon peril for the first time offending herein of losing
+    his ears, and for the second time to be condemned a year to the
+    galleys, and for the third time offending to be condemned to the
+    galleys for three years.
+
+The years of trial and error fishing had brought their return in
+increased knowledge, according to John Rolfe in 1616:
+
+    About two years since, Sir Thomas Dale ... found out two seasons in
+    the year to catch fish, namely, the spring and the fall. He himself
+    took no small pains in the trial and at one haul with a seine
+    caught five thousand three hundred of them, as big as cod. The
+    least of the residue or kind of salmon trout, two foot long, yet he
+    durst not adventure on the main school for breaking his net.
+    Likewise, two men with axes and such like weapons have taken and
+    killed near the shore and brought home forty [fish] as great as cod
+    in two or three hours space....
+
+There was a hint that the Virginia Company was interfering with free
+ocean fishing by claiming all the land to Newfoundland,--not that it
+was getting much out of it. One complaint as published in London
+sometime before February 22, 1615, in the anonymous tract, _The Trades
+Increase_, read:
+
+    The Virginia Company pretend almost all that main twixt it and
+    Newfoundland to be their fee-simple, whereby many honest and able
+    minds, disposed to adventure, are hindered and stopped from
+    repairing to those places that they either know or would discover,
+    even for fishing.
+
+As a matter of fact, there was continuous wrangling in London over the
+fishing rights off the entire coast administered by the Virginia
+Company. The proposed settlers of the Northern Colony in New England
+had fishing uppermost in their minds and would have been glad to
+exclude fishermen coming from the Southern Colony. Minutes of meetings
+of the Company reveal how earnest was the struggle:
+
+    December 1, 1619. The last great general court being read, Mr.
+    Treasurer acquainted them that Mr. John Delbridge, purposing to
+    settle a particular colony in Virginia, desired of the Company that
+    for defraying some part of his charge he might be admitted to fish
+    at Cape Cod. Which request was opposed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
+    alleging that he always favored Mr. Delbridge but in this he
+    thought himself something touched that he should sue to this
+    Company and not rather to him as the matter properly belonged to
+    the Northern Colony to give liberty for fishing in that place, it
+    lying within their latitude. This was answered by Mr. Treasurer
+    that the Companies of the South and North Plantations are free of
+    one another and that the patent is clear that each may fish within
+    the territory of the other, the sea being free for both. If the
+    Northern Company abridged them of this, they would take away their
+    means and encouragement for sending out men. To which Sir
+    Ferdinando Gorges replied that if he was not mistaken both the
+    Companies were limited by the patents unto which he would submit.
+    For the deciding whereof it is referred to the Council, who are of
+    both Companies, to examine the patents tomorrow afternoon at the
+    Lord Southampton's and accordingly to determine the dispute.
+
+Two weeks later the Council gave its decision: Either Colony could fish
+within the bounds of the other. But this was by no means an end to the
+matter. The Northern Colony requested a new patent to resolve the
+disputes. With suggestions and counter-suggestions, the debate dragged
+on through the spring, summer and fall. About the time the Northern
+Colony had arranged to exclude the Southern Colony from free fishing,
+the King stepped in, declaring that "if anything were passed in the New
+England patent that might be prejudicial to the Southern Colony it was
+done without his knowledge and that he has been abused thereby by those
+that pretended otherwise to him." Finally, after a year-and-a-half of
+cross-purposes, agreement was reached:
+
+    June 18, 1621. There was a petition exhibited unto His Majesty in
+    the name of the patentees and adventurers in the plantation of New
+    England concerning some difference between the Southern and
+    Northern Colonies, the said petition was by His Majesty referred to
+    the consideration of the Lords. Their Lordships, upon the hearing
+    and debating of the matter at large and by the consent of both
+    Colonies, did establish and confirm two former orders, the one
+    bearing date of the 16th of March 1620, agreed upon by the Duke of
+    Lenox and the Earl of Arundell; the other of the 21st of July 1620
+    ordered by the Board whereby it was thought fit that the said
+    colonies should fish at sea within the limits and bounds of each
+    other reciprocally, with this limitation that it be only for the
+    sustentation of the people of the Colonies there and for the
+    transportation of people into either Colony. Further it was ordered
+    at this time by their Lordships that they should have freedom of
+    the shore for drying of their nets and taking and saving of their
+    fish and to have wood for their necessary uses, by the assignment
+    of the Governors at reasonable rates. Lastly the patent of the
+    Northern Colony shall be renewed according to the premises, and
+    those of the Southern plantation to have a sight thereof before it
+    be engrossed and the former patent to be delivered into the hand of
+    the patentees.
+
+In an effort to encourage Virginians to salt their own fish, an order
+from London recommended the reopening of the old sea-water-evaporators
+on Smith's island, off Cape Charles, where salt had been produced in
+the first days. The Virginia Company advised the Governor and Council
+in 1620:
+
+    The last commodity, but not of least importance for health, is
+    SALT: the works whereof having been lately suffered to decay; we
+    now intending to restore in so great plenty, as not only to serve
+    the Colony for the present, but as is hoped, in short time, the
+    great fishings on those coasts, a matter of inestimable advancement
+    to the Colony, do upon mature deliberation ordain as followeth:
+    First, that you the Governor and Council, do chose out of the
+    tenants for the Company, 20 fit persons to be employed in salt
+    works, which are to be renewed in Smith's Island, where they were
+    before; as also in taking of fish there, for the use of the Colony,
+    as in former times was also done. These 20 shall be furnished out
+    at the first, at the charges of the Company, with all implements
+    and instruments necessary for those works. They shall have also
+    assigned to each of them for their occupation or use, 50 acres of
+    land within the island, to be land of the Company. The one moiety
+    of salt, fish, and profits of the land shall be for the tenants,
+    the other for us the Company, to be delivered into our store: and
+    this contract shall be continued for five years.
+
+The reply of Secretary of the Colony, John Pory, was something less
+than complacent:
+
+    The last commodity spoken of in your charter is salt; the works
+    whereof, we do much marvel, you would have restored to their former
+    use; whereas I will undertake in one day to make as much salt by
+    the heat of the sun, after the manner used in France, Spain, and
+    Italy, as can be made in a year by that toilsome and erroneous way
+    of boiling sea water into salt in kettles as our people at Smith's
+    Island hitherto accustomed. And therefore when you enter into this
+    work, you must send men skillful in salt ponds, such as you may
+    easily procure from Rochell, and if you can have none there, yet
+    some will be found in Lymington, and in many other places in
+    England. And this indeed in a short time might prove a real work of
+    great sustenance to the Colony at home, as of gain abroad, here
+    being such schools of excellent fish, as ought rather to be admired
+    of such as have not seen the same, than credited. Whereas the
+    Company do give their tenants fifty acres upon Smith's Island some
+    there are that smile at it here, saying there is no ground in all
+    the whole island worth the manuring.
+
+Following this exchange, attempts at salt making, especially on the
+Eastern Shore where the waters were saltiest, were renewed. John Rolfe
+reported in 1621:
+
+    At Dale's Gift, being upon the sea near unto Cape Charles, about
+    thirty miles from Kecoughtan, are seventeen inhabitants under
+    command of Lieutenant Cradock. All these are fed and maintained by
+    the Colony. Their labor is to make salt and catch fish....
+
+Secretary Pory soon expressed his disagreement with the project in more
+than words and succeeded in effecting the removal of the salt works to
+a more convenient location. That this hardly fulfilled expectations is
+evidenced by a letter written in 1628 to the King by the Governor and
+Council:
+
+    Great likeliness of the certainty of bay salt, the benefit that
+    will thereby accrue to the Colony will be great, and they shall
+    willingly assist Mr. Capps in making his experiment, which, brought
+    to perfection, will draw a certain trade to them. And they hope
+    that the fishing upon their coasts will be very near as good as
+    Canada.
+
+Mr. Capps, a citizen of Accomack, had proposed that if the Colony would
+subsidize him he would undertake to supply it with salt from evaporated
+sea water. His offer was accepted and the enterprise set up. After
+waiting patiently and seeing little salt the Council took him to task.
+His plea was the familiar one of most operations that fail: lack of
+capital. He had worked hard, he said; he had all the firewood he needed,
+workmen were available, and the sun shone bright. The bottle-neck was
+too few evaporating pans. But apparently he had not won the Council's
+confidence. The Capps salt company was dissolved.
+
+Another one sprang up about 30 years later under the sponsorship of
+Colonel Edmund Scarborough of Northampton County. Such was the public
+interest aroused by this influential man, who, among other
+distinctions, had been a Burgess between 1642 and 1659, that the
+importation of salt into the county was prohibited to encourage him.
+Finally, in 1666, this project was abandoned for reasons that remain
+obscure. Most probably the quality of the product was inferior.
+
+The salt shortage continued despite other random attempts to alleviate
+it. For example, in 1660 one Daniel Dawen of Accomack was exempted from
+taxes and granted public funds for his "experiments of salt."
+
+The trouble that attended obtaining salt in needed quantity and of
+satisfactory quality accompanied the development of Virginia right up
+to George Washington's time.
+
+Despite all attempts to the contrary, reliance on salt fish from the
+North kept gaining. The General Assembly that had met in 1619 censured
+a Captain Warde for establishing a plantation in Virginia without
+asking anybody's permission. But when it was brought out that he had
+conveyed quantities of salt fish to the Colony from Canada on his ship
+he was forgiven. This captain was an important link between the Colony
+and the North. John Rolfe wrote to Sir Edwin Sandys in 1619:
+
+    Captain Warde in his ship went to Monhegan [island, Maine] in the
+    Northern Colony in May and returned the latter end of July with
+    fish which he caught there. He brought but a small quantity by
+    reason he had but little salt. There were some Plymouth ships where
+    he harbored, who made great store of fish which is far larger than
+    Newland [Newfoundland] fish.
+
+The Maine waters were far busier than those of Virginia. For more than
+a century vessels from half-a-dozen European nations had thronged
+there, even to Greenland, attracted by the fishing, and the furs
+available on the mainland. When some of the early experiments at
+colonization failed, fishing became all the more emphasized. There was
+usually excellent demand for the catches whether landed in Plymouth
+(England) or Plymouth (Massachusetts), Portugal, Holland, the West
+Indies or Virginia. These bold adventurers made use of the land in the
+New World only for drying, salting and barreling their fish. If
+conditions permitted, they transported them fresh, in a cargo commonly
+known as "corfish." Oil made from whale and cod was a profitable
+commodity.
+
+Fishermen were the pioneers and explorers of America's first days just
+as the miners, trappers and traders were those of a later period.
+
+The importance of fish was thus underlined. In addition, conceding the
+value to the untrained whites of Indians as fishermen, the 1619
+Assembly agreed to a proposal that Indians to the limit of six be
+permitted to live in white settlements if they engaged in fishing for
+the benefit of the settlement. Indian methods were first described by
+Hariot of the Roanoke island colony:
+
+    They have likewise a notable way to catch fish in their rivers, for
+    whereas they lack both iron and steel, they fasten unto their
+    reeds, or long rods, the hollow tail of a certain fish like to a
+    sea crab instead of a point, wherewith by night or day they strike
+    fishes, and take them up into their boats. They also know how to
+    use the prickles, and pricks of other fishes. They also make weirs,
+    with setting up reeds or twigs in the water, which they so plant
+    one with another, that they grow still narrower, and narrower.
+    There was never seen among us so cunning a way to take fish withal,
+    whereof sundry sorts as they found in their rivers unlike ours,
+    which are also of a very good taste. Doubtless it is a pleasant
+    sight to see the people, sometimes wading, and going sometimes
+    sailing in those rivers, which are shallow and not deep, free from
+    all care of heaping up riches for their posterity, content with
+    their state, and living friendly together of those things which God
+    of His bounty hath given unto them, yet without giving Him any
+    thanks according to His deserts.
+
+The most vivid and comprehensive description of Indian fishing was
+given by historian Robert Beverley. Though his work was not published
+until 1705, he dealt with an earlier period:
+
+    Before the arrival of the English there, the Indians had fish in
+    such vast plenty that the boys and girls would take a pointed stick
+    and strike the lesser sort as they swam upon the flats. The larger
+    fish that kept in deeper water, they were put to a little more
+    difficulty to take. But for these they made weirs, that is, a hedge
+    of small rived sticks or reeds of the thickness of a man's finger.
+    These they wove together in a row with straps of green oak or other
+    tough wood, so close that the small fish could not pass through.
+    Upon high water mark they pitched one end of this hedge and the
+    other they extended into the river to the depth of eight or ten
+    foot, fastening it with stakes, making cods out from the hedge on
+    one side, almost at the end, and leaving a gap for the fish to go
+    into them. These were contrived so that the fish could easily find
+    their passage into those cods when they were at the gap, but not
+    see their way out again when they were in. Thus if they offered to
+    pass through, they were taken.
+
+    Sometimes they made such a hedge as this quite across a creek at
+    high water and at low would go into the run, so contracted into a
+    narrow stream, and take out what fish they pleased.
+
+    At the falls of the rivers where the water is shallow and the
+    current strong, the Indians use another kind of weir thus made.
+    They make a dam of loose stone, whereof there is plenty at hand,
+    quite across the river, leaving one, two, or more spaces or
+    trunnels for the water to pass through. At the mouth they set a pot
+    of reeds, wove in form of a cone, whose base is about three foot
+    [wide] and ten [foot] perpendicular, into which the swiftness of
+    the current carries the fish and wedges them so fast that they
+    cannot possibly return.
+
+    The Indian way of catching sturgeon, when they came into the narrow
+    part of the rivers, was by a man's clapping a noose over their
+    tails and by keeping fast his hold. Thus a fish, finding itself
+    entangled, would flounce and often pull him under water. Then that
+    man was counted a cockarouse, or brave fellow, that would not let
+    go till with swimming, wading and diving, he had tired the sturgeon
+    and brought it ashore. These sturgeon would also leap into their
+    canoes in crossing the river, as many of them do still every year
+    into the boats of the English.
+
+    They have also another way of fishing like those on the Euxine Sea,
+    by the help of a blazing fire by night. They make a hearth in the
+    middle of their canoe, raising it within two inches of the edge.
+    Upon this they lay their burning lightwood, split into small
+    shivers, each splinter whereof will blaze and burn end for end like
+    a candle. 'Tis one man's work to tend this fire and keep it
+    flaming. At each end of the canoe stands an Indian with a gig or
+    point spear, setting the canoe forward with the butt end of the
+    spear as gently as he can, by that means stealing upon the fish
+    without any noise or disturbing of the water. Then they with great
+    dexterity dart these spears into the fish and so take them. Now
+    there is a double convenience in the blaze of this fire, for it not
+    only dazzles the eyes of the fish, which will lie still glaring
+    upon it, but likewise discovers the bottom of the river clearly to
+    the fisherman, which the daylight does not.
+
+Under Governor George Yeardley in 1616, there were 400 people at
+Jamestown and one old frigate, one old shallop and one boat belonging
+to the community. There were two boats privately owned. The boats best
+suited to local fishing, and the most easily available, were the Indian
+dugout canoes. Such was the size of the trees that it was possible to
+make them comparatively roomy, as Strachey noted.
+
+Every passing year brought home to the steadily growing Colony the need
+of improving its fishing practices. Most nets had to be bought in
+England. Here is a London item from a 1623 _List of Subscribers and
+Subscriptions for Relief of the Colony_: "Richard Tatem will adventure
+[speculate] in cheese and fishing nets the sum of L30 sterling."
+
+Jamestown had by 1624 begun to spawn little Jamestowns throughout the
+countryside. A census was ordered of all settlements. In January, 1625,
+there were 1209 white persons, and 23 negroes. This first American
+census listed, among general provisions, the stocks of salt fish. On
+hand at thirteen settlements was 58,380 pounds. James City had the
+largest supply, 24,880 pounds. Elizabeth City was next with 10,550
+pounds. A community listed only as "Neck of Land" adjacent to
+Jamestown, consisting of perhaps ten dwellings and plantations, had
+4,050 pounds. The smallest store, 450 pounds, was credited to another
+"Neck of Land" in Charles City. From the accumulated evidences of
+disorganized home fishing, coupled with the deficiency of salt, it is
+to be concluded that most of this supply had come from the Northern
+fishing grounds.
+
+There were 40 boats of various sizes and uses listed in this census.
+For example, at Jamestown a "barque of 40 tons, a shallop of 4 tons and
+one skiff" were among the ten there.
+
+A token of the stress resulting from inadequate fisheries even after 16
+years of active colonization is this letter preserved in the records of
+the Virginia Company. A Virginia citizen named Arundle in 1623 wrote to
+his friend, Mr. Caning, in London:
+
+    The most evident hope from altogether starving is oysters, and for
+    the easier getting of them I have agreed for a canoe which will
+    cost me 6 livres sterling.
+
+    Emigrants had been advised not to leave for Virginia without some
+    fishing equipment. In his _Travels_, John Smith had included the
+    warning: "A particular of such necessaries as either private
+    families or single persons shall have cause to provide to go to
+    Virginia ... nets, hooks and lines must be added."
+
+Records of the Virginia Company in London throw light on the
+extensiveness of the fish trade. Robert Bennett wrote from Virginia to
+Edward Bennett in London in 1623:
+
+    My last letter I wrote you was in the _Adam_ from Newfoundland,
+    which I hope you shall receive before this. God send her back in
+    safety and this from Canada. I hope the fish will come to a good
+    reckoning for victuals is very scarce in the country. Your
+    Newfoundland fish is worth 30s. per hundred, your dry Canada [fish]
+    L3, 10s. and the wet L5, 10s. per hundred. I do not know nor hear
+    of any that is coming hither with fish but only the _Tiger_ which
+    went in company with the _Adam_ from this place and I know the
+    country will carry away all this forthwith.
+
+And again from the records of the Company, this extract from _An
+Account of Sums Subscribed and Supplies Sent Since April_, dated July
+23, 1623:
+
+    ... We have received advice that from Canada there departed this
+    last month a ship called Furtherance with above forty thousand of
+    that fish which is little inferior to ling for the supply of the
+    Colony in Virginia and that fish is worth not less than L600.
+
+
+[Illustration: _The broyling of their fish over the flame of fire._
+
+Library of Congress Photo
+
+The first settlers did not have to learn from the Indians how to cook
+fish, but this method was perhaps as appetizing as any they knew.]
+
+[Illustration: _The manner of their fishing._
+
+Library of Congress Photo
+
+The first colonists saw the Indians engaged in fishing practices that
+included spearing, luring with firelight, and entrapping in staked-off
+enclosures.]
+
+[Illustration: The sheepshead was one of the favorite seafoods of
+Tidewater Virginians from the beginning. It was fairly abundant,
+according to their records, and remained so until the twentieth
+century, when it became almost extinct in Chesapeake waters.
+
+U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Photos]
+
+[Illustration: The ugly-looking but delicious-tasting sturgeon was the
+fish that principally engaged the attention of the first colonists.
+They were impressed by its abundance and were busy for a time in
+shipping its roe to England for [1]caviar.
+
+U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Photos]
+
+      [1] (we cannot be certain that much actual caviar was produced at
+      Jamestown. The chances are that the roe was merely salted down
+      and that the final processing took place in England)
+
+[Illustration: Haul-seining or dragging fish ashore by enclosing them
+in a long net, is a form of fishing that has thrived almost unchanged
+through the ages. Its practice at Jamestown was limited by the lack of
+nets.]
+
+[Illustration: The toothsome Chesapeake Bay hard crab was, and is still
+to a great extent today, taken by baits spaced along lines sunk to the
+bottom and then raised and the tenacious crabs removed.]
+
+[Illustration: Vast quantities of river herring were taken in
+haul-seines in the spring throughout Tidewater Virginia. A crew dragged
+the fish ashore to a force of women cutters waiting to prepare them for
+salting down.]
+
+[Illustration: Great living oyster mounds, built up by nature through
+the ages, impeded ships in the lower James river. At high tide they
+were hidden so that unwary pilots struck them; at low they could be
+picked over by hand. They remained a threat to navigation until they
+disappeared under three centuries of harvesting.
+
+Original drawing by Esther Derieux]
+
+[Illustration: Fishing implements excavated at Jamestown. The large
+fish-hook was for ocean cod fishing or possibly for snagging sturgeon
+in the river. The spear, attached to a wooden handle, was for stalking
+big fish in shallow water, or for capturing those that could be
+attracted to a light in a boat at night. The lead weights were suitable
+for (right) a handline, (left) a net.
+
+National Park Service]
+
+[Illustration: Early salt-evaporating houses were located close by the
+sea, from which the water was channeled in by slow stages to take
+advantage of natural evaporation before wood fires finished the job.
+When the crystals formed they were shoveled into conical baskets and
+drained.]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy Mariners Museum
+
+An 18th century plan of a solar-evaporating works. Sea water is
+channeled into the primary reservoir (DD), from which it is conducted
+to (FFF) and (KKK) by progressive stages to the final basins where it
+crystallizes.]
+
+
+The kernel of the situation was reflected by the Dutch traveler,
+David De Vries, who made voyages to America from 1632 to
+1644:
+
+    In going down to Jamestown on board of a sloop, a sturgeon sprang
+    out of the river, into the sloop. We killed it, and it was eight
+    feet long. This river is full of sturgeon, as also are the two
+    rivers of New Netherland. When the English first began to plant
+    their Colony here, there came an English ship from England for the
+    purpose of fishing for sturgeon; but they found that this fishery
+    would not answer, because it is so hot in summer, which is the best
+    time for fishing, that the salt or pickle would not keep them as in
+    Muscovy whence the English obtain many sturgeon and where the
+    climate is colder than in the Virginias.
+
+The effects of the Virginians' favoring tobacco-growing above fishing
+were also noted by De Vries on a visit to Canada:
+
+    Besides my vessel [at Newfoundland] there was a small boat of fifty
+    or sixty lasts [110 tons], with six guns, which had come out of the
+    Virginias with tobacco, in order to exchange the tobacco for fish.
+
+A rather aggrieved reaction to the tales of abundant natural resources
+in Virginia is contained in this letter from one Tho. Niccolls to Sir
+Jo. Worstenholme in London in 1623:
+
+    If the Company would allow to each man a pound of butter and a
+    portion of cheese weekly, they would find more comfort therein then
+    by all the deer, fish, and fowl [that] is so talked of in England,
+    of which, I can assure you, your poor servants have not had so much
+    as the scent since their coming into the country.
+
+To prevent profiteering in Canadian fish the Virginia authorities had
+set the selling prices:
+
+    January 3, 1625-6: Proclamation by the Governor and Council of
+    Virginia renewing a former proclamation of August 31, 1623,
+    restraining the excessive rates of commodities--commanding that no
+    person in Virginia, either adventurer or planter, shall vend,
+    utter, barter, or sell any of the commodities following above the
+    prices hereafter mentioned, viz: New Foundland fish, the hundred
+    ... 10 pounds of tobacco; Canada dry fish, the hundred ... 24
+    pounds of tobacco; Canada wet fish, the hundred.... 30 pounds of
+    tobacco.
+
+In one proposed deal of fish for tobacco the owner of the fish got
+scared off, as recorded in the Minutes of the Council and General
+Court, 1622-29:
+
+    Luke Edan, sworn and examined, says that there were sixteen
+    thousand fish offered him by one Corbin at Canada which afterward
+    the said Corbin refused to sell him for it was told him his tobacco
+    was not good, and as the examiner heard, it was Henry Hewat that
+    told him so.
+
+A case of special concession for the sale of fish was shown in a ruling
+of the Virginia Council in 1626:
+
+    It is ordered that whereas Mr. Weston came up to James City, he
+    shall sell 3,000 of his fish there, which he has promised to sell
+    at reasonable rates. Therefore, in regard the proclamations are not
+    published for the choosing of merchants and factors, it is
+    permitted that such as are desirous to buy any of the said fish he
+    may have leave to deal with Mr. Weston, notwithstanding orders to
+    the contrary.
+
+Another dissuading factor in the unsubstantial fishing in Virginia was
+the threat of Indian attack. The Assembly in 1626 ruled:
+
+    It is ordered, according to the act of the late General Assembly,
+    that no man go or send abroad either upon fowling, fishing, or
+    otherwise whatsoever without a sufficient plenty of men, well armed
+    and provided of munition, upon penalty of undergoing severe censure
+    of punishment by the Governor and Council.
+
+It was characteristic of Virginia's fisheries that the pessimists
+occupied the stage for a while, then the optimists. An example of the
+whipping-up of enthusiasm is this discourse of Edward Williams writing
+on Virginia at mid-century. China was a fabulous country, therefore he
+compared Virginia with it. Ideas ran riot as he contemplated the
+resources crying to be developed:
+
+    ... What multitudes of fish to satisfy the most voluptuous of
+    wishes, can China glory in which Virginia may not in justice boast
+    of?... Let her publish a precedent so worthy of admiration (and
+    which will not admit belief in those bosoms where the eye cannot be
+    witness of the action) of five thousand fish taken at one draught
+    near Cape Charles, at the entry into Chesapeake bay, and which
+    swells the wonder greater, not one fish under the measure of two
+    feet in length. What fleets come yearly upon the coasts of
+    Newfoundland and New England for fish, with an incredible return?
+    Yet it is a most assured truth that if they would make experiment
+    upon the south of Cape Cod, and from thence to the coast of this
+    happy country, they would find fish of greater delicacy, and as
+    full handed plenty, which though foreigners know not, yet if our
+    own planters would make use of it, would yield them a revenue which
+    cannot admit of any diminution while there are ebbs and floods,
+    rivers feed and receive the ocean, or nature fails in (the
+    elemental original of all things) waters.
+
+    There wants nothing but industrious spirits and encouragement to
+    make a rich staple of this commodity; and would the Virginians but
+    make salt pits, in which they have a greater convenience of tides
+    (that part of the universe by reason of a full influence of the
+    moon upon the almost limitless Atlantic causing the most spacious
+    fluxes and refluxes, that any shore of the other divisions in the
+    world is sensible of) to leave their pits full of salt-water, and
+    more friendly and warm sunbeams to concoct it into salt, than
+    Rochel, or any parts of Europe. Yet notwithstanding these
+    advantages which prefer Virginia before Rochel, the French king
+    raises a large proportion of his revenues out of that staple
+    yearly, with which he supplies a great part of Christendom.
+
+    Nor would it be such a long interval (salt being first made)
+    betwixt the undertaking of this fishing, and the bringing it to
+    perfection, for if every servant were enjoined to practice rowing,
+    to be taught to handle sails, and trim a vessel, a work easily
+    practised, and suddenly learned, the pleasantness of weather in
+    fishing season, the delicacy of the fish, of which they usually
+    feed themselves with the best, the encouragement of some share in
+    the profit, and their understanding what their own benefit may be
+    when their freedom gives them an equality, will make them willing
+    and able fishermen and seamen. To add further to this, if we
+    consider the abundance, largeness, and peculiar excellency of the
+    sturgeon in that country, it will not fall into the least of
+    scruples, but that one species will be of an invaluable profit to
+    the buyer, or if we repeat to our thoughts the singular plenty of
+    herrings and mackerel, in goodness and greatness much exceeding
+    whatever of that kind these our seas produce, a very ordinary
+    understanding may at the first inspection perceive that it will be
+    no great difficulty to out-labor and out-vie the Hollander in that
+    his almost only staple.
+
+This flowery author goes on to make ingenious suggestions about raising
+fish in captivity, like domesticated animals, by inclosing a creek
+against their egress but keeping it sluiced to permit the action of
+tides. He even guesses that a nutritious and medicinal oil could be
+produced from fish livers. It is worth noting that both these
+suggestions have been proved practical but they had to wait until
+modern times to be carried out.
+
+In the anonymous _A Perfect Description of Virginia_, published in
+1649, the population is given as 15,000 English and 300 negroes. The
+count of boats, remembering the shortage of 40 years before, is
+impressive: "They have in their Colony pinnaces, barks, great and small
+boats many hundreds, for most of their plantations stand upon the river
+sides or up little creeks, and but a small way into the land so that
+for transportation and fishing they use many boats."
+
+The enmity of the Indians had been a constant irritation, and worse,
+ever since the first days. As soon as it became possible to do so,
+effort was made to cut them off from the resources of the tidal waters.
+It was reasoned, and as it turned out, rightly, that with them unable
+to supplement their food supplies with fish and shellfish, especially
+oysters, they would be weakened in body and more easily subdued. The
+word early went out: Keep the Indians away from the water. This
+strategy worked so successfully that by 1662 it was deemed safe to ease
+the pressure. Thus another milestone was reached: the first oyster
+licensing law, as recorded in Hening's _Statutes_:
+
+    Be it further enacted that for the better relief of the poor
+    Indians whom the seating of the English had forced from their
+    wonted convenience of oystering, fishing ... that the said Indians
+    upon address made to two of the justices of that county they desire
+    to oyster ... they, the said justices, shall grant a license to the
+    said Indians to oyster ... provided the said justices limit the
+    time the Indians are to stay, and the Indians bring not with them
+    any guns, or ammunition or any other offensive weapon but only such
+    tools or implements as serve for the end of their coming. If any
+    Englishman shall presume to take from the Indians so coming in any
+    of their goods, or shall kill, wound, maim any Indian, he shall
+    suffer as he had done the same to an Englishman and be fined for
+    his contempt.
+
+This was followed, according to Hening, in 1676 by another cavalier
+gesture to the oppressed:
+
+    ... It is hereby intended that our neighbor Indian friends be not
+    debarred from fishing and hunting within their own limits and
+    bounds, using bows and arrows only. Provided also that such
+    neighbor Indian friends who have occasion for corn to relieve their
+    lives and it shall and may be lawful for any English to employ in
+    fishing or deal with fish, canoes, bowls, mats, or baskets, and to
+    pay the said Indians for the same in Indian corn, but no other
+    commodities....
+
+Thomas Glover, author of _An Account of Virginia_, addressed to the
+Royal Society in London, published in 1676, sides with the optimists.
+His catalogue has a familiar sound but it is valuable as substantiating
+many of the earlier reports. One impression to be gained from it is
+that after more than 60 years of occupancy of the new territory, the
+settlers had in no way depleted their fishery resources, had not, in
+fact, even scratched the surface:
+
+    In the rivers are great plenty and variety of delicate fish. One
+    kind whereof is by the English called a sheepshead from the
+    resemblance the eye of it bears with the eye of a sheep. This fish
+    is generally about fifteen or sixteen inches long and about half a
+    foot broad. It is a wholesome and pleasant fish and of easy
+    digestion. A planter does often times take a dozen or fourteen in
+    an hour's time with hook and line.
+
+    There is another sort which the English call a drum, many of which
+    are two foot and a half or three foot long. This is likewise a very
+    good fish, and there is plenty of them. In the head of this fish
+    there is a jelly, which being taken and dried in the sun, then
+    beaten to powder and given in broth, procures speedy delivery to
+    women in labour.
+
+    At the heads of the rivers there are sturgeon and in the creeks are
+    great store of small fish, as perch, croakers, taylors, eels, and
+    divers others whose name I know not. Here are such plenty of
+    oysters as they may load ships with them. At the mouth of Elizabeth
+    River, when it is low water, they appear in rocks a foot above
+    water. There are also in some places great store of mussels and
+    cockles. There is also a fish called a stingray, which resembles a
+    skate, only on one side of his tail grows out a sharp bone like a
+    bodkin about four or five inches long, with which he sticks and
+    wounds other fish and then preys upon them.
+
+The same author went farther than any other reporter up to that time in
+telling a real fish story:
+
+    And now it comes into my mind, I shall here insert an account of a
+    very strange fish or rather a monster, which I happened to see in
+    Rappahannock River about a year before I came out of the country;
+    the manner of it was thus:
+
+    As I was coming down the forementioned river in a sloop bound for
+    the bay, it happened to prove calm, at which time we were three
+    leagues short of the river's mouth; the tide of ebb being then
+    done, the sloop-man dropped his grapline, and he and his boy took a
+    little boat belonging to the sloop, in which they went ashore for
+    water, leaving me aboard alone, in which time I took a small book
+    out of my pocket and sat down at the stern of the vessel to read;
+    but I had not read long before I heard a great rushing and flashing
+    of the water, which caused me suddenly to look up, and about half a
+    stone's cast from me appeared a prodigious creature, much
+    resembling a man, only somewhat larger, standing right up in the
+    water with his head, neck, shoulders, breast and waist, to the
+    cubits of his arms, above water; his skin was tawny, much like that
+    of an Indian; the figure of his head was pyramidal, and slick,
+    without hair; his eyes large and black, and so were his eyebrows;
+    his mouth very wide, with a broad streak on the upper lip, which
+    turned upward at each end like mustachioes; his countenance was
+    grim and terrible; his neck, shoulders, arms, breast and waist were
+    like unto the neck, arms, shoulders, breast and waist of a man; his
+    hands if he had any, were under water; he seemed to stand with his
+    eyes fixed on me for some time, and afterward dived down, and a
+    little after riseth at somewhat a farther distance, and turned his
+    head towards me again, and then immediately falleth a little under
+    water, and swimmeth away so near the top of the water, that I could
+    discern him throw out his arms, and gather them in as a man doth
+    when he swimmeth. At last he shoots with his head downwards, by
+    which means he cast his tail above the water, which exactly
+    resembled the tail of a fish with a broad fane at the end of it.
+
+Judging from the few piddling regulations and restrictions referred to
+in extracts already cited, the Virginia lawmakers could see no need for
+intensive or even active supervision of the Tidewater fisheries. A
+rather epoch-making law was enacted in 1678 by the county court of
+Middlesex County, which is about 50 miles from James City, at the
+juncture of the Rappahannock river and Chesapeake bay:
+
+    Whereas, by the 15th act of Assembly made in the year 1662, liberty
+    is given to each respective county to make by-laws for themselves;
+    which laws, by virtue of the said act are to be binding upon them
+    as any other general law; and whereas several of the inhabitants of
+    this county have complained against the excessive and immoderate
+    striking and destroying of fish, by some fire, of the inhabitants
+    of this county by striking them by a light in the night time with
+    fish gigs, wherby they not only affright the fish from coming into
+    the rivers and creeks, but also wound four times that quantity that
+    they take, so that if a timely remedy be not applied, by that means
+    the fishing with hooks and lines will be thereby spoiled to the
+    great hurt and grievance of most of the inhabitants of this county.
+    It is therefore by this court ordered that from and after the 20th
+    day of March next ensuing, it shall not be lawful for any of the
+    inhabitants of this county to take, strike, or destroy any sort of
+    fish in the night time with fish gigs, harping irons, or any other
+    instrument of that nature, sort or kind, within any river, creek or
+    bay which are accounted belonging to or within the bounds or
+    precincts of this county. And it is further ordered that if any
+    person or persons being a freeman, shall offend against this order,
+    he or they so offending shall for the first offence be fined five
+    hundred pounds of good tobacco to be paid to the informer, and for
+    every other offence committed against this order after the first,
+    by any person, the said fine to be doubled and if any servants be
+    permitted or encouraged by their masters to keep or have in their
+    possession any fish gig, harping iron or any other instrument of
+    that kind or nature and shall therewith offend against this order,
+    that in such case the master of such servant or servants shall be
+    liable to pay the several fines above mentioned, and if any servant
+    or servants shall, contrary to and against their master's will and
+    knowledge, offend against this order, that for every offence they
+    receive such corporal punishment as by this court shall be thought
+    meet.
+
+As population became more dense it was inevitable that rights
+previously of little significance began to be asserted. This case of
+1679 taken from Hening's _Statutes_, was a forerunner of countless
+others like it which continue to this day:
+
+    Robert Liny, having complained to this Grand Assembly that whereas
+    he had cleared a fishing place in the river against his own land to
+    his great cost and charge supposing the right thereof in himself by
+    virtue of his patents, yet nevertheless several persons have
+    frequently obstructed him in his just privilege of fishing there,
+    and despite of him came upon his land and hauled their seines on
+    shore to his great prejudice, alleging that the water was the King
+    Majesty's and not by him granted away in any patent and therefore
+    equally free to all His Majesty's subjects to fish in and haul
+    their seines on shore, and praying for relief therein by a
+    declaratory order of this Grand Assembly; it is ordered and
+    declared by this Grand Assembly that every man's right by virtue of
+    his patent extends into the rivers or creeks so far as low water
+    mark and it is a privilege granted to him in and by his patent, and
+    that therefore no person ought to come and fish there above low
+    water mark or haul seines on shore without leave first obtained,
+    under the hazard of comitting a trespass for which he is sueable by
+    law.
+
+In most cases this decision somewhat limited a landowner's claim. But
+on the seaside of Virginia's Eastern Shore conditions have always been
+so that at low tide thousands of acres of land are laid bare, with the
+result that "low water mark" is in many cases difficult of
+interpretation as a boundary between waterfront properties and the
+public domain.
+
+Toward the close of the century fishing methods had shaped up
+advantageously compared to the crudities and hit-or-miss practices of
+the first settlers. Robert Beverley described them in 1705:
+
+    The Indian invention of weirs in fishing is mightily improved by
+    the English, besides which, they make use of seines, trolls,
+    casting nets, setting nets, hand fishing and angling and in each
+    find abundance of diversion. I have sat in the shade at the heads
+    of the rivers angling and spent as much time in taking the fish off
+    the hook as in waiting for their taking it. Like those of the
+    Euxine Sea, they also fish with spilyards which is a long line
+    staked out in the river and hung with a great many hooks on short
+    strings, fastened to the main line, about four foot asunder. The
+    only difference is that our line is supported by stakes and theirs
+    is buoyed up with gourds.
+
+The abundance of the fisheries never ceased impressing visitors. A
+French tourist added to the chorus in 1687:
+
+    Fish too is wonderfully plentiful. There are so many shell oysters
+    that almost every Saturday my host craved them. He had only to send
+    one of his servants in one of the small boats and two hours after
+    ebb tide he brought it back full. These boats, made of a single
+    tree hollowed in the middle, can hold as many as fourteen people
+    and twenty-five hundredweight of merchandise.
+
+As if to crown the final emergence of recognition of the home fisheries
+William Byrd I instructed his agent in Boston in 1689 to send him a
+variety of commodities in return for a bill of exchange but _no salt
+fish_:
+
+    By the advice of my friend, Captain Peter Perry, I made bold to
+    give you the trouble of a letter of the 1st instant with two small
+    bills of exchange which I desired you to receive and return the
+    effects to me in the upper part of James River, either in rum,
+    sugar, Madeira wine, turnery, earthenware, or anything else you may
+    judge convenient to this country (fish excepted)....
+
+Evidently at least some good salt was now at hand to preserve the roe
+herring that choked the rivers and creeks in the spring. The
+salt-herring breakfast was on its way to becoming a Virginia
+institution, and the salt-fish monopolies of New England and Canada
+were cracking after three-quarters of a century.
+
+The score of "firsts" in the Virginia fishery world have been noted as
+they occurred. Among them were the first fishery statistics, the first
+licensing law, the first price control, the first diamond-back
+terrapin, the first conservation measures. And now in 1698 there was
+the first agitation against polluted waters:
+
+    We, the Council and Burgesses of the present General Assembly,
+    being sensible to the great mischiefs and inconveniences that
+    accrue to the inhabitants of this, his Majesty's Colony and
+    Dominion of Virginia, by killing of whales within the capes
+    thereof, in all humility take leave to represent the same unto Your
+    Excellency and withal to acquaint you that by the means thereof
+    great quantities of fish are poisoned and destroyed and the rivers
+    also made noisome and offensive. For prevention of which evils in
+    regard the restraint of the killing of whales is a branch of His
+    Majesty's royal prerogative.
+
+    We humbly pray that Your Excellency [the Governor, Francis
+    Nicholson] will be pleased to issue out a proclamation forbidding
+    all persons whatsoever to strike or kill any whales within the bay
+    of Chesapeake in the limits of Virginia which we hope will prove an
+    effectual means to prevent the many evils that arise therefrom.
+
+As Jamestown reached the end of its span, the fisheries came of age.
+Inequities were being ironed out, methods were being perfected, and
+planners were at work on ways of employing more and more of the
+fast-growing population in searching out and making available the
+bounty of the fair Chesapeake.
+
+At the start of the 18th century, however, there was little evidence of
+an organized industry in any phase. Everywhere were unlimited
+opportunities for exploitation. The abundance of oysters still
+impressed travelers. In the extract to follow, Francis Louis Michel of
+Switzerland speaks of the method of tonging oysters in 1701, but note
+that he says, "They usually pull from six to ten times." This could be
+taken to mean that each individual procured his own oysters from the
+lavish supply virtually at his doorstep, and stopped as soon as he had
+a "mess" to enjoy over the week-end:
+
+    The water is no less prolific, because an indescribably large
+    number of big and little fish are found in the many creeks, as well
+    as in the large rivers. The abundance is so great and they are so
+    easily caught that I was much surprised. Many fish are dried,
+    especially those that are fat. Those who have a line can catch as
+    many as they please. Most of them are caught with the hook or the
+    spear, as I know from personal experience, for when I went out
+    several times with the line, I was surprised that I could pull out
+    one fish after another, and, through the clear water I could see a
+    large number of all kinds, whose names are unknown to me. They
+    cannot be compared with our fish, except the herring, which is
+    caught and dried in large numbers. Thus the so-called catfish is
+    not unlike the large turbot. A very good fish and one easily caught
+    is the eel, also like those here [in Switzerland]. There is also a
+    kind like a pike. They have a long and pointed mouth, with which
+    they like to bite into the hook. They are not wild, but it happens
+    rarely that one can keep them on the line, for they cut it in two
+    with their sharp teeth. We always had our harpoons and guns with us
+    when we went out fishing, and when the fish came near we shot at
+    them or harpooned them. A good fish, which is common and found in
+    large numbers is the porpoise. They are so large that by their
+    unusual leaps, especially when the weather changes, they make a
+    great noise and often cause anxiety for the small boats or canoes.
+    Especially do they endanger those that bathe. Once I cooled and
+    amused myself in the water with swimming, not knowing that there
+    was any danger, but my host informed me that there was.... The
+    waters and especially the tributaries are filled with turtles. They
+    show themselves in large numbers when it is warm. Then they come to
+    the land or climb up on pieces of wood or trees lying in the water.
+    When one travels in a ship their heads can be seen everywhere
+    coming out of the water. The abundance of oysters is incredible.
+    There are whole banks of them so that the ships must avoid them. A
+    sloop, which was to land us at Kingscreek, struck an oyster bed,
+    where we had to wait about two hours for the tide. They surpass
+    those in England by far in size, indeed, they are four times as
+    large. I often cut them in two, before I could put them into my
+    mouth. The inhabitants usually catch them on Saturday. It is not
+    troublesome. A pair of wooden tongs is needed. Below they are wide,
+    tipped with iron. At the time of the ebb they row to the beds and
+    with the long tongs they reach down to the bottom. They pinch them
+    together tightly and then pull or tear up that which has been
+    seized. They usually pull from six to ten times. In summer they are
+    not very good, but unhealthy and can cause fever.
+
+The most comprehensive list of fish thus far given by the early
+historians was offered by Robert Beverley in 1705. Again as with John
+Smith, there are names that do not fit in today. But these are very
+few: "greenfish," "maid," "wife," and "frogfish" perhaps, all of which,
+however, are well-known in England. The recurring mention of carp in
+the early authorities quoted is interesting, since it has long been
+believed that carp were introduced into the Chesapeake region in 1877
+by the U.S. Fish Commission. No doubt that was carp of another
+species. The esteemed sheepshead is today very rare:
+
+    As for fish, both of fresh and salt water, of shellfish, and
+    others, no country can boast of more variety, greater plenty, or of
+    better in their several kinds.
+
+    In the spring of the year, herrings come up in such abundance into
+    their brooks and fords to spawn that it is almost impossible to
+    ride through without treading on them. Thus do those poor creatures
+    expose their own lives to some hazard out of their care to find a
+    more convenient reception for their young, which are not yet alive.
+    Thence it is that at this time of the year, the freshes of the
+    rivers, like that of the Broadruck, stink of fish.
+
+    Besides these herrings, there come up likewise into the freshes
+    from the sea multitudes of shad, rock, sturgeon, and some few
+    lampreys, which fasten themselves to the shad, as the remora of
+    Imperatus is said to do to the shark of Tiburon. They continue
+    their stay there about three months. The shad at their first coming
+    up are fat and fleshy, but they waste so extremely in milting and
+    spawning that at their going down they are poor and seem fuller of
+    bones, only because they have less flesh. As these are in the
+    freshes, so the salts afford at certain times of the year many
+    other kinds of fish in infinite shoals, such as the oldwife, a fish
+    not much unlike a herring, and the sheepshead, a sort of fish which
+    they esteem in the number of their best.
+
+    There is likewise great plenty of other fish all the summer long
+    and almost in every part of the rivers and brooks there are found
+    of different kinds. Wherefore I shall not pretend to give a detail
+    of them, but venture to mention the names only of such as I have
+    eaten and seen myself and so leave the rest to those that are
+    better skilled in natural history. However, I may add that besides
+    all those that I have met with myself, I have heard of a great many
+    very good sorts, both in the salts and freshes, and such people
+    too, as have not always spent their time in that country, have
+    commended them to me, beyond any they had ever eaten before.
+
+    Those which I know myself, I remember by the names of herring,
+    rock, sturgeon, shad, oldwife, sheepshead, black and red drums,
+    trout, taylor, greenfish, sunfish, bass, chub, plaice, flounder,
+    whiting, fatback, maid, wife, small turtle, crab, oyster, mussel,
+    cockle, shrimp, needlefish, bream, carp, pike, jack, mullet, eel,
+    conger eel, perch, and catfish.
+
+    Those which I remember to have seen there of the kinds that are not
+    eaten are the whale, porpoise, shark, dogfish, gar, stingray,
+    thornback, sawfish, toadfish, frogfish, land crabs, fiddlers, and
+    periwinkle.
+
+Francis Makemie, often called the father of American Presbyterianism,
+was concerned, in his _A Plain and Friendly Perswasive to the
+Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland for Promoting Towns and
+Cohabitations_, about the dearth of markets for fishery products. It
+was a condition brought about largely by a general lack of money in
+circulation. It was easily possible for entire families to subsist the
+year around on the fruits of land and water plus unexacting manual
+labor. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the more important
+planters whose estates were usually self-sufficient and concentrating
+on trade with England. The natural bounty of the Tidewater region thus
+actually deterred the development of Virginia along the lines of New
+England with its urban centers:
+
+    Cohabitation would not only employ thousands of people ... others
+    would be employed in hunting, fishing, and fowling, and the more
+    diligently if assured of a public market....
+
+    So also our fishing would be advanced and improved highly by
+    encouraging many poor men to follow that calling, and sundry sorts
+    which are now slighted would be fit for a town market, as sturgeon,
+    thornback, and catfish. Our vast plenty of oysters would make a
+    beneficial trade, both with the town and foreign traders, believing
+    we have the best oysters for pickling and transportation if
+    carefully and skillfully managed.
+
+By 1705 the seat of government had been transferred to nearby
+Williamsburg. The need of establishing towns as foci for the developing
+countryside had been felt and now the legislators turned their
+attention to promoting the fish markets therein, followed by some
+essential protection of the rights of fishermen and others. Hening's
+_Statutes_ gives the details:
+
+    October, 1705. For the encouragement and bettering of the markets
+    in the said town, Be it enacted, That no dead provision, either of
+    flesh or fish shall be sold within five miles of any of the ports
+    or towns appointed by this act, on the same side the great river
+    the town shall stand upon, but within the limits of the town, on
+    pain of forfeiture and loss of all such provision by the purchases,
+    and the purchase money of such provision sold by the vendor,
+    cognizable by any justice of the county....
+
+    Be it further enacted and declared, That if any person or persons
+    shall at any time hereafter shoot, hunt or range upon the lands and
+    tenements, or fish or fowl in any creeks or waters included within
+    the lands of any other person or persons without license for the
+    same, first obtained of the owner and proprietor thereof, every
+    such person so shooting, hunting, fishing, fowling, or ranging,
+    shall forfeit and pay for every such offence, the sum of five
+    hundred pounds of tobacco....
+
+    Be it further enacted, That if any person shall set, or cause to be
+    set, a weir in any river or creek, such person shall cause the
+    stayes thereof to be taken up again, as soon as the weir becomes
+    useless; and if any person shall fail of performing his duty
+    herein, he shall forfeit and pay fifteen shillings current money,
+    to the informer: To be recovered, with costs, before a justice of
+    the peace.
+
+The essentials of any stable industry are: control of supply and means
+of distribution. The fisheries of Virginia were blessed with neither of
+these advantages. Any progress had to be made in spite of uncertain
+harvests and lack of packing and handling facilities. Distribution of
+fresh seafoods was impossible without rapid transportation and adequate
+refrigeration. Neither was available for two centuries. Virginia's huge
+supply of oysters was a case in point. Consumption of oysters was
+limited to those who lived on the spot, and though they figured
+importantly in the Tidewater diet, as a palpable resource they were
+untouched until the 19th century. The principal means of preserving
+them before then was by pickling. In that form they were quite popular
+during the Colonial period. Fish were salted when there was a surplus
+and in certain seasons, especially the spawning time of the anadromous
+river-herring, they were available in phenomenal quantities. They
+remain today among Virginia's most plentiful fish but the salting
+industry has now become a mere token of its former magnitude.
+
+The Chesapeake bay blue crab which today constitutes a resource worth
+about $5,000,000 a year to Virginia crabbers and packers, had to wait
+even longer than fish and oysters did for development. Salting and
+pickling were unsuitable to this delicate food and expeditious handling
+methods did not exist.
+
+In an exhaustive catalogue of the marine life of Virginia William Byrd
+II, of Westover said:
+
+    Herring are not as large as the European ones, but better and more
+    delicious. After being salted they become red. If one prepares them
+    with vinegar and olive oil, they then taste like anchovies or
+    sardines, since they are far better in salt than the English or
+    European herring. When they spawn, all streams and waters are
+    completely filled with them, and one might believe, when he sees
+    such terrible amounts of them, that there was as great a supply of
+    herring as there is water. In a word, it is unbelievable, indeed,
+    indescribable, as also incomprehensible, what quantity is found
+    there. One must behold oneself.
+
+At the time he wrote Virginians were beginning to compete with
+Canadians and New Englanders in exporting salt fish, particularly to
+the West Indies, where a large proportion of them were exchanged for
+the rum so freely used on the plantations as slave rations.
+
+There were no dams barring access to the highest reaches of the rivers
+and no cities and factories to discharge pollution, so that the
+river-herring and shad made their way far inland even to the Blue Ridge
+mountains. There the pioneers awaited them eagerly each spring and
+salted down a supply to tide them over till the next run. Small wonder,
+then, that the love of salt herring--always with corn bread--became
+ingrained in so many Old Virginians!
+
+They had an illustrious exemplar. Once, in 1782, when George Washington
+was due to visit Robert Howe the honored host wrote to a friend:
+"General Washington dines with me tomorrow. He is exceedingly fond of
+salt fish."
+
+Despite obstacles a healthy experimentation in the various phases of
+fishing was now and then manifest. For example, in 1710 one adventurous
+fisherman wished to extend the home fisheries to whaling and applied to
+the Virginia Council for a license. Whales, though not common in
+Chesapeake bay or the ocean area near it, had been noted from time to
+time ever since the birth of the Colony. Most often they were washed
+ashore dead. John Custis, of Northampton County, succeeded in making 30
+barrels of oil from one such in 1747. The year before that a live one
+was spotted in the James river by some Scottish sailors who were able
+to comer it in shallow water. After killing it, they found it to
+measure 54 feet! The _Virginia Gazette_, published in Williamsburg,
+carried this item in 1751:
+
+    Some principal gentlemen of the Colony, having by voluntary
+    subscription agreed to fit out vessels to be employed in the whale
+    fishery on our coast, a small sloop called the _Experiment_ was
+    some time ago sent on a cruise, and we have the pleasure to
+    acquaint the public that she is now returned with a valuable whale.
+    Though she is the first vessel sent from Virginia in this employ,
+    yet her success, we hope, will give encouragement to the further
+    prosecution of the design which, we doubt not, will tend very much
+    to the advantage of the Colony as well as excite us to other
+    profitable undertakings hitherto too much neglected.
+
+Commented John Blair in his _Diary_ on the incident: "Heard our first
+whale brought in and three more struck but lost." The _Experiment_
+continued its whaling career successfully for three years. When it
+retired, no similar enterprise replaced it. Yet in a list of exports
+from Virginia for the year ending September 30, 1791, 1263 gallons of
+whale oil appears. Even today whales are occasionally represented in
+Virginia fishery products, as when one is washed up on a beach and
+removed by the Coast Guard to a processing plant to be turned into meal
+and oil.
+
+The overall value of Virginia's fisheries as an industrial resource was
+glacially slow in reaching public consciousness. Here and there, like
+dim lights along an uncertain voyage, bits of legislation or isolated
+conservation procedures appeared. In due course it became evident that
+natural fishways--to choose one example--were being obstructed to the
+disadvantage of both the fish and navigation. Hening records the law
+enacted to keep the rivers open:
+
+    1745. And whereas the making and raising of mill dams, and
+    stone-stops, or hedges for catching of fish, is a great obstruction
+    to the navigation of the said rivers [James and Appomattox]: Be it
+    further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all mill dams,
+    stone-stops, and hedges, already made across either of the said
+    rivers, where they are navigable, shall be thrown down and
+    destroyed by the person or persons who made the same....
+
+Like most hastily framed and passed laws this one proved unsatisfactory
+and a second one, with more detailed provisions was passed. Hening
+records it:
+
+    1762. Whereas the act of assembly made in the first year of his
+    present Majesty's reign [1761], entitled, an act to oblige the
+    owners of mills, hedges, or stone-stops, on sundry rivers therein
+    mentioned, to make openings or slopes therein for the passage of
+    fish, has been found defective, and not to answer the purposes for
+    which it was intended, and it is therefore necessary that the same
+    should be amended: Be it therefore enacted by the Lieutenant
+    Governor, Council and Burgesses, of this present General Assembly,
+    and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That the
+    owner or proprietor of all and every mill, hedge, or stone-stop, on
+    either of the rivers Nottoway and Meherrin, shall in the space of
+    nine months from and after the passing of this act, make an opening
+    or slope in their respective mill-dams, hedges, or stops, in that
+    part of the same where there shall happen to be the deepest water,
+    which shall be in width at least ten feet in the clear, in length
+    at least three times the height of the dam, and that the bottoms
+    and sides thereof shall be planked, and that the sides shall be at
+    least fourteen inches deep, so as to admit a current of water
+    through the same twelve inches deep, which shall be kept open from
+    the tenth day of February to the last day of May in every year....
+    And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any
+    such owner or proprietor shall neglect or refuse so to do, within
+    the time aforesaid, the person so offending shall forfeit and pay
+    the sum of five pounds of tobacco for every day he or they shall so
+    neglect or refuse....
+
+Still the fundamental problem was not solved; fish were not by-passing
+the remaining obstructions in sufficient quantity to maintain the
+expected harvest. After various amendments and additions this explicit
+definition of a fishway or slope was enacted into law in 1771:
+
+    That a gap be cut in the top of the dam contiguous to the deepest
+    part of the water below the dam, in which shall be set a slope ten
+    feet wide, and so deep that the water may run through it 18 inches
+    before it will through the waste, or over the dam, that the
+    direction of the said slope be so, as with a perpendicular to be
+    dropped from the top of the dam, will form an angle of at least 75
+    degrees, and to continue in that direction to the bottom of the
+    river, below the dam, to be planked up the sides 2 feet high; that
+    there be pits or basins built in the bottom, at 8 feet distance,
+    the width of the said slope, and to be 12 inches deep, and that the
+    whole be tight and strong; which said slope shall be kept open from
+    the 10th day of February to the last day of May, annually, and any
+    owner not complying to forfeit 5 pounds of tobacco a day.
+
+The effort was of little avail. Before many dams could be so
+laboriously modified the Revolutionary War arrived to obscure placid
+matters like fish conservation.
+
+The diaries of the 18th Century Virginia planters abound with
+references to seafoods. Most of them lived either on or within easy
+distance of Tidewater. Most of them had nets and other fishing
+implements of their own and crews among the slaves to work them.
+Whenever their needs required, an expedition was made. Perhaps there
+was a season of bountiful entertaining in prospect. The seine would be
+taken to a likely spot and hauled ashore. Or a boat would go out and
+load up with oysters. The fish had to be eaten right away or salted
+down. But oysters stored in a dark cellar, especially in cool weather,
+would keep for weeks if moistened from time to time.
+
+One diarist, James Gordon, lived near the Rappahannock river in a
+section affording a variety of seafoods. Note these typical entries:
+
+    Sept. 20, 1759. Fine weather. Went in the afternoon and drew the
+    seine. Had very agreeable diversion and got great plenty of fine
+    fish....
+
+    Sept. 26. Went with my wife in the evening to draw the seine. Got
+    about sixty greenfish and a few other sorts.
+
+    Sept. 28. Sent in the morning to have the seine drawn. They made
+    several hauls and got good fish, viz: three drum, one of them
+    large, trouts, greenfish, etc....
+
+    Oct. 6. Went with my wife to see the seine drawn. We dined very
+    agreeably on a point on fish and oysters....
+
+    Jan. 22,--Bought about 70 gallons of rum. Got fine oysters there.
+
+    Feb. 12. Went on board the New England man and bought some pots,
+    axes and mackerel.
+
+    Feb. 22. Drew the seine and got 125 fine rock and some shad.
+
+    July 14. Drew the seine today and got some fine rock.
+
+    Feb. 9, 1760. Went with my wife and Mr. Criswell to draw the seine.
+    We met in Eyck's Creek a school of rock--brought up 260. Some very
+    large; the finest haul I ever saw. Sent many of them to our
+    neighbors.
+
+The term "greenfish" is unknown among Virginia Tidewater fishermen.
+Here again we have a British name brought into Virginia by a colonist
+not long removed from that country. There "greenfish" is applied to the
+bluefish, of which there were and are at times plenty in the
+Rappahannock river.
+
+Another diarist, who lived only a few miles away from Gordon, also on
+the Rappahannock river, was Landon Carter, son of the famed Robert, or
+"King," Carter of Corotoman in Lancaster County. There is no doubt
+about it: he was an oyster lover. He not only knew a way to hold
+oysters over an extended period--one wishes one knew what it was--but
+he had the courage and originality to eat them in July, contrary to a
+widely respected superstition:
+
+    Jan. 14, 1770. My annual entertainment began on Monday, the 8th,
+    and held till Wednesday night, when, except one individual or two
+    that retired sooner, things pleased me much, and therefore, I will
+    conclude they gave the same satisfaction to others.
+
+    The oysters lasted till the third day of the feast, which to be
+    sure, proves that the methods of keeping them is good, although
+    much disputed by others.
+
+    July, 1776. Last night my cart came up from John E. Beale for iron
+    pots to make salt out of the bay water, which cart brought me eight
+    bushels oysters. I ordered them for family and immediate use. As we
+    are obliged to wash the salt we had of Col. Tayloe, I have ordered
+    that washing be carried into the vault and every oyster dipped into
+    it over all and then laid down on the floor again.... Out of the
+    eight bushels oysters I had six pickled and two bushels for
+    dressing. But I was asked why Beale sent oysters up in July. I
+    answered it was my orders. Who would eat oysters in July said the
+    mighty man; and the very day showed he not only could eat them but
+    did it in every shape, raw, stewed, caked in fritters and pickled.
+
+George Washington, too, was an oyster fancier as this note to his New
+York friend George Taylor shows:
+
+    Mt. Vernon, 1786. Sir: ... Mrs. Washington joins me in thanking you
+    also for your kind present of pickled oysters which were very fine.
+    This mark of your politeness is flattering and we beg you to accept
+    every good wish of ours in return.
+
+When in 1770 a notice appeared in the _Virginia Gazette_ about the
+proposed academy in New Kent County an added attraction was featured:
+"Among other things the fine fishery at the place will admit of an
+agreeable and salutary exercise and amusement all the year." It was the
+Chickahominy river, a tributary of the James, that was referred to.
+Fishing is still "agreeable" there. Citizens of Richmond,
+recreation-bent, throng to it along with the residents of its banks,
+many of whom make their living out of it. This is one of the sections
+where the water, though tidal, is fresh. Anadromous herring, shad, rock
+and sturgeon are caught. Unlike the salty bay, fish can be caught here
+the year round. Among them are catfish, carp, perch and bass.
+
+One of the most accurate and vivid reporters of Colonial Virginia
+plantation life was Philip Vickers Fithian, tutor to the family of
+Councillor Robert Carter of Nominy Hall on the lower Potomac river. In
+his _Journals_ are appetizing references to seafood:
+
+    1774, March: With Mr. Randolph, I went a-fishing, but we had only
+    the luck to catch one apiece.
+
+    April. We had an elegant dinner; beef and greens, roast pig, fine
+    boiled rockfish.
+
+    July. We dined today on the fish called the sheepshead, with crabs.
+    Twice every week we have fine fish.
+
+    On the edges of these shoals in Nominy River or in holes between
+    the rocks is plenty of fish.
+
+    Well, Ben, you and Mr. Fithian are invited by Mr. Turberville, to a
+    fish feast tomorrow, said Mr. Carter when we entered the Hall to
+    dinner.
+
+    As we were rowing up Nominy we saw fishermen in great numbers in
+    canoes and almost constantly taking in fish,--bass and perch.
+
+    This is a fine sheepshead, Mr. Stadly [the music master], shall I
+    help you? Or would you prefer a bass or a perch? Or perhaps you
+    will rather help yourself to some picked crab. It is all extremely
+    fine, sir, I'll help myself.
+
+    August. Each Wednesday and Saturday, we dine on fish all the
+    summer, always plenty of rock, perch, and crabs, and often
+    sheepshead and trout.
+
+    September. We dined on fish and crabs, which were provided for our
+    company, tomorrow being fish day.
+
+    September. Dined on fish,--rock, perch, fine crabs, and a large
+    fresh mackerel.
+
+    I was invited this morning by Captain Tibbs to a barbecue. This
+    differs but little from the fish feasts, instead of fish the dinner
+    is roasted pig, with the proper appendages, but the diversion and
+    exercise are the very same at both.
+
+An English traveler in 1759, Andrew Burnaby, registered his wonder at
+the way fish were taken in the reaches of the Chesapeake:
+
+    Sturgeon and shad are in such prodigious numbers [in Chesapeake
+    Bay] that one day within the space of two miles only, some
+    gentlemen in canoes caught above six hundred of the former with
+    hooks, which they let down to the bottom and drew up at a venture
+    when they perceived them to rub against a fish; and of the latter
+    above five thousand have been caught at one single haul of the
+    seine.
+
+The "gentlemen" concerned were obviously not slaves serving the needs
+of a plantation, but, judging from the amount caught, expert commercial
+fishermen. The sturgeon, after the roe was removed, were stacked in
+carts and peddled in nearby towns. The shad, after as many as possible
+were sold fresh, were salted down.
+
+The snagging of big sturgeon as recounted by the French traveler
+Francois J. de Chastellux in 1781 remained in common practice into the
+20th Century, when the big ones became much scarcer:
+
+    As I was walking by the river side [James near Westover], I saw two
+    negroes carrying an immense sturgeon, and on asking them how they
+    had taken it, they told me that at this season they were so common
+    as to be taken easily in a seine and that fifteen or twenty were
+    found sometimes in the net; but that there was a much more simple
+    method of taking them, which they had just been using. This species
+    of monster, which are so active in the evening as to be perpetually
+    leaping to a great height above the surface of the water, usually
+    sleep profoundly at mid-day. Two or three negroes then proceed in a
+    little boat, furnished with a long cord at the end of which is a
+    sharp iron crook, which they hold suspended like a log line. As
+    soon as they find this line stopped by some obstacle, they draw it
+    forcibly towards them so as to strike the hook into the sturgeon,
+    which they either drag out of the water, or which, after some
+    struggling and losing all his blood, floats at length upon the
+    surface and is easily taken.
+
+The frequently met-with term, "fishery," in Colonial writings took on a
+special meaning as the industry developed. It was used in the sense of
+what the present Virginia lawbook calls a "regularly hauled fishing
+landing."
+
+This is usually a shore privately owned where the fronting waters have
+been cleared of obstructions. The owner, or some one permitted by him,
+operates a long seine at that place by carrying it offshore in boats
+and hauling it to land. So long as he thus uses the spot "regularly"
+the law protects him, now as in the past, by making it illegal for any
+other person to fish with nets within a quarter-mile of "any part of
+the shore of the owner of any such fishery."
+
+The rights to such a property were, and are, in many cases extremely
+profitable. George Washington was among the Virginia planters zealously
+caring for their "fisheries."
+
+Often the privilege of using these was advertised in the newspapers or
+otherwise for rent for a long or short term. Some owners who did not
+themselves wish to fish counted on their shores to yield rental. One of
+these, George William Fairfax, must have expressed himself to
+Washington on the subject, for the latter wrote him in June, 1774:
+
+    ... As to your fishery at the Raccoon Branch, I think you will be
+    disappointed there likewise as there is no landing on this side of
+    river that rents for more than one half of what you expect for
+    that, and that on the other side opposite to you (equally good they
+    say) to be had at L15 Maryland currency....
+
+But growing along with this practice was sentiment favoring fishing
+places open to the general public. When an attempt was made about 1770
+to take over certain lands near Cape Henry for private operation, a
+vigorous protest ensued:
+
+    The petition of the subscribers, inhabitants of the county of
+    Princess Anne in behalf of themselves and the other inhabitants of
+    this colony, humbly shows: That the point of land called Cape Henry
+    bounded eastward by the Atlantic Ocean, northwardly by Chesapeake
+    Bay, westwardly and southwardly by part of Lynnhaven River and by a
+    creek called Long Creek and the branches thereof, is chiefly desert
+    banks of sand and unfit for tillage or cultivation and contains
+    several thousand acres.
+
+    And that for many years past a common fishery has been carried on
+    by many of the inhabitants of said county and others on the shore
+    of the ocean and bay aforesaid, as far as the western mouth of
+    Lynnhaven River. And that during the fishing season the fishermen
+    usually encamp amongst the said sand hills and get wood for fuel
+    and stages from the desert, and that very considerable quantities
+    of fish are annually taken by such fishery which greatly
+    contributes to the support and maintenance of your petitioners and
+    their families.
+
+    Your petitioners further show that they have been informed that
+    several gentlemen have petitioned your Honour to have the land
+    aforesaid granted to them by patent and that one Keeling has lately
+    surveyed a part thereof situated near the mouth of Long Creek
+    aforesaid, and that if a patent should be granted for the same, it
+    would greatly prejudice the said fishery.
+
+    Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that no patent may be
+    granted to any person or persons for the same lands or any part
+    thereof; and that the same may remain a common for the benefit of
+    the inhabitants of this Colony in general for carrying on a fishery
+    and for such public uses as the same premises shall be found
+    convenient.
+
+Even when the new United States Government erected a lighthouse at Cape
+Henry a careful stipulation was made in the act ceding the property in
+1790 that the public were not to be denied fishing privileges there:
+
+    Deed of cession of two acres of land at Cape Henry, in Princess
+    Anne County, Virginia, for the purpose of erecting a lighthouse
+    thereon ... provided that nothing contained in this act shall
+    affect the right of this State to any materials heretofore placed
+    at or near Cape Henry for the purpose of erecting a lighthouse, nor
+    shall the citizens be debarred, in consequence of this cession,
+    from the privileges they now enjoy of hauling their seines and
+    fishing on the shores of the said land so ceded to the United
+    States.
+
+When George Washington had come, a newlywed, to be master of Mt. Vernon
+in 1759 he found the prospects for fishing very satisfying. One of his
+letters at this time boasted:
+
+    A river [the Potomac] well-stocked with various kinds of fish at
+    all seasons of the year, and in the spring with shad, herrings,
+    bass, carp, perch, sturgeon, etc., in great abundance. The borders
+    of the estate are washed by more than ten miles of tidewater, the
+    whole shore, in fact, is one entire fishery.
+
+Washington generously ordered his overseer to admit "the honest poor"
+to fishing privileges at one of his shores, a concession that may have
+been customary among many landowners.
+
+He was a man who believed in keeping records, and so complete a file of
+them has now been reassembled at Mt. Vernon that it is possible to
+follow his career in any phase: officer, business speculator, host,
+farmer, legislative adviser, and friend. He gave to fishing the
+painstaking personal attention he gave to all else. As a "fisherman" he
+directed the manufacture as well as the repair of his nets, and the
+curing, shipping and marketing of his fish.
+
+It seems obvious that suitable nets were not being manufactured in the
+desired quantity or variety in America, otherwise he would hardly have
+bought his in England.
+
+He dealt with Robert Cary and Co., London, in 1771. Here is a typical
+order:
+
+    One seine, seventy-five fathoms long when rigged for hauling; to be
+    ten feet deep in the middle and eight at the ends with meshes fit
+    for the herring fishery. The corks to be two and a half feet
+    asunder; the leads five feet apart; to be made of the best
+    three-strand (small) twine and tanned.
+
+    400 fathom of white inch rope for hauling the above seine. 150
+    fathom of deep sea line.
+
+To get ready for spring fishing he had to prepare as far ahead as July.
+Even then he was not always sure delivery would be on time:
+
+    ... The goods you will please to forward by the first vessel for
+    Potomac (which possibly may be Captain Jordan the bearer of this)
+    as there are some articles that will be a good deal wanted,
+    especially the seine, which will be altogether useless to me if I
+    do not get them early in the spring, or in other words I shall
+    sustain a considerable disappointment and loss, if they do not get
+    to hand in time.
+
+He wrote to Bradshaw and Davidson in London in 1772:
+
+    That I may have my seine net exactly agreeable to directions this
+    year I give you the trouble of receiving this letter from me to
+    desire that three may be made. One of them eighty fathom long,
+    another seventy, and the third sixty-five fathom, all of them to be
+    twelve feet deep in the middle and to decrease to seven at the ends
+    when rigged and fit for use; to be so close-meshed in the middle as
+    not to suffer the herrings (for which kind of fishery they are
+    intended) to hang in them because, when this is the case it gives
+    us a good deal of trouble at the busy hurrying season to disengage
+    the seine, and often is the means of tearing it. But the meshes may
+    widen as they approach the ends: the corks to be no more than two
+    feet and a half asunder and fixed on flatways that they may swim
+    and bear the seine up better with a float right in the middle to
+    show the approach of the seine with greater certainty in case the
+    corks should sink; the leads to be five feet apart. The seine I had
+    from you last year had two faults, one of which is that of having
+    the meshes too open in the middle; the other of being too strait
+    rigged; to avoid which I wish you to loose at least one-third of
+    the length in hanging these seines; that is, to let your 80 fathom
+    seine be 120 in the strait measure (before it is hung in the lead
+    and cork lines) and the other two to bear the same proportion, I
+    could wish to have these seines tanned but it is thought the one I
+    had from you last year was injured in the vat, for which reason I
+    leave it to you to have these tanned or not, as you shall judge
+    most expedient ... I would not wish to have them made of thick
+    heavy twine as they are more liable to heat and require great force
+    to work them....
+
+A detailed reply came from James Davidson, a partner in the net
+company:
+
+    London, Sept. 29, 1772. Sir: I had the honour of receiving your
+    letter with instructions concerning your seines. I shall always pay
+    due attention to the contents. I persuade myself you'll say I have
+    fulfilled your instructions given me in these three seines which I
+    heartily hope will be in time for the intended fishery. Am not
+    afraid but they will meet with your approbation and if you should
+    see any alteration wanting if you'll be so obliging as to send a
+    line in the same channel, it shall be attended to with great care.
+    Your order is for the corks to be put on flat ways. I have only put
+    them on the 65 fathom seine for these reasons. We have tried that
+    method before with every other invention for the satisfaction of
+    our fishermen here but they have assured us they really do not bear
+    the net up so well. They are obliged to be tied on so tight that
+    the twine cuts them and are much apter to break and after all in
+    dragging the net they will swim sideways. Now, Sir, you'll readily
+    see the above inconveniences. I have also put six floats in the
+    middle, two together to show the center of the net. Likewise the
+    length of the netting, 120 fathoms for the 80 fathoms, the other
+    two in proportion.
+
+    I now enter upon tanning. This, you may assure yourself, they are
+    pretty well wore if you have them tanned for we are obliged to haul
+    them in and out to take the tan and after that hauling them about
+    to get them thoroughly dry before we can possibly pack them or else
+    they would soon rot. Among the hundreds of seines I sent abroad
+    last year or this, I only tanned one besides yours. Therefore have
+    not tanned any of these. I think the three-quarters inch mesh that
+    I have put in the middle of the nets this year will be a cure for
+    the malady you mention of the herrings hanging in the mesh, for
+    last year I only put in inch mesh which upon examination you'll
+    soon perceive. Therefore, sir, I entreat the honour of a line
+    whether or not the two above three-quarters mesh seines answer the
+    purpose. I have tapered them away at the ends to [an] inch and a
+    half.
+
+These nets were designed for hauling ashore by hand. It was not till
+much later that other nets, of the styles so familiar today, gill nets
+and pound nets in particular, came into general use.
+
+Much longer seines than Washington needed were used as fish became
+scarcer. There are tales of them four and five miles long, actually
+able to block off the entire river, being used in the neighborhood of
+Mt. Vernon before control laws were enacted and enforced. The catches
+were enormous. Barges were heaped high with all sorts of fish and towed
+into Washington City where they were sold before they spoiled, for what
+they would bring.
+
+Today the pollution for which Washington and Alexandria are responsible
+has destroyed most fish life within several miles of Mt. Vernon.
+
+Like his fishing predecessors ever since Jamestown, Washington had his
+troubles with salt. One of his business letters ordering a supply
+complained: "Liverpool salt is inadequate to the saving of fish....
+Lisbon is the proper kind."
+
+He was only briefly touching on a subject that had vexed the Colonists
+since the beginning. Through the years the cry for more and better salt
+had gone up. The fishermen of Virginia needed salt for their fish as
+badly as the Hebrews in Egypt needed straw for their bricks. Although
+trading with foreign countries increased steadily, the question of a
+salt supply for Virginia remained unsolved.
+
+As the 18th century had progressed, matters grew even worse. In 1763
+the Virginia Committee of Correspondence had written urgently to its
+agent in London to apply to Parliament for an act to
+
+    allow to this Colony the same liberty to import salt from Lisbon or
+    any other European ports, which they have long enjoyed in the
+    Colonies and provinces of New England, New York and Pennsylvania.
+    This is a point that hath been more than once unsuccessfully
+    labored; but we think it is so reasonable, that when it is set in a
+    proper light, we shall hope for success. The reason upon which the
+    opposition hath been supported, is this general one that it is
+    contrary to the interest of Great Britain to permit her plantations
+    to be supplied with any commodity, especially any manufacture from
+    a foreign country, which she herself can supply them with. This we
+    allow to be of force; provided the Mother Country can and does
+    supply her plantations with as much as they want; but the fact
+    being otherwise, we have been allowed to supply ourselves with
+    large quantities from Cercera, Isle of May, Sal Tortuga and so
+    forth. The course of this trade being hazardous, in time of war,
+    this useful and necessary article hath been brought to us at a high
+    price of late. The reason or pretence of granting this indulgence
+    to the Northern Colonies, in exclusion of the Southern, we presume
+    to be to enable them to carry on their fishery to greater
+    advantage, the salt from the Continent of Europe being fitter for
+    that purpose than the salt from Great Britain or that from any of
+    the islands we have mentioned. But surely this reason is but weakly
+    founded with respect to Pennsylvania, whose rivers scarcely supply
+    them with fish sufficient for their own use; whereas the Bay of
+    Chesapeake abounds with great plenty and variety of fish fit for
+    foreign markets, as well as for ourselves, if we could but get the
+    proper kind of salt to cure it. Herrings and shads might be
+    exported to the West Indies to great advantage; and we could supply
+    the British markets with finer sturgeon than they have yet tasted
+    from the Baltic. And it is an allowed principle that every
+    extension of the trade of the Colonies, which does not interfere
+    with that of the Mother Country is an advantage to the latter;
+    since all our profits ultimately center with her.
+
+It was pointed out that the English merchants were not above sharp
+practices in filling orders for salt; they would reduce the amount
+shipped to individuals and provide the captain with all he could carry
+extra to be sold at high prices to needy buyers.
+
+The plaint was just another of the rumblings of discontent contributing
+to the grand explosion of thirteen years later. The intricacies were
+entered into in detail by the Committee:
+
+    We have twelve different Colonies on the Continent of North
+    America. Four of them, viz., Pennsylvania, New York, New England,
+    and Newfoundland, have liberty to import salt from any part of
+    Europe directly. The other eight, viz., Virginia, Maryland, East
+    and West Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Nova Scotia,
+    as well as all the West India Islands, are deprived of it.
+
+    At present those Colonies on whose behalf the petition is given,
+    are supplied with salt from the Isle of Mays in Africa, Sal
+    Tortuga, and Turks Island in America, also a little from England;
+    but are deprived of the only salt that answers best for the
+    principal use, viz., to preserve fish and other provisions, twelve
+    months, or a longer time. What they have from Great Britain is made
+    from salt water by fire, which is preferred for all domestic uses.
+    The African or American salt is made from salt water by the sun;
+    which is used for curing and preserving provisions. The first, made
+    by fire, is found, by long experience, in warm climates, to be too
+    weak; the provisions cured with it turn rusty, and in six or eight
+    months become unfit for use. The second kind, by the quantity of
+    alum, or some other vicious quality in it, is so corrosive, that in
+    less than twelve months, the meat cured with it is entirely
+    deprived of all the fat, and the lean hardened, or so much
+    consumed, as to be of little service. The same ill qualities are
+    found in these salts with regard to fish: wherefore the arguments
+    used, that they ought to have English salt only, are as much as to
+    say, they should be allowed to catch fish, or salt any provisions,
+    but let their cattle and hogs die without reaping the advantage
+    nature has given them.
+
+    In all countries where a benefit can arise by fish or provisions,
+    salt must be cheap; and as its value where made is from ten to
+    twenty shillings the ton, so the carriage of it to America is often
+    more than the real value: It is in order to save part of the
+    expense of carriage, this application is made; for although some
+    gentlemen do not seem to know it, yet we have liberty, by the
+    present laws in force, to carry any kind of European salt to
+    America, the ship first coming to an English port, in order to make
+    an entry.
+
+    We have also liberty to bring it from any salt island in Africa or
+    America; but by the Act of 15 Car. II. Chap. 7, salt is supposed to
+    be included under the word commodity; whereby it is, with all
+    European goods, prevented from being carried to America, unless
+    first landed in England: the consequence whereof is, that English
+    ships, which (I shall suppose) are hired to sail from London to
+    Lisbon with corn, and thence proceed to America, have not the
+    liberty to carry salt in place of ballast, and therefore under a
+    necessity to pay above L10 sterling at Lisbon for ballast (that is
+    to say, for sand), which they carry to America, or else return to
+    England in order to get a clearance for the salt, which would be
+    more expense than its value.
+
+    Now, had they liberty to carry salt directly to America, they would
+    not only save the money paid for the sand, but also gain by the
+    freight of salt perhaps L60 or L80 more. Thus on an average every
+    ship that goes now empty from these ports to America, might clear
+    L70 and there are above a hundred sail to that voyage every year.
+    This is an annual loss of L7,000 at least; and besides, as the ship
+    loses no time in this case (salt being as soon taken in as sand),
+    they could afford to sell the best salt as cheap in America as is
+    now paid for the worst; for as a ship must make a long voyage on
+    purpose to get, and make it in the salt islands, so the expense
+    thereof is more than the value of the salt at Lisbon, St. Ibbes,
+    and so forth.
+
+The proponents of the petition made out a strong case. They went into
+the grading of the kinds of salt obtained from the West Indies, Africa
+and Europe and asserted that, inferior though some of them were, they
+nevertheless had been found to be "preferable to England salt for
+curing and preserving their fish":
+
+    To know the qualities of the different kinds of salt used in
+    America may be an amusement to a speculative man; but seems
+    entirely out of the question in this case; for whatever may be said
+    on that head, long experience and the universal agreement of all
+    from America, as well as former Acts of Parliament, show that the
+    common white salt will not answer the uses it is chiefly wanted for
+    there.
+
+    As to what is called Loundes's brine salt, that, and his many other
+    projects, seemed to be formed on the same plan with Subtle's in
+    _The Alchemist_, his scheme looking as if he only wanted the money,
+    and left it to others to make the salt.
+
+    Salt can, without doubt, be made of any desired quality, but the
+    price, the place of delivery, and the quantity to be had of so
+    useful a commodity must also be regarded.
+
+    We can get salt at Sal Tortuga for the raking and putting it into
+    our ships; but the expense of a voyage on purpose for it is greater
+    than to buy it at a place from whence the freight may be all saved,
+    and to have the best salt on the cheapest terms, is, no doubt the
+    intention of this application, as it certainly was of the other
+    Colonies that have obtained this privilege.
+
+All the Virginians were asking, in effect, was the liberty to import
+from Europe what salt they wished!
+
+As the moment of Independence neared, the stress grew greater. George
+Washington's Mt. Vernon overseer during the crucial years, his distant
+relative Lund Washington, addressed a letter to him in 1775:
+
+    The people are running mad about salt. You would hardly think it
+    possible there could be such a scarcity. Five and six shillings per
+    bushel. Conway's sloop came to Alexandria Monday last with a load.
+
+A couple of months later the crisis was reached:
+
+    I have had 300 bushels more of salt put into fish barrels, which I
+    intend to move into Muddy Hole barn, for if it should be destroyed
+    by the enemy we shall not be able to get more. There is still fifty
+    or sixty more bushels, perhaps a hundred in the house. I was
+    unwilling to sell it, knowing we could not get more and our people
+    must have fish. Therefore I told the people I had none.
+
+Two more years of adversity went by. Lund wrote in 1778:
+
+    I was told a day or two past that Congress had ordered a quantity
+    of shad to be cured on this river. I expect as everything sells
+    high, shad will also. I should be fond of curing about 100 barrels
+    of them, they finding salt. We have been unfortunate in our crops,
+    therefore I could wish to make something by fish.
+
+He proposed that he cure fish "for the Continent" and make "upwards of
+200 pounds":
+
+    I have very little salt, of which we must make the most. I mean to
+    make a brine and after cutting off the head and bellies, dipping
+    them in the brine for but a short time, then hang them up and cure
+    them by smoke, or dry them in the sun; for our people being so long
+    accustomed to have fish whenever they wanted, would think it very
+    bad to have none at all.
+
+All ended well for that season. Lund wrote:
+
+    I have cured a sufficient quantity of fish for our people, together
+    with about 160 or 170 barrels of shad for the Continent.
+
+One of the most interesting diarists of Revolutionary days was young
+Nicholas Cresswell, an Englishman of 24 when he arrived in America for
+a three-years visit. He was in Leesburg, Virginia, in December 1776
+when he recorded this occurrence:
+
+    A Dutch mob of about forty horsemen went through the town today on
+    their way to Alexandria to search for salt. If they find any they
+    will take it by force.... This article is exceedingly scarce; if
+    none comes the people will revolt. They cannot possibly subsist
+    without a considerable quantity of this article.
+
+The raiders were pacified by an allotment of three pints of salt per
+man.
+
+A vivid picture of what the lack of salt entailed was given by
+Cresswell in April 1777:
+
+    Saw a seine drawn for herrings and caught upwards of 40,000 with
+    about 300 shad fish. The shads they use but the herrings are left
+    upon the shore useless for want of salt. Such immense quantities of
+    this fish is left upon the shore to rot, I am surprised it does not
+    bring some epidemic disorder to the inhabitants by the nauseous
+    stench arising from such a mass of putrefaction.
+
+A fishery by-product of importance to early Virginians, lime, was of
+interest to Washington. It was extensively obtained by burning oyster
+shells.
+
+Early Virginia masonry shows that such lime was mixed in mortar and it
+was usually of poor quality, perhaps because of crude facilities for
+burning. Today's shell lime is much in demand in agriculture and its
+price is higher than mined lime. George Washington found that for the
+purpose of building it left much to be desired. He wrote to Henry Knox
+from Mt. Vernon in 1785:
+
+    I use a great deal of lime every year, made of the oyster shells,
+    which, before they are burnt, cost me twenty-five to thirty
+    shillings per hundred bushels; but it is of mean quality, which
+    makes me desirous of trying stone lime.
+
+He was paying about seven cents a bushel for shells, which seems high
+for those days of abundant oysters and cheap labor. Until recently the
+Virginia market price was very little more.
+
+Washington's probing, weighing mind slighted no phase of his fishery.
+About to fertilize crops with fish experimentally, he wrote to his
+overseer: "If you tried both fresh and salt fish as a manure the
+different aspects of them should be attended to." A few weeks later,
+after watching results, he wrote: "The corn that is manured with fish,
+though it does not appear to promise much at first, may nevertheless be
+fine.... It is not only possible but highly probable."
+
+This opinion was abundantly confirmed years later when vast quantities
+of menhaden were converted into guano for crops by Atlantic coast
+factories, a practice changed only when livestock-nutrition studies
+showed that menhaden scrap was too valuable a protein source to be
+spread on land. The fish referred to by Washington were in all
+probability river-herring, or alewives, used as fertilizer at such
+times as they were caught in greater abundance than the food market
+could absorb.
+
+The probable yield of his fish trade was always carefully calculated,
+even when the pressure of national affairs required his absence from
+home. From Philadelphia we find him writing to his manager about a fish
+merchant's offer: "Ten shillings per hundred for shad is very low. I am
+at this moment paying six shillings apiece for every shad I buy." He
+usually tried to get at least twelve shillings a hundred for his shad,
+which were salted prior to marketing, although there were instances
+when he let them go for as little as one pence apiece. The
+extraordinary price of six shillings for one shad cited by him in
+Philadelphia is hard to explain. It probably referred to a fresh one
+caught early in the season and prepared especially for his table.
+Though records of the average weight of shad in those days are lacking,
+seven pounds is a fair estimate, and it may have been greater. The
+weights now seldom exceed three or four pounds, because in the more
+recent years of intensive fishing, shad have been widely caught up as
+they returned from the ocean to spawn for the first time. Shad, along
+with other anadromous, or "up-running," fish are born near the
+head-waters of rivers, and seek the ocean for feeding and growth.
+Unlike salmon they do not perish after one spawning and the oftener
+they return, the larger they are. What conservationists call
+"escapement," or the freedom to get back to the ocean from the rivers,
+is considered vital to their survival in quantity.
+
+All through the two-score years of fishing at Mount Vernon, Washington
+suffered, judging by his unceasing preoccupation with minor details,
+from the lack of a fishing foreman to whom he could entrust the
+operation with any confidence. Letters toward the close of his life
+bearing on this subject are still replete with reminders concerning
+trifles which would have been routine for any competent boss. The fish
+runs start about March; therefore, in January he finds it necessary to
+write; "It would be well to have the seines overhauled immediately,
+that is, if new ones are wanting, or the old ones requiring much
+repair, they may be set about without loss of time." He must even look
+beyond his own help for the skill necessary to put his nets in order.
+"I would have you immediately upon the receipt of this letter send for
+the man who usually does this work for me.... Let him choose his twine
+(if it is to be had in Alexandria) and set about them immediately."
+
+Abundance of fish created a bottleneck:
+
+    In the height of the fishery they are not prepared to cure or
+    otherwise dispose of them as fast as they could be caught; of
+    course the seines slacken in their work, or the fish lie and spoil
+    when that is the only time I can make anything by the seine, for
+    small hauls will hardly pay the wear and tear of the seine and the
+    hire of the hands.
+
+However, then as now, fishing was a gamble:
+
+    Unless the weather grows warmer your fishing this season will, I
+    fear, prove unproductive; for it has always been observed that in
+    cold and windy weather the fish keep in deep water and are never
+    caught in numbers, especially at shallow landings.
+
+And in 1794, he states, with the rather weary voice of experience,
+
+    I am of opinion that selling the fish all to one man is best ... if
+    Mr. Smith will give five shillings per thousand for herrings and
+    twelve shillings a hundred for shad, and will oblige himself to
+    take all you have to spare, you had better strike and enter into a
+    written agreement with him.... I never choose to sell to wagoners;
+    their horses have always been found troublesome, and themselves
+    indeed not less so, being much addicted to the pulling down and
+    burning the fences. If you do not sell to Smith the next best thing
+    is to sell to the watermen.... I again repeat that when the schools
+    of fish run you must draw night and day; and whether Smith is
+    prepared to take them or not, they must be caught and charged to
+    him; for it is then and then only I have a return for my expenses;
+    and then it is the want of several purchasers is felt; for unless
+    one person is extremely well prepared he cannot dispose of the fish
+    as fast as they can be drawn at those times and if the seine or
+    seines do no more than keep pace with his convenience my harvest is
+    lost and of course my profit; for the herrings will not wait to be
+    caught as they are wanted to be cured.
+
+Thus did Washington become one of the first to encounter the besetting
+plague of American mass production: the problem of distribution.
+
+That fishing was a vital prop in plantation economy is evidenced by a
+letter of April 24, 1796, to his manager:
+
+    As your prospect for gain is discouraging, it may, in a degree, be
+    made up in a good fishing season for herrings; that for shad must,
+    I presume, be almost, if not quite, over.
+
+Salt herrings were a staple in the feeding of the "black people," and
+were issued to those at Mount Vernon at the rate of twenty a month per
+head. But he warned about waiting for the annually expected herring
+"glut" to occur before the slaves were provided for. If it should fail
+to materialize--as had been known--what then? Save a "sufficiency of
+fish" from the first runs, he wisely ordered.
+
+In 1781 he suggested that salt fish be contracted for the troops, and
+possibly it was tried for a while, but the year following, army leaders
+voted to exclude fish from the rations.
+
+Accounting records for 1774, presumably an average fishing year, show
+receipts of L170 for the catch at the Posey's ferry fishery, with L26
+debited to operating cost. At the Johnson's ferry fishery L114 was
+taken in and L28 paid out. The catch here represented consisted of
+9,862 shad and 1,591,500 river herring, but other large hauls were also
+made on the estate. Profits would seem to be adequate, although costs
+of nets and boats were not figured in. Fishing boats were usually small
+maneuverable craft that never had to put out very far from shore, and
+cost about L5 to build.
+
+Occasionally Washington was approached by speculators offering to rent
+the season's privileges at one of his fisheries for a flat sum. About
+one such proposal in 1796 he expressed the opinion to his manager that
+"under all chances fishing yourself will be more profitable than hiring
+out the landing for L60." Nevertheless, the headaches had for years
+made the transference of fishing to someone for cash on the barrelhead
+a temptation. In February, 1770, he had entered into an agreement as to
+sales while retaining the responsibility of catching:
+
+    Mr. Robert Adams is obliged to take all I catch at Posey's landing
+    provided the quantity does not exceed 500 barrels and will take
+    more than this quantity if he can get casks to put them in. He is
+    to take them as fast as they are catched, without giving any
+    interruption to my people, and is to have the use of the fish house
+    for his salt, fish, etc., taking care to have the house clear at
+    least before the next fishing season; is to pay L10 for the use of
+    the house and 3 shillings 4 pence, Maryland currency, per hundred
+    for white fish.
+
+But in 1787 he wrote: "A good rent would induce me to let the fishery
+that I have no trouble or perplexity about it." The _Diary_ shows a
+good deal more interest during the early years in how the fish ran than
+it does later. In April, 1760, he writes:
+
+    Apprehending the herring were come, hauled the seine but catched
+    only a few of them, though a good many of other sorts.... Hauled
+    the seine again, catched two or three white fish, more herring than
+    yesterday and a great number of cats.
+
+    August, 1768: Hauling the seine upon the bar of Cedar Point for
+    sheepshead but catched none.
+
+    April, 1769: The white fish ran plentifully at my seine landing,
+    having catched about 300 at one haul....
+
+The term "white fish" is not now generally applied to any species
+caught in the Potomac, but a good guess is that, with Washington, it
+was an alternate for shad.
+
+The Revolution was fought, but even before the surrender the minds of
+America's statesmen were actively considering peace terms. Both Richard
+Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson suggested that the valuable fisheries
+off Newfoundland be freely open to American ships. This time it was not
+a question of the Northern Colony keeping the Southern Colony out as it
+had been 150 years before. Thomas Jefferson, writing in 1778, wanted
+the United Colonies to exclude England:
+
+    If they [Britain] really are coming to their senses at last, and it
+    should be proposed to treat of peace, will not Newfoundland
+    fisheries be worthy particular attention to exclude them and all
+    others from them except our _tres grand_ and _chers amis_ and
+    allies? Their great value to whatever nation possesses them is as a
+    nursery for seamen. In the present very prosperous situation of our
+    affairs, I have thought it would be wise to endeavor to gain a
+    regular and acknowledged access in every court in Europe but most
+    the Southern. The countries bordering on the Mediterranean I think
+    will merit our earliest attention. They will be the important
+    markets for our great commodities of fish, wheat, tobacco, and
+    rice.
+
+Lee saw how fishing in Northern waters had started America on its way
+to being a maritime power. In a series of letters to George Mason and
+others he expresses his opinions forcibly:
+
+    Our news here is most excellent; both from Williamsburg and from
+    Richmond it comes that our countrymen have given the enemy in the
+    South a complete overthrow.... Heaven grant it may be so. I shall
+    then with infinite pleasure congratulate my friend on the recovery
+    of his property, and our common country on so great a step towards
+    really putting a period to the war. I think that in this case we
+    may insist on our full share of the fishery, and the free
+    navigation of the Mississippi. These are things of very great and
+    lasting importance to America, the yielding of which will not
+    procure the Congress thanks either from the present age or
+    posterity.
+
+    I rejoice greatly at the news from South Carolina. God grant it may
+    be true. If this should force the enemy to reason and to peace,
+    would you give up the navigation of the Mississippi and our
+    domestic fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland? The former almost
+    infinitely depreciating our back country and the latter totally
+    destroying us as a maritime power. That is taking the name of
+    independence without the means of supporting it.
+
+    I rejoice exceedingly at our successes both in the North and in the
+    South. If we continue to do thus, it will not be in the power of
+    the execrable junto to prevent us from having a safe and honorable
+    peace next winter. In this idea I shall ever include the fisheries
+    and the navigation of the Mississippi. These, Sir, are the strong
+    legs on which North America can alone walk securely in
+    independence.
+
+    If you do not get a wise and very firm friend to negotiate the
+    fishery, it is my clear opinion that it will be lost, and upon this
+    principle that it is the interest of every European power to weaken
+    us and strengthen themselves.
+
+    I heartily wish you success in your negotiations and that when you
+    secure one valuable point for us (the fishery) that you will not
+    less exert yourself for another very important object,--the free
+    navigation of the Mississippi, provided guilty Britain should
+    remain in possession of the Floridas.
+
+Fishing as a matter of states' rights resulted in the pioneering
+Potomac River Compact of 1785, when representatives of Maryland and
+Virginia met under George Washington's sponsorship at Mt. Vernon to
+deal with fishing and tolls. Maryland owned the river to the Virginia
+shore line, and agreed to allow Virginians to fish in it in return for
+free entry of Maryland ships through the Virginia capes. The compact,
+in force to this day, was the first step taken in behalf of interstate
+commerce. With its example to follow, other states eased the barriers
+to their commercial interests, with immeasurable benefit to the Union.
+
+Commercial fishing in Virginia was, as the century closed, on the verge
+of the stability it had sorely lacked. Its reliance on Indians for
+knowledge and skill, as in the first of the 17th century, was as dead
+as its reliance on England for manufactures in the last of the 18th.
+Just around the corner were railroads and steamboats with their
+comparatively swift transportation. Teeming cities needed to be fed,
+and after nearly two centuries of education in the ways of the
+Chesapeake Bay and its marine life, Virginia fishermen knew how to keep
+the markets stocked. In 1794 a French visitor, Moreau de Saint Mery,
+wrote:
+
+    Fish is the commodity that sells for a ridiculously low price in
+    Norfolk. One can purchase weakfish weighing more than twenty pounds
+    for 4 or 5 francs and sometimes one that weighs three times more
+    for a gourde, 5 francs, 10 sous. Drum is also very cheap. Sturgeon,
+    weighing up to 60 pounds, can be bought for 6 French sous a pound,
+    about the same price paid for little codfish that are brought in
+    alive and are delicious to eat. Shad is also plentiful there. In
+    addition, one can get perch, porpoise, eels, leatherjackets, summer
+    flounder, turbot, mullet, trout, blackfish, herring, sole, garfish,
+    etc. In short, fish is so abundant in Norfolk that sometimes the
+    police find it necessary to throw back into the water those that
+    are not bought.
+
+Herring fishing began to be abandoned by the planters, many of whom
+were up to their necks in a variety of enterprises, in favor of
+business men intending to specialize. Letters from a Virginia
+speculator, John F. Mercer, to Richard Sprigg, sketch the situation:
+
+    April 19, 1779. To cure fish properly requires two days in the
+    brine before packing and they can only lie packed with safety in
+    dry weather. These circumstances joined with the heading and
+    drawing almost all the fish (a very tedious operation) will show
+    that no time was lost--only 9 days elapsed from his arrival here to
+    his completing his load of 15,000 herrings, a time beyond which
+    many wagons have waited on these shores for 4,000 uncured fish and
+    many have been obliged to return without one, after coming 40 and
+    50 miles and offering 2 and 5 dollars a thousand. Several indeed
+    from my own shore and six who want 36,000 herring will, I believe,
+    quit this night without a fish, after waiting all this storm on the
+    shore five days.
+
+    Mr. Clarke has had his fish completed two days.... He has been
+    delayed by the almost continual storm that has prevailed since his
+    arrival and which has ruined us fishermen.
+
+    My fishery has been miserably conducted from the beginning as might
+    be expected from my entire ignorance and the penury of my partner
+    who was poorer than myself.... Still I have expectations that it
+    may turn out an immense thing from the trial we have made. The
+    shores being opposite to Maryland Point, the reach above and below
+    with the mouths of the two creeks on this side form a sweep, both
+    tides upon them, that must collect for fish; and they are kept in
+    by a kind of pound on the Virginia shore's trend. There apparent
+    advantages accord with the experiment for, with a desperate
+    patched-up seine that always breaks with a good haul, we have
+    contrived to land 20,000 a day, every day we can haul. We are
+    nearer to the Fredericksburg and Falmouth Virginia markets than any
+    shore that is or can be opened on the river by 10 miles
+    notwithstanding every discouragement and particularly the activity
+    and lies practiced against us by the Little Creek fisheries on each
+    side, who must fail with our success.
+
+    April 10, 1795. Herrings they tell me are 10 shillings per thousand
+    at all the shores. If I had your lease I could make a fortune. I
+    have a great mind to send Pollard and George up for your small boat
+    and seine.... If Peyton comes down with his seine to haul at my
+    shore, I will seine salted herrings enough for us both.
+
+That acidulous but always colorful roving reporter from the mid-west,
+Anne Royall, offers the best picture, for accuracy and detail, of
+hauling a seine ever presented by anyone not a technician. Though
+written almost 50 years after the Revolution, it describes the kind of
+fishing on which Virginians had principally depended since Christopher
+Newport began the Colonial era and George Washington ended it:
+
+    The market of Alexandria is abundant and cheap; though much
+    inferior to any in any part of the western country, except beef and
+    fish, which are by far superior to that of the western markets....
+    Their exquisite fish, oysters, crabs, and foreign fruits upon the
+    whole bring them upon a value with us.
+
+    Their fish differ from ours, even some species. Their catfish is
+    the only sort in which we excel; they have none that answer to our
+    blue cat, either in size or flavor, and nothing like our mud-cat.
+    Their catfish is from ten to fifteen inches in length, with a wide
+    mouth, like the mud-cat of the Western waters; but their cat differ
+    from both ours in substance and color; they are soft, pied black
+    and white. They are principally used to make soup, which is much
+    esteemed by the inhabitants. All their fish are small compared with
+    ours. Besides the catfish which they take in the latter part of the
+    winter, they have the rock, winter shad, mackerel, and perch, shad
+    and herring. The winter shad is very fine indeed. They are like our
+    perch, but infinitely smaller. These fish are sold very low; a
+    large string, enough for a dozen persons, may be purchased for a
+    few cents. No fish, however, that I have tasted, equal our trout.
+
+    The Potomac at Alexandria, is rather over a mile in width; it is
+    celebrated for its beauty. It is certainly a great blessing to this
+    country in supplying its inhabitants with food in the article of
+    fish.
+
+    Fish is abundant (at Washington), and cheap at all seasons, shad is
+    three dollars per hundred; herrings, one dollar per thousand.
+
+    Great quantities of herring and shad are taken in these waters
+    during the fishing season, which commences in March, and lasts
+    about ten weeks. As many as 160,000 are said to be caught at one
+    haul. When the season commences no time is to be lost, not even
+    Sunday. Although I am not one of those that make no scruple of
+    breaking the Sabbath, yet, Sunday, as it was, I was anxious to see
+    a process which I had never witnessed--I mean that of taking fish
+    with a seine--there being no such thing in the Western country. It
+    is very natural for one to form an opinion of some sort respecting
+    things they have never seen, but the idea I had formed of the
+    method of fishing with a seine was far from a correct one. In the
+    first place, about fifteen or twenty men, and very often an
+    hundred, repair to the place where the fish are to be taken, with a
+    seine and a skiff. This skiff, however, must be large enough to
+    contain the net and three men--two to row, and one to let out the
+    net. These nets, or seines, are of different sizes, say from two to
+    three hundred fathom in length, and from three to four fathom wide.
+    On one edge are fastened pieces of cork-wood as large as a man's
+    fist, about two feet asunder, and on the opposite edge are fastened
+    pieces of lead, about the same distance--the lead is intended to
+    keep the lower end of the seine close to the bottom of the river.
+    The width of the seine is adapted to the depth of the river, so
+    that the corks just appear on its surface, otherwise the lead would
+    draw the top of the seine under water, and the fish would escape
+    over the top. All this being understood and the seine and rowers in
+    the boat, they give one end of the seine to a party of men on the
+    shore, who are to hold it fast. Those in the boat then row off from
+    the shore, letting out the seine as they go; they advance in a
+    straight line towards the opposite shore, until they gain the
+    middle of the river, when they proceed down the stream, until the
+    net is all out of the boat except just sufficient to reach the
+    shore from whence they set out, to which they immediately proceed.
+    Here an equal number of men take hold of the net with those at the
+    other end, and both parties commence drawing it towards the shore.
+    As they draw, they advance towards each other, until they finally
+    meet, and now comes the most pleasing part of the business. It is
+    amusing enough to see what a spattering the fish make when they
+    find themselves completely foiled: they raise the water in a
+    perfect shower, and wet every one that stands within their reach. I
+    ought to have mentioned, that when the fish begin to draw near the
+    shore, one or two men step into the water, on each side of the net,
+    and hold it close to the bottom of the channel, otherwise the fish
+    would escape underneath. All this being accomplished, the fishermen
+    proceed to take out the fish in greater or less numbers, as they
+    are more or less fortunate. These fishermen make a wretched
+    appearance, they certainly bring up the rear of the human race.
+    They were scarcely covered with clothes, were mostly drunk, and had
+    the looks of the veriest sots on earth.
+
+A Virginian born in 1792, Col. T. J. Randolph of Edgehill near
+Charlottesville, was asked to search his earliest memories in order to
+record 18th century fishing conditions. He wrote a letter in 1875 to
+the newly-constituted Virginia fish commissioners describing an era
+well-nigh incredible to today's Tidewater fishermen:
+
+    Shad were abundant in the Rivanna at my earliest recollection, say
+    prior to 1800. They penetrated into the mountains to breed. I have
+    heard the old people, when I was young, speak of their descending
+    the rivers in continuous streams in the fall, as large as a man's
+    hand. The old ones so weak, that if they were forced by the current
+    against a rock they got off with difficulty. Six miles north of
+    Charlottesville three hundred were caught in one night with a bush
+    seine. A negro told me he had caught seventeen in a trap at one
+    time. I recollect the negroes bringing them to my mother
+    continually. An entry of land near Charlottesville about 1735
+    crossed the Rivanna for two or three acres as a fishing shore. The
+    dams absolutely stopped them, but they had greatly declined before
+    their erection. In 1810 every sluice in the falls at Richmond was
+    plied day and night by float seines. I never heard of rockfish
+    above the falls, and supposed they were confined to Tidewater....
+    Rockfish were hunted on the Eastern Shore on horseback with spears.
+    The large fish coming to feed on the creek shores, overflowed by
+    the tide, showed themselves in the shallow water by a ripple before
+    them. They were ridden on behind and forced into water too shallow
+    for them to swim well, and were speared. I inferred from this fact
+    that they confined themselves to the Tidewater. When young, I have
+    heard the old people speak of an abundance of other fish. The
+    supposition was that the clearing of the country, and consequent
+    muddying of the streams, had destroyed them.
+
+    By sluicing the dams, and prohibiting fishing in sluices, or
+    trapping, or anything that should bar their progress, I do not see
+    why the shad should not return.
+
+The shad have never returned to the up-country. But they still visit
+the vast inland waters below the Fall line, sometimes so abundantly
+that the price declines, as it did so recently as 1956, to where the
+fishermen can scarcely make a profit. Other fish referred to by the
+first Virginians continue to return, and will do so as long as our
+outreaching civilization does not deprive them of the natural
+conditions they need for survival.
+
+The years closely following the Revolution brought profound readjustment
+in American commerce. Observations on whaling, a minor but vital home
+industry, filled many pages of a 1788 communication of Thomas Jefferson
+to John Jay, one of his confreres in the shaping of national policy.
+After sketching the uses of whale oil, its economic position and its
+history, he took up the particular problem facing the people of
+Nantucket, perhaps the foremost whalers in America. As long as they had
+been subjects of the British Empire they had been able to sell their
+oil duty-free in England. Now as aliens they must pay the same tariff
+charged other foreign traders. This meant the difference between a
+profitable and unprofitable enterprise. A few Nantucket seamen had even
+transferred to Nova Scotia in order to become British citizens again
+and thus receive exemption from whale-oil import duty. This trend
+alarmed the French in particular, who could visualize thousands of the
+United States' best sailors going over to their enemies the English.
+The remedy was suggested: make France the most attractive market for
+U.S. whale oil. At the same time, English whaling had been government
+subsidized and could undercut competition.
+
+The international chess game went briskly on, to the concern of
+Jefferson and the well-wishers of the infant Union. Before the
+Revolution England had fewer than 100 vessels whaling, while America
+had more than 300. But by 1788 England had 314 and America 80. Such was
+the result of the conflict, aided by the bounty paid by Britain to its
+own whalers. Jefferson hoped that the United States producers could
+develop a market in France, in part, by bartering oil for the essential
+work clothes which hitherto had been bought for cash in England. But he
+warned that without some kind of subsidy American whalers could neither
+compete with foreign countries nor make a living commensurate with
+other pursuits. The growing nation's sea-faring men would decrease to
+the point where the country's sea power would be in question.
+
+As Secretary of State in 1791, Jefferson reported to Congress on the
+two principal American fisheries of the day, both oceanic. "The cod and
+whale fisheries," he began, "carried on by different persons, from
+different ports, in different vessels, in different seas, and seeking
+different markets, agree in one circumstance, as being as unprofitable
+to the adventurer as important to the public." Once prosperous, he
+said, they were now in embarrassing decline.
+
+He traced the history of the cod fisheries back to 1517, in which year
+as many as 50 European ships were reported fishing off the Newfoundland
+banks at one time. In 1577 there were 150 French vessels, 100 Spanish
+and 50 Portuguese. The British limped far behind with 15. The French
+gradually took over as they claimed more and more territory in the
+region. Other nations dropped out, except England, whose cod fleet at
+the beginning of the seventeenth century had increased to about 150
+vessels. These in due course were largely supplanted by the New England
+colonists. When France lost Newfoundland to England in 1713 the English
+and Colonial fisheries spurted ahead. By 1755 their fleets and catches
+equaled those of the French, and in 1768 passed them. Jefferson's
+statistics present an impressive picture of the fishing activity of
+that time and place, especially when compared with the unorganized
+Chesapeake fisheries just then coming of age.
+
+In 1791 he said there were 259 French vessels totaling 24,422 tons and
+employing 9,722 seamen. Their catch: 20 million pounds that year. There
+were 665 American vessels with 25,650 tonnage, 4,405 seamen and a catch
+of around 40 million pounds. England's ships, tonnage and men were not
+given. However, her estimated catch nearly equaled that of France and
+America combined. Thus the Northern fishing grounds in their palmy days
+accounted for well over 100 million pounds of cod a year.
+
+It is worth remarking that the size of today's New England cod fishery
+is not radically different from the pre-Revolutionary one described by
+Jefferson. Boats, men and catch remain about the same on the average.
+
+Turning to the whaling industry, Jefferson noted that Americans did not
+enter it until 1715, although he credited the Biscayans and Basques of
+Southern Europe with prosecuting it in the 15th century and leading the
+way to the fishing grounds off Newfoundland. Whales were sought in both
+the North and South Atlantic. The figures for the American Colonies in
+1771 as given by Jefferson were 304 vessels engaged, totaling 27,800
+tons, navigated by 4,059 men.
+
+They were in for a difficult time in 1791. The Revolution halted their
+activities and deprived them of their markets. Re-establishing this
+fishery was a prime concern of Jefferson.
+
+It is significant that in his painstaking consideration of the nation's
+fisheries he, a Virginian, apparently found no cause to deal with those
+of his own Chesapeake bay. They were one day nevertheless to outstrip
+many times over both the volume and value of American cod and whale
+fisheries together.
+
+The evidence is that Jefferson was more interested in fish at
+Monticello than anywhere else. But there the interest was personal, not
+national. In his so-called _Farm Book_, or plantation record, he often
+mentions fish. A note on slave labor reads: "A barrel of fish costing
+$7. goes as far with the laborers as 200 ponds of pork costing $14."
+This was in all probability Virginia salt-herring, which had finally
+reached the status of a staple during the latter half of the 18th
+century. An 1806 memorandum to his overseer runs: "Fish is always to be
+got in Richmond ... and to be dealt out to the hirelings, laborers,
+workmen, and house servants of all sorts as has been usual." In 1812 a
+bill for fish, which he terms "indeed very high and discouraging, but
+the necessity of it is still stronger," lists the species no doubt in
+chief demand: "Twelve barrels herrings, $75. and one barrel of shads,
+$6.50." These were salted and shipped in from Tidewater fisheries like
+George Washington's at Mt. Vernon.
+
+For fresh fish Jefferson and his neighbors could look to their adjacent
+rivers. In fact, so greatly did they rely on them that it was with
+feelings akin to consternation that he wrote his friend William D.
+Meriwether in 1809 that a neighbor, Mr. Ashlin, proposed to erect a dam
+which was sure to inconvenience the watermen of the vicinity.
+Furthermore, "to this then add the removal of our resort for fresh fish
+... and the deprivation of all the intermediate inhabitants who now
+catch them at their door." He was not on too firm ground in objecting,
+however. He had a dam of his own across the Rivanna river which had
+been there since 1757.
+
+He decided to build a fish pond in his garden. As he described it in
+1808 it was little larger than an aquarium, 40 cubic yards contents,
+probably for water lilies and goldfish. It was the first of several
+fish ponds, constructed, no doubt, with both beauty and utility in
+mind. A note in his _Weather Memorandum Book_ under date April 1812
+tells us: "The two fish ponds on the Colle branch were 40 days work to
+grub, clean and make the dams."
+
+A series of letters in 1812 to friends who he thought might supply him
+with live fish, particularly carp, for stocking, all run very much on
+the order of this one to Captain Mathew Wills:
+
+    I return you many thanks for the fish you have been so kind as to
+    send me, and still more for your aid in procuring the carp, and you
+    will further oblige me by presenting my thanks to Capt. Holman &
+    Mr. Ashlin. I have found too late, on enquiry that the cask sent
+    was an old and foul one, and I have no doubt that must have been
+    the cause of the death of the fish. The carp, altho it cannot live
+    the shortest time out of water, yet is understood to bear
+    transportation in water the best of any fish whatever. The
+    obtaining breeders for my pond being too interesting to be
+    abandoned, I have had a proper smack made, such as is regularly
+    used for transporting fish, to be towed after the boat, and have
+    dispatched the bearer with it without delay, as the season is
+    passing away. I have therefor again to solicit your patronage, as
+    well as Captain Holman's in obtaining a supply of carp. I think a
+    dozen would be enough and would therefore wish him to come away as
+    soon as he can get that number.
+
+From that time on his ponds came in for periodic mention, as when one
+was broken up by flood waters in 1814. But despite setbacks he kept
+faith in them as good food-producing adjuncts of a farm, thus
+anticipating the U.S. Department of Agriculture's modern food-fish
+pond-development program by more than a century.
+
+As is likely to be the case with experimenters, Jefferson's efforts at
+fish propagation do not appear to have been overwhelmingly successful.
+At any rate, there is much more frequent reference in his records to
+putting fish in his ponds than taking them out. So far as he was
+concerned, it may be said that results were less important than
+example. Like all great leaders he was an originator and investigator,
+confining himself to the basic things that insure man's sustenance and
+contribute to his happiness, not the least of which is fishing.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+Archer, Gabriel. _A Relation of the Discovery of Our River From James
+Forte into the Maine, Made by Captain Christopher Newport._ Worcester,
+1860.
+
+Beverley, Robert. _The History and Present State of Virginia._ London,
+1705.
+
+Brown, Alexander. _The Genesis of the United States._ Boston, 1890. 2
+vols.
+
+Burnaby, Andrew. _Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North
+America in the Years 1759-1760._ London, 1798.
+
+Byrd, William. _Natural History of Virginia._ Ed. and tr. by R. C.
+Beatty and W. J. Mulloy. Richmond, 1940.
+
+Chastellux, Francois J. _Travels in North America in the Years 1780,
+1781, and 1782._ London, 1787.
+
+Cresswell, Nicholas. _The Journal, 1774-77._ Ed. by Lincoln McVeagh.
+New York, 1924.
+
+De Vries, David P. _Voyages From Holland to America, 1632-1644._ New
+York, 1857.
+
+Durand, --. _A Huguenot exile in Virginia._ Ed. by Gilbert Chinard. New
+York, 1934.
+
+Fithian, Philip V. _Journal and Letters, 1773-1774._ Ed. by Hunter D.
+Farish. Williamsburg, 1943.
+
+Force, Peter. _Tracts and Other Papers._ Washington, 1836-46. 4 vols.
+
+Glover, Thomas. _An Account of Virginia._ London, 1676.
+
+Hamilton, Stanislaus M., ed. _Letters to Washington and Accompanying
+Papers._ Boston, 1898-1901. 5 vols.
+
+Hamor, Ralph. _Notes of Virginian affaires of the Government of Sir
+Thomas Gates and of Sir Thomas Dale till 1614._ Glasgow, 1906.
+
+---- _A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia._ London, 1614.
+
+Hariot, Thomas. _Narrative of the First English Plantation of
+Virginia._ London, 1893.
+
+Hart, Albert B. _American History Told by Contemporaries._ New York,
+1908. 4 vols.
+
+Hening, William W. _The Statutes at Large of Virginia._ 1809-1823. 13
+vols.
+
+Jefferson, Thomas. _The Complete Jefferson._ Ed. by Saul K. Padover.
+New York, 1943.
+
+---- _Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book._ Ed. by Edwin M. Betts. Princeton.
+1953.
+
+---- _Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book, 1766-1824._ Ed. by Edwin M.
+Betts. Philadelphia, 1944.
+
+Lee, Richard Henry. _Letters of Richard Henry Lee._ Ed. by James C.
+Ballagh. New York, 1914. 2 vols.
+
+Middleton, Arthur P. _Tobacco Coast._ Ed. by George C. Mason. Newport
+News, 1953.
+
+Neill, Edward. _Virginia Vetusta._ Albany, 1885.
+
+Newport, Christopher. _A Description of the Now-discovered River and
+Country of Virginia, 1607._ Worcester, 1860.
+
+Pearson, John C. _The Fish and Fisheries of Colonial Virginia._ In
+William and Mary College Quarterly, 1942-3. Williamsburg.
+
+Purchas, Samuel. _His Pilgrimes._ Glasgow, 1906. 20 vols.
+
+Royall, Anne. _Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United
+States._ New Haven, 1826.
+
+Smith, John. _Travels and Works of Captain John Smith._ Ed. by Edward
+Arber. Edinburgh, 1910. 2 vols.
+
+Strachey, William. _The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia._
+London, 1849.
+
+Swem, E. G. _Virginia Historical Index._ Roanoke, 1934-6. 2 vols.
+
+Virginia. _Calendar of Virginia State Papers._ Richmond, 1875-1893. 11
+vols.
+
+Virginia Fish Commissioners. _Annual Report for the Year 1875._
+Richmond, 1875.
+
+Virginia Company. _The Records._ Ed. by S. M. Kingsbury. Washington,
+1906-1935. 4 vols.
+
+Washington, George. _The Writings of George Washington._ Ed. by J. C.
+Fitzpatrick. Washington. 39 vols.
+
+Whitelaw, Ralph T. _Virginia's Eastern Shore._ Ed. by George C. Mason.
+Richmond, 1951. 2 vols.
+
+
+Manuscripts
+
+_Mercer Papers_, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond.
+
+Washington, Lund. _Letters._ Unpublished, at Mt. Vernon.
+
+
+
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