at, either in size or flavor, and nothing like our mud-cat.
Their catfish is from ten to fifteen inches in length, with a wide
mouth, like the mud-cat of the Western waters; but their cat differ
from both ours in substance and color; they are soft, pied black
and white. They are principally used to make soup, which is much
esteemed by the inhabitants. All their fish are small compared with
ours. Besides the catfish which they take in the latter part of the
winter, they have the rock, winter shad, mackerel, and perch, shad
and herring. The winter shad is very fine indeed. They are like our
perch, but infinitely smaller. These fish are sold very low; a
large string, enough for a dozen persons, may be purchased for a
few cents. No fish, however, that I have tasted, equal our trout.

The Potomac at Alexandria, is rather over a mile in width; it is
celebrated for its beauty. It is certainly a great blessing to this
country in supplying its inhabitants with food in the article of
fish.

Fish is abundant (at Washington), and cheap at all seasons, shad is
three dollars per hundred; herrings, one dollar per thousand.

Great quantities of herring and shad are taken in these waters
during the fishing season, which commences in March, and lasts
about ten weeks. As many as 160,000 are said to be caught at one
haul. When the season commences no time is to be lost, not even
Sunday. Although I am not one of those that make no scruple of
breaking the Sabbath, yet, Sunday, as it was, I was anxious to see
a process which I had never witnessed--I mean that of taking fish
with a seine--there being no such thing in the Western country. It
is very natural for one to form an opinion of some sort respecting
things they have never seen, but the idea I had formed of the
method of fishing with a seine was far from a correct one. In the
first place, about fifteen or twenty men, and very often an
hundred, repair to the place where the fish are to be taken, with a
seine and a skiff. This skiff, however, must be large enough to
contain the net and three men--two to row, and one to let out the
net. These nets, or seines, are of different sizes, say from two to
three hundred fathom in length, and from three to four fathom wide.
On one edge are fastened pieces of cork-wood as large as a man's
fist, about two fe