On both sides of the river they were pursuing their vocation with assiduity, for "the season" lasts only about two months. The

immense reels on which they stretch and dry their nets, the rough, uncouth costume of the fishermen, appropriate to the water and the slime, the groups of young people who gather upon the beach to see the " catch," form interesting and sometimes picturesque foregrounds to every view on these shores. The shad'^' is the most important fish of the Hudson, being very delicious as food, and caught in such immense

* Alosa jn-astabLlis. Head and back dark bluish ; sides of the bodygi-eeiiish, with blue and yellowish thiiiigeable metallic reflections; belly nearly white; length from one to two feet. It resides in the northern seas, but comes to us from the south to deposit its spawn. It appears at Charleston in January or February ; early in Marcli at Norfolk and Baltimore, and at New York at the latter end of March.

THE HUDSON.

numbers, as to make them clieap dishes for the poor man's table. They enter the Hudson in immense numbers towards the close of March or beginning of April, and ascend to the head of tide water to spawn. It is while on their passage up that the greater number and best conditioned arc caught, several hundreds being sometimes taken in a single "catch." They generally descend the river at the close of May, when they are

«l^

lIslIIN(r '5r ±x >\ --^,±11 Lh.O'S, MI\I),