Long ere the full riches of the forests were tested the colonists turned to another food-supply,—the treasures of the sea.
The early voyagers and colonists came to the coasts of the New World to find gold and furs. The gold was not found by them nor their children's children in the land which is now the United States, till over two centuries had passed from the time of the settlement, and the gold-mines of California were opened. The furs were at first found and profitably gathered, but the timid fur-bearing animals were soon exterminated near the settlements. There was, however, a vast wealth ready for the colonists on the coast of the New World which was greater than gold, greater than furs; a wealth ever-obtainable, ever-replenished, ever-useful, ever-salable; it was fish. The sea, the rivers, the lakes, teemed with fish. Not only was there food for the settlers, but for the whole world, and all Europe desired fish to eat. The ships of the early discoverer, Gosnold, in 1602, were "pestered with cod." Captain John Smith, the acute explorer, famous in history as befriended by Pocahontas, went to New England, in 1614, to seek for whale, and instead he fished for cod. He secured sixty thousand in one month; and he wrote to his countrymen, "Let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will afford as good gold as the mines of Guiana or Potosi, with less hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility." This promise of wealth has proved true a thousandfold. Smith wrote home to England full accounts of the fisheries, of the proper equipment of a fishing-vessel, of the methods of fishing, the profits, all in a most enticing and familiar style. He said in his Description of New England:—
"What pleasure can be more than to recreate themselves before their owne doores in their owne boates, upon the Sea, where man, woman, and childe, with a small hooke and line by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasure? And is it not pretty sport to pull up twopence, sixpence, or twelvepence, as fast as you can hale and veare a line? If a man worke but three days in seaven hee may get more than hee can spend unless hee will be excessive.
"Young boyes and girles, salvages, or any other, be they never such idlers may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great pain: hee is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."
His accounts and similar ones were so much read in England that when the Puritans asked King James of England for permission to come to America, and the king asked what profit would be found by their emigration, he was at once answered, "Fishing." Whereupon he said in turn, "In truth 'tis an honest trade; 'twas the apostles' own calling." Yet in spite of their intent to fish, the first English ships came but poorly provided for fishing, and the settlers had little success at first even in getting fish for their own food. Elder Brewster of Plymouth, who had been a courtier in Queen Elizabeth's time, and had seen and eaten many rich feasts, had nothing to eat at one time but clams. Yet he could give thanks to God that he was "permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in the sand." The Indian Squanto showed the Pilgrims many practical methods of fishing, among them one of treading out eels from the brook with his feet and catching them with his hands. And every ship brought in either cod-hooks and lines, mackerel-hooks and lines, herring-nets, seines, shark-hooks, bass-nets, squid-lines, eel-pots, coils of rope and cable, "drails, barbels, pens, gaffs," or mussel-hooks.
Josselyn, in his New England's Rarities, written in 1672, enumerated over two hundred kinds of fish that were caught in New England waters.
Lobsters certainly were plentiful enough to prevent starvation. The minister Higginson, writing of lobsters at Salem, said that many of them weighed twenty-five pounds apiece, and that "the least boy in the plantation may catch and eat what he will of them." In 1623, when the ship Anne arrived from England, bringing many of the wives and children of the Pilgrims who had come in the first ships, the only feast of welcome that the poor husbands had to offer the newcomers was "a lobster or a piece of fish without bread or anything else but a cup of spring water."
Patriarchal lobsters five and six feet long were caught in New York Bay. The traveller, Van der Donck, says "those a foot long are better for serving at table." Truly a lobster six feet long would seem a little awkward to serve on a dinner table. Eddis, in his Letters from America, written in 1792, says these vast lobsters were caught in New York waters until Revolutionary days, when "since the incessant cannonading, they have entirely forsaken the coast; not one having been taken or seen since the commencement of hostilities." Beside these great shell-fish the giant lobster confined in our New York Aquarium in 1897 seems but a dwarf. In Virginia waters lobsters were caught, and vast crabs, often a foot in length and six inches broad, with a long tail and many legs. One of these crabs furnished a sufficient meal for four men.
From the gossiping pages of the Labadist missionaries who came to America in 1697 we find hints of good fare in oysters in Brooklyn.
"Then was thrown upon the fire, to be roasted, a pail full of Gowanes oysters which are the best in the country. They are fully as good as those of England, better than those we eat at Falmouth. I had to try some of them raw. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot long. Others are young and small. In consequence of the great quantities of them everybody keeps the shells for the burning of lime. They pickle the oysters in small casks and send them to Barbados."