arch to Mr. John C. Pearson of
the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, who masterfully surveyed the field
and first brought the early fishery reports to public notice.

JAMES WHARTON
Weems, Virginia

THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE

The Bounty of The Chesapeake

The voyage to America in 1607 was like a journey to a star. Veteran
rovers though the English were, none of them had any clear idea of what
to expect in the new land of Virginia. Only one thing was certain: they
would have nothing there but what they took with them or wrought from
the raw materials of the country.

What raw materials?

They had reliable information that the climate was mild. Therefore,
crops could be raised. They learned of inexhaustible timber: so ships
and dwellings and industrial works could be built. They hoped for gold
and dreamed of access to uncharted lands of adventure. But putting
first things first, how would they eat in the meantime?

When Sir Walter Raleigh established the first English colony in
"Virginia"--on what is now Roanoke island, North Carolina--two good
reporters, one a writer, the other an illustrator, were commissioned to
describe what they saw. This was twenty-two years before Jamestown and
naturally all the material consisted of Indian life and customs. Thomas
Hariot wrote:

For four months of the year, February, March, April and May, there
are plenty of sturgeon; and also in the same months of herrings,
some of the ordinary bigness as ours in England, but the most part
far greater, of eighteen, twenty inches, and some two feet in
length and better; both these kinds of fish in these months are
most plentiful and in best season which we found to be most
delicate and pleasant meat.

There are also trouts, porpoises, rays, oldwives, mullets, plaice,
and very many other sorts of excellent good fish, which we have
taken and eaten, whose names I know not but in the country language
we have of twelve sorts more the pictures as they were drawn in the
country with their names.

The inhabitants use to take them two manner of ways, the one is by
a kind of weir made of reeds which in that country are very strong.
The other way which is more strange, is with poles made sharp at
one end, by shooting them into the fish after the manner as
Irishmen cast darts; either as they are rowing in their boats or
else as they are wading in the shallows for