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: