Audubon, John James, 1785-1851; Naturalists -- Biography; Scientists -- Biography
He gives this realistic picture of salmon fishermen that his party saw in
Labrador: "On going to a house on the shore, we found it a tolerably good
cabin, floored, containing a good stove, a chimney, and an oven at the
bottom of this, like the ovens of the French peasants, three beds, and a
table whereon the breakfast of the family was served. This consisted of
coffee in large bowls, good bread, and fried salmon. Three Labrador dogs
came and sniffed about us, and then returned under the table whence they
had issued, with no appearance of anger. Two men, two women, and a babe
formed the group, which I addressed in French. They were French-Canadians
and had been here several years, winter and summer, and are agents for the
Fur and Fish Co., who give them food, clothes, and about $80 per annum.
They have a cow and an ox, about an acre of potatoes planted in sand, seven
feet of snow in winter, and two-thirds less salmon than was caught here ten
years since. Then, three hundred barrels was a fair season; now one hundred
is the maximum; this is because they will catch the fish both ascending and
descending the river. During winter the men hunt Foxes, Martens, and
Sables, and kill some bear of the black kind, but neither Deer nor other
game is to be found without going a great distance in the interior, where
Reindeer are now and then procured. One species of Grouse, and one of
Ptarmigan, the latter white at all seasons; the former, I suppose to be,
the Willow Grouse. The men would neither sell nor give us a single salmon,
saying, that so strict were their orders that, should they sell _one,_
the place might be taken from them. If this should prove the case
everywhere, I shall not purchase many for my friends. The furs which they
collect are sent off to Quebec at the first opening of the waters in
spring, and not a skin of any sort was here for us to look at."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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