while it is expected that the future will more than justify the outlay, but in general it is acknowledged that this great volume of water flowing seaward with slow gradations from the freshness of a mountain stream to the saltness of the Digitized by Microsoft® Sports and Industries 441 ocean is no longer a fisherman's river. One can hardly believe that the schools of fish have been de- pleted by the industry of the fishermen. By the ordinary process of multiplication, if unchecked by other untoward influences, the supply of fish in such a river must always be in excess of the number caught with hook and line. But there are other pernicious influences, among them the pollution which results from sewage in the vicinity of large towns. There can be little doubt that fish are poisoned by the fouling of the element in which they live. It may be too that the constant accretion of cinders and ashes upon the bed of the channels has prevented the development of those forms of life upon which the fish depend for food. That this view is not entirely fanciful the reader will readily see if he will take paper and pencil, and with such data as he may have at hand calculate the num- ber of steamers that have dumped their ashpans in the river in the past threescore years. A million tons would fall far short of the probable deposit. The restocking of the waters will only be an efficient remedy in places where the fry will not be subject to the disadvantages we have suggested and others of equal importance. It is well known that many, if not all, of the fish that frequent the Hudson, or any large river, run into the smaller streams to spawn. The practical closing of many such streams by means of dams, where no fish-ways are provided, must of neces- sity militate greatly against the natural increase. Digitized by Microsoft® 442 The Hudson River Under favourable conditions this increase would be enormous. A single female tomcod, for instance, will produce fifty thousand eggs or more. Two hundred and eighty-eight thousand such eggs would just fill a quart measure. But in order to secure the develop- ment of even a small percentage of all this embryonic life it is necessary to have undisturbed, fairly pure, and abundant water. At the hatcheries of the State Commission it has been found that the shad fry, if they are to be raised at all, must never be handled even with the nets that may be used in the rearing of young trout or salmon. The ideal pond for hatching purposes is one that has been dry for months, so that all life in it is destroyed, and then filled by seepage, thus excluding enemies that would otherwise destroy the adolescent shadlings. It will be readily seen that the natural conditions of the Hudson and its tributaries at the present day are not conducive to the increase of delicate fish. Digitized by Microsoft® Chapter XXVII Rondout and Kingston THE name Rondout signifies a fort or earthwork; it was first applied to the Dutch post near Esopus River, and afterwards to the settled land in the neighbourhood. The word Esopus, it is said, was derived from seepus, a river, and was first given to the Indians dwelling upon the banks of the river that afterwards bore that name. The Indians whose settlements extended through Ulster and Greene counties belonged to the Mingua nation, that Leather- stocking was fond of referring to as Mingos. The Minnesinks, one of the largest clans, were originally dwellers on a minnis, or island, in the upper waters of the Delaware. The Mohegan Indians lived upon the upper shore of the Hudson. Northward of Esopus, on the west shore, the land was claimed by the Mohawks, who ruled, the forests as far north as Champlain and through the valley of the Mohawk River. They were to the more peaceable tribes of the south as a hawk is to a heron, being- fierce, revengeful, and cruel almost beyond conception. Their occasional forays into the 443 Digitized by Microsoft® 444 The Hudson River lands of their neighbours were events to be anticipated with dread and remembered with horror. Hidden under a modern post-office designation we freqviently find half a dozen earlier place-names, as the geologist discovers in a river-bed successive deposits. "I am surprised to find," said a gentleman of an en- quiring mind, " that Esopus had at one time a larger trade than Albany; yet I do not find Esopus on my map or on the time-table. Where was it?" Esopus has disappeared from the map, as have Wiltwyck, Atkarkarton, and Rondout, but all these old names, that are folded down and put away, like