Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and animals, and laying down new lines, much needed in England just now, for the guidance of the farmer. The Potomac is a wide shallow stream, with low well-wooded banks of drift, and abundantly stocked with shad, an excellent fish which is taken on a very large scale a few miles below Washington. A trip to see the nets hauled, with a fish dinner to follow, is one of the amusements of the city, and a " shad bake," or " plank shad excursion," was always a favourite form of picnic in old Southern days. It was a stifling morning when we left the city with a party of perhaps a hundred people, in a large river steamer. The Potomac was gay with shipping of all kinds, from brigs in cargo for Washington, to fishing crafts and pleasure yachts. The latter are more like saucers than boats. Each carries a single mast, stepped near the bow, and one great mainsail, with a boom nearly twice the length of the yacht. They are exquisitely built, and sail like the wind. The river near Washington is full of shallows, covered with miles of stake nets, in which great quantities of Potomac herrings are taken at every tide. Fifteen miles below the city is Mount Vernon, the burial-place of George Washington, on passing which the steamer's bell tolled solemnly, and shortly afterwards we reached the fishery. Shad are taken in seines not less than three miles long, which are hauled twice in every twenty-four hours by a steam-engine and windlass fixed on shore, the tackle being quite unmanageable by hand. When the net reaches shallow water it is surrounded by a semicircle of black fellows who, standing close together and waist-deep in the water, keep up a constant stamping to frighten the fish and prevent their escaping. Meanwhile large " scows," or flat-bottomed boats, are brought alongside the seine a...