est; so called
from the dun-color. Fish was always eaten in New England for a Saturday
dinner; and Mr. Palfrey, the historian, says that until this century no
New England dinner on Saturday, even a formal dinner party, was complete
without dun-fish being served.

Of course the first fishing-vessels had to be built and sent from
England. Some carried fifty men. They arrived on the coast in early
spring, and by midsummer sailed home. The crew had for wages one-third
share of the fish and oil; another third paid for the men's food, the
salt, nets, hooks, lines, etc.; the other third went to the ship's
owners for profit.

This system was not carried out in New England. There, each fisherman
worked on "his own hook"--and it was literally his own hook; for a tally
was kept of the fish caught by each man, and the proceeds of the trip
were divided in proportion to the number of fish each caught. When there
was a big run of fish, the men never stopped to eat or sleep, but when
food was held to them gnawed it off while their hands were employed with
the fish-lines. With every fishing-vessel that left Gloucester and
Marblehead, the chief centres of the fishing industries, went a boy of
ten or twelve to learn to be a skilled fisherman. He was called a
"cut-tail," for he cut a wedge-shaped bit from the tail of every fish he
caught, and when the fish were sorted out the cut-tails showed the boy's
share of the profit.

For centuries, fish was plentiful and cheap in New England. The
traveller Bennet wrote of Boston, in 1740:--

"Fish is exceedingly cheap. They sell a fine cod, will weigh a
dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea for about twopence
sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as cheap as sprats
in London. Salmon, too, they have in great plenty, and these they
sell for about a shilling apiece which will weigh fourteen or
fifteen pounds."

Two kinds of delicious fish, beloved, perhaps, above all others
to-day,--salmon and shad,--seem to have been lightly regarded in
colonial days. The price of salmon--less than a penny a pound--shows the
low estimation in which it was held in the early years of the eighteenth
century. It is told that farm-laborers in the vicinity of the
Connecticut River when engaged to work stipulated that they should have
salmon for dinner but once a week.

Shad were profoundly despised; it was even held to be somewhat
disreputable to eat them; and the s