Forgotten Treasures #12: DE PISCIUM NATURA

DE PISCIUM NATURA *



By Theodore Lyman



There was one woodcut in the primary geography which alone was well worth
the price of the book, and that was "Indians spearing Salmon." There were
other woodcuts of decided merit; exempli gratia, the view of a "civilized
and enlightened" nation, wherein a severely stiff gentleman is taking off
his bell-crowned hat to a short-waisted lady in a coal-scuttle bonnet. But
"Indians spearing Salmon" was a great deal better. Two of them there were,
with not much clothing save a spear, wherewith they were threatening certain
fishes that, like animated shoe-soles, were springing nimbly against a
waterfall. An almost mythical romance overspread the scene; for Indians and
Salmon are long since lost to us, and only a vanishing form of them still
lingers in the half-breeds and the sea-trout of Marshpee, just as the
alligator now brings to mind the great fossil saurians he so degenerately
represents. Yet our woodcut is not at all mythical, but really historical.
Does not excellent Gookin inform us of the notable "fishing-place" at
Wamesit, where Reverendus Eliot "spread the net of the Gospel" to fish for
the souls of the poor Indian pagans? Alas! all this is replaced by the High
Honorable Locks and Canals Company, and the turbine and other not easily
understood water-wheels, of Lowell. Not that we have anything against the
High Honorable, the only old-fashioned corporation we know of that invites
official persons to dine, - a praiseworthy custom, followed not even by the
Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Office; although some of the insurance
companies keep crackers, and others ginger-nuts, whereby certain worthy old
gentlemen, who have not more than a million, or, at the outside, a million
and a half, make a clear daily saving (Sundays excepted) in the matter of
luncheon. But the High Honorable gives you a real dinner chez mine host Mr.
T., no less a man than the discoverer and owner of the celebrated
"Blackhawk," - and yet so little puffed up by this distinction, that, with
his proper hands, he will bring in the breaded pigs' feet for which his
house is noted. Also he has invented a safe, which, like the Union Deposit
Vaults, is to be forced nec igne nec ferro; for, being asked how he secured
the Oleroso Sherry of the High Honorable, he replied that it was in a place
where no harm ever could come to it, - to wit, under his bed. Is it not a
pity he cannot serve a Salmon taken in its season, glittering, from
Pawtucket Falls?.



When the apple-trees of our thrifty forefathers were bursting into blossom
on the banks of the Merrimack, and the land was furrowed for the corn and
the pumpkins, and the pleasant river itself was running swift and full, then
the great silver Salmon, fresh from the salt water, would leap and tumble as
they drove up stream, bound for the cold brooks of the Pemigewasset, or away
beyond it to those of Franconia Notch. With them came great battalions of
Shad; and hosts of homely Alewives, that forced themselves through every
little rivulet as they crowded to their breeding-ponds. The Shad held
soberly to the main stream till they came to the Winnipiseogee River, where
they said au revoir to the Salmon, and turned their heads toward the lake.
That lake knows them no more, yet there is a fish therein that still is
called the Shad-waiter, who perhaps regards his friend as a sort of
"Malbrook," and who yearly repeats to himself, "Il reviendra au Pâque ou à
la Trinité." Yes! the two Indians of the woodcut have gone, and their Salmon
have gone. We don't want the Indians back again, but we should like the
Salmon; we should like to stand on the Dracut shore, and hook a twenty-pound
fish, without the risk of having our scalp nailed to the gates of the
Massachusetts Cotton Mills.



When we asked Mr. Madder Spinney why there were no longer fish in the river,
that enterprising mill-owner replied, that it was "owing to the progress of
civilization"; whereupon we were led to wonder, whether, if we should cut
all the belting in his mill, Mr. Spinney would say the machinery stopped by
reason of the progress of civilization. Spinney junior is getting his
education at Harvard, and there he will probably learn enough to understand
that the fish were not taken care of, and therefore disappeared. If
compelled to write a forensic on the subject, he might get enough
information to tell the following sad tale of the destruction of the
Autochthonoi. Less than a century ago people were seized with a
beaver-like desire to build dams. They called themselves slack-water
companies, - which referred, perhaps, to their finances. These dams bothered
the fish, for no way was given to help them over, notwithstanding the old
Crown law, and notwithstanding learned decisions, as in Stoughton versus
Baker; for the beavers cared not for Crown law, and took no kind of interest
in Mr. Stoughton or Mr. Baker. So the Salmon and Shad were diminished, yet
not destroyed. Now ingenious gentlemen used to go up to Chelmsford and
Dracut, and gaze at the river. Perhaps they considered how slack the water
was. At any rate they soon began to resolve great things. If, thought they,
a mill-pond will turn a wheel to grind corn, why not also a wheel to spin
cotton? and why not thus spin a great deal of cotton? So they began; while
the merchants looked on with horror at this prospect of several thousand
yards of cloth to be cast, in one vast flood, upon the market.



Next year the sober Shad, making their usual rush at the sloping face of the
Pawtucket Falls dam, had a tough thing of it. Some got over, and some had to
fall back, all out of breath, and take another run. Never had their dignity
been so tried. The fact is, the dam had been raised. It is true the Salmon
made nothing of it. The lazy ones went up the sloping part, while the more
lively jumped the steeper portions; and one active fellow, incited by his
lady-love, who was peeking over the crest of the fall at him, made such a
frantic bound at the "corner," that he threw himself ten feet out of water,
and came down, slosh, in the mill-pond above, to the delight of the females,
though his own sex said anybody could do it who chose to try. The fishermen
looked with apprehension on these increasing difficulties, and threatened to
pull the dam down; but the gentlemen, from being ingenious, as aforesaid,
now became defiant, and expressed themselves to this effect, namely, that
they should like to see the fishermen do it. This was sarcasm; and though
Whately says sarcasm should be used sparingly, in this instance the effect
was good, and the dam remained.



By this time, what with seines, pots, dip-nets, spears, hooks, dams, and
mills, the fisheries were in a poor way; and the old New Hampshire lady who
used to spear Salmon with a pitchfork could do so no more. The fishes
whimpered, and would have whimpered much more had they known what was
coming. Certain Pentakosiomedimnoi of Athens determined to put a hotbed of
manufactures in a corner of Andover, on the Merrimack, and to grow mills,
like early lettuce, all in four weeks. They spoke



"The words that cleft Eildon hills in three,"

"And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone";



and, when the Salmon, and the Shad came up the next spring, they ran their
noses against a granite scarp, twenty-three feet high, from whose crest fell
a thundering cataract. The Shad rolled up their eyes at it, waggled their
tails, and fell down stream to Marston's Ferry. The Salmon, springing and
plunging, eagerly reconnoitred the position from wing to wing. At last one
lively grilse cried out: "Here is a sort of trough coming down from the top!
but it's awful steep!" "Stand aside," shouted the hoarse voice of an old
male Salmon, whose glorious hooked jaw penetrated his upper lip, and stood
out two inches above his nose. And with that he rushed tête baissée against
the torrent. An old fisherman who was standing on the abutment suddenly
exclaimed: "There was a whopper tried it! He got half-way up; but it ain't
no kind er use. I told them County Commissioners that the only way they
would get fish up that fishway was to hitch a rope to 'em. But they was
like all folks that don't know nothin', - they thought they knew all about
it."



The Lawrence dam and its noted fishway (constructed "to the satisfaction of
the County Commissioners") made an end of the Salmon, because they can hatch
their eggs only in the mountain brooks; but the Shad could breed in warmer
and more turbid waters, and they therefore continued to flourish in a
limited sort of way. Time went on. Children who ate of the last shad of
New Hampshire waters had grown to man's estate, and the memory of the diet
of their youth seemed to have died within them; but it slept only. In the
year 1865 they rose as one man and as one woman, and cried: "Give us the
flesh-pots of our youth, the Salmon and the Shad, and the Alewife, and the
fatness thereof! or we will divert all the waters of the great Lake
Winnipiseogee into the Piscataqua, which runs down to the sea over against
Portsmouth!" These cries came to the ears of the Pentakosiomedimnoi, the
High Honorable Locks and Canals, and all the Mandarins of the Red Button
that are in and about Franklin Street. They took counsel together. "Do
nothing about it!" said the Mandarins. "Pay them," suggested the
Pentakosiomedimnoi. "Dine them- Blackhawk-pigs' feet," murmured the High
Honorable. Here the echoes seemed to say " Fishways!" This was a dreadful
word, because to them a flshway (other than that of a County Commissioner)
was a big gap to let all the water out of a mill-pond. They appeared in
force before the Legislature with a panathenaic chorus.



PARHODOS.[1]



O honorable Areopagites

Io! Io!

Zeus the earth-shaker,

Poseidon, heaver of the waves,

Send us water;-

Hephaistos, the iron-worker,

And his much skilful Kuklops

Give us power:

Do not those wretches who cry

Fish! Fish!

Strive against the immortal Gods?



The Legislature did what everybody ought to do who has any responsibility:
namely, first, not to assume said responsibility; secondly, to gain time;
thirdly, to get somebody else to do the work. The somebody else took on the
form of two commissioners, - the very "official persons" already referred
to. These proceeded to collect information. They cross-questioned the
oldest inhabitants, and got crooked answers; they entered into the mysteries
of flashboards, and investigated the properties of garancine; they wandered
on the river-banks after the manner of the spotted tatler (Totanus
macularius); and at last they made a report only fifty pages long, the
brevity of which proved two negative points: first, that the commissioners
were not congressmen; and, second, that they had never writ- ten for
newspapers or for periodicals. Thereupon the Legislature, gratified beyond
measure, said: "Good boys! now work some more. Build some fishways. Breed
some fish. And here is a check to pay for it all." Thus encouraged, the
official persons did build fishways, especially a big one at Lawrence in
place of the singular trough already referred to. But, when they came to
Holyoke, on the Connecticut, the Wooden-Dam-and-Nutmeg Company there
dwelling were inclined to the papal aphorism, Non possumus, which is
equivalent to Mr. Toodles's "It's not quite in our line; and we really can't."
The fact is, the Nutmegs had a "charter" which they held to be a sovereign
balm for fishways, and which they fulminated against the official persons,
as William the Testy fulminated his proclamation against the Yankee onion
patches. This, and the high water of that summer, retarded the development
of the fishway for the time being; but meanwhile important incubations were
going on just below the dam, - nothing less, indeed, than the hatching of
Shad by an artificial method. All this is something to be explained, and
deserves a new para- graph.



In the times of the later Roman emperors, to such a pitch had luxury risen,
that a mullet was often sold - No! this is a little too bad; you shall not
be bored with dreadful old stories of Heliogabalus and oysters, or of the
cruel gourmet with his "in muraenas." Well, then, start once mo In the
Middle Ages, when Europe was overshadowed by monkish superstition, the
observance of Lent rendered a large supply of fish necessary; fish-ponds
were therefore - Oh! there we go again, more prosy than ever. Come, now,
let us get at once to Joseph Rémy. Joseph Rémy, a man of humble station and
slight education, but of studious and reflective temperament, was one of
those instances, more common in America than abroad, where a man, without
the external advantages of culture or of fortune, rises by his own efforts
to a well-deserved eminence. He was a - yes, and all that sort of thing.
The fact is, Rémy found he could squeeze the eggs out of fishes, and hatch
them afterwards; and so can anybody else who chooses to try, and who will
take pains enough. We have had Columbus and the hen's egg; now we have Rémy
and the fish egg. As to the exact manner of hatching fish, is it not
written in the report of the Commissioners for this year,[2] and in the
report of the United States Commissioner of Agriculture for 1866, and in the
"Voyages" of Professor Coste, and in five hundred books and papers beside?



From this fish culture, if we will only make it a real industry in this
Commonwealth, may come important additions to our bill of fare. Many things
are more pleasant than paying as much as we now do for animal food. Fish,
flesh, and fowl are all as dear as dear can be; and, what is worse, they are
hard to come at, for our back-country people, during the hot weather. We
have two goodly rivers in Massachusetts, and plenty of streams, brooks,
ponds, pools, and springs. We cultivate corn and potatoes on the land (and
lose money on every bushel); why not cultivate fish in the waters, and make
money? There are two secrets at the foundation of success. First, fishes
must be taken from the domain of game, and become property. Secondly, the
fishes must be fed for nothing; and the way to do that is to breed
multitudes of herbivorous or of insectivorous fishes to feed the carnivorous
fishes, which, in turn, are to feed man. Thus, if you have a thousand
Trout, do you breed for their diet a million Shiners; and these will take
care of themselves, except in the matter of getting caught by the Trout. So
much for domestic culture, - our fish-coop, as we may come to call it.
Then, as to the encouragement of migratory sea-fishes, - the Salmon,
Sea-trout, Shad, Bass, Alewife, Sturgeon, - if you would have children, you
must have a nursery; if you would have fish, you must extend their
breeding-grounds. Open, then, the ten thou- sand dams that bar our streams,
and, with care and patience, these waters will be peopled; and we, whose
mother earth is so barren, will find that mother sea will each year send
abundant food into every brook that empties into a stream, that flows into a
river, that runs to the ocean.



[2] Those who have studied the useful metrical works of our universities
will know that this is an iambic trimeter acatalectic in pyrrichium aut
iambum. Those who do not know this are to he pitied.



[3] House Document No. 60 (1868).



End DE PISCIUM NATURA



*From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 22, Issue 130, August 1868.



This work is in the public domain. To the best of my knowledge, it's
inclusion here does not violate any U.S. or other copyright laws.



Wolfgang