y 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 ske