eel, conger-eel, perch,
and cat, &c.

Those which I remember to have seen there, of the kinds that are not
eaten, are the whale, porpus, shark, dog-fish, garr, stingray,
thornback, saw-fish, toad-fish, frog-fish, land-crab, fiddler, and
periwinckle. One day as I was hauling a sein upon the salts, I caught a
small fish about two inches and an half long, in shape something
resembling a scorpion, but of a dirty, dark color. I was a little shy of
handling it, though I believe there was no hurt in it. This I judge to
be that fish which Mr. Purchase in his Pilgrims, and Captain Smith in
his General History, page 125, affirm to be extremely like St. George's
Dragon, except only that it wants feet and wings. Governor Spotswood has
one of them dried in full shape.

Sec. 23. Before the arrival of the English there the Indians had fish in
such vast plenty, that the boys and girls would take a pointed stick and
strike the lesser sort as they swam upon the flats. The larger fish,
that kept in deeper water, they were put to a little more difficulty to
take. But for these they made weirs, that is, a hedge of small riv'd
sticks, or reeds, of the thickness of a man's finger. These they wove
together in a row, with straps of green oak, or other tough wood, so
close that the small fish could not pass through. Upon high water mark
they pitched one end of this hedge, and the other they extended into the
river, to the depth of eight or ten feet, fastening it with stakes,
making cods out from the hedge on one side almost at the end, and
leaving a gap for the fish to go into them, which were contrived so that
the fish could easily find their passage into those cods when they were
at the gap, but not see their way out again when they were in. Thus, if
they offered to pass through, they were taken.

Sometimes they made such a hedge as this quite across a creek at high
water, and at low would go into the run, then contracted into a narrow
stream, and take out what fish they pleased.

At the falls of the rivers, where the water is shallow, and the current
strong, the Indians use another kind of weir, thus made: They make a dam
of loose stone, whereof there is plenty at hand, quite across the river,
leaving one, two or more spaces or tunnels for the water to pass
through; at the mouth of which they set a pot of reeds, wove in form of
a cone, whose base is about three feet, and perpendicular ten, into
which the swiftness of the current carries