Webb was soon ready, and had provided himself with his skates and a small
sleigh with a back. When they arrived at the landing he tied his horse,
and said:
"The ice is too poor to drive on any longer, I am informed, but perfectly
safe still for foot-passengers. As a precaution we will follow the tracks
of the fishermen, and I will give you a swift ride on this little sledge,
in which I can wrap you up well."
Like most young men brought up in the vicinity, he was a good and powerful
skater, and Amy was soon enjoying the exhilarating sense of rapid motion
over the smooth ice, with a superb view of the grand mountains rising on
either side of the river a little to the south. They soon reached the nets,
which stretched across the river through narrow longitudinal cuts so as to
be at right angles to each tide, with which the fish usually swim. These
nets are such in shape as were formerly suspended between the old-fashioned
shad-poles, and are sunk perpendicularly in the water by weights at each
end, so that the meshes are expanded nearly to their full extent. The fish
swim into these precisely as do the shad, and in their attempts to back out
their gills catch, and there they hang.
The nests are about twelve feet square, and the meshes of different nets
are from to and a half to five and a quarter inches in size. A bass of
nine pounds' weight can be "gilled" in the ordinary manner; but in one
instance a fish weighing one hundred and two pounds was caught, and
during the present season they were informed that a lucky fisherman at
Marlborough had secured "a 52-pounder.
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