variety of commodities in return for a bill of exchange but _no salt
fish_:

By the advice of my friend, Captain Peter Perry, I made bold to
give you the trouble of a letter of the 1st instant with two small
bills of exchange which I desired you to receive and return the
effects to me in the upper part of James River, either in rum,
sugar, Madeira wine, turnery, earthenware, or anything else you may
judge convenient to this country (fish excepted)....

Evidently at least some good salt was now at hand to preserve the roe
herring that choked the rivers and creeks in the spring. The
salt-herring breakfast was on its way to becoming a Virginia
institution, and the salt-fish monopolies of New England and Canada
were cracking after three-quarters of a century.

The score of "firsts" in the Virginia fishery world have been noted as
they occurred. Among them were the first fishery statistics, the first
licensing law, the first price control, the first diamond-back
terrapin, the first conservation measures. And now in 1698 there was
the first agitation against polluted waters:

We, the Council and Burgesses of the present General Assembly,
being sensible to the great mischiefs and inconveniences that
accrue to the inhabitants of this, his Majesty's Colony and
Dominion of Virginia, by killing of whales within the capes
thereof, in all humility take leave to represent the same unto Your
Excellency and withal to acquaint you that by the means thereof
great quantities of fish are poisoned and destroyed and the rivers
also made noisome and offensive. For prevention of which evils in
regard the restraint of the killing of whales is a branch of His
Majesty's royal prerogative.

We humbly pray that Your Excellency [the Governor, Francis
Nicholson] will be pleased to issue out a proclamation forbidding
all persons whatsoever to strike or kill any whales within the bay
of Chesapeake in the limits of Virginia which we hope will prove an
effectual means to prevent the many evils that arise therefrom.

As Jamestown reached the end of its span, the fisheries came of age.
Inequities were being ironed out, methods were being perfected, and
planners were at work on ways of employing more and more of the
fast-growing population in searching out and making available the
bounty of the fair Chesapeake.

At the start of the 18th century, however, there was li