The streams which these fish ascend are invariably distinguished for their rocky and gravelly bottoms, for the coldness and purity of their water, and for their rapid currents. Those which afford the angler the most sport, are rather small and shallow, and empty into tide-water rivers; while in these they are chiefly taken with the net. The tributaries of the Androscoggin, Kennebec, and Penobscot, having all been blocked up with mill-dams, the salmon is only found in the principal estuaries; and as these are large and deep, they are of no value to the angler, and will not be many years longer even to the fishermen who capture them for the purpose of making money. So far as our own experience goes, we only know of one river, within the limits of the Union, which affords the angler good salmon fishing, and that is the Aroostook, in Maine. We have been informed, however, that the regular salmon is taken in many of those rivers, in the northern part of New York, which empty into Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence, but we are compelled to doubt the truth of the statement. Such may have been the case in former times, but we think it is not so now. Salmon are not taken at Montreal, and it is therefore unreasonable to suppose that they ever reach the fountain-head of the St. Lawrence; this portion of the great river is too far from the ocean, and too extensively navigated, and the water is not sufficiently clear. That they once ascended to the Ottawa river and Lake Ontario we have not a doubt, but those were in the times of the days of old. Another prevailing opinion with regard to salmon, we have it in our power decidedly to contradict. Mr. John J. Brown, in his useful little book entitled the “American Angler’s Guide,” makes the remark, that salmon are found in great abundance in the Mississippi and its magnificent tributaries. Such is not the fact, and we are sure that if “our brother” had ever caught a glimpse of the muddy Mississippi, he would have known by intuition that such _could_ not be the case. Nor is the salmon partial to any of the rivers of the far South, as many people suppose, not being known in any river emptying into the Gulf of Mexico; so that the conclusion of the whole matter is just this, that the salmon fisheries of the United States proper are of but little consequence when compared with many other countries on the globe. When we come to speak of our territories, however, we have a very different story to relate, for a finer river for salmon does not water any country than the mighty Columbia—that same Columbia where a certain navigator once purchased a ton of salmon for a jack-knife. But that river is somewhat too far off to expect an introduction in our present essay, and we will therefore take our reader, by his permission, into the neighboring Provinces of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.