Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/92

86 He tells us they were numerous and of various kinds: the catfish, weighing from three to eighty pounds; the buffalo, from five to thirty; the pike, from four to fifteen pounds; the sturgeon, from four to ten; the perch, from one to twenty-five; the sucker, from one-half a pound to six pounds; and occasionally a few herring were caught. A fisherman, drawing in his seine in the spring of 1805, found among other fish, it is said, a few shad of three or four pounds. These were caught at Pittsburg. A great many felt disposed to dispute that these were salt water shad considering the great distance from the sea, but all who tasted of them positively identified them, in taste and shape, as the shad which were caught in the Delaware River. Eels and soft-shell turtles, though occasionally caught, were not plentiful in 1806. The numerous and various kinds of wild ducks and the few geese which frequented the river often furnished food for pioneers descending the Ohio; for the purpose of shooting ducks and geese, turkeys, and occasionally a deer or bear, the boats were always well supplied with fire-arms.