The salmon are cured by being first split, and rubbed with fine salt; and, after laying in pickle, in great tubs or reservoirs, are packed up with layers of coarse brown Spanish salt, in casks, six of which make a ton. These are exported to Leghorn and Venice.

Immediately near to Katrineberg, at a hamlet called Deje Forsa, there is a valuable fishery for salmon, ten or twelve thousand of these fish being taken there annually. They are, however, of a small size, the largest of them rarely exceeding twenty pounds in weight; one with another, indeed, they probably do not average more than six or seven pounds a-piece.

These salmon are bred in the Wenern lake, but, in consequence of the considerable cataracts at Deje, they never have access to the sea; from this cause, they are said to be inferior, in point of flavour, to those found in most other rivers.

I subjoin a statement of the numbers taken in eight successive years:—

182021,817
182111,751
182210,103
18239,823
182414,313
18258,884
18265,800
182710,500
———
92,991
———
11,624average.

In the river Beaulie, below the falls, is a valuable salmon fishery, and in the months of July and August many of these come to the foot of the falls. When a flood occurs, they endeavour to get up the stream, but as the water in which they swim is constantly agitated and frothy, on account of the height from which it descends, they cannot see before them, often mistake their direction, and leap upon the dry rock. It is a constant practice with the people in the neighbourhood to lay branches of trees along the side of the water, to prevent the fish tumbling back into the river. Twenty salmon have by these means been frequently taken in a morning. The last Lord Lovat is said to have performed a curious experiment here. He made a fire upon the rock, and placed on it a large pot of water; speedily a salmon, making a leap, tumbled into the pot where it was soon boiled, and no doubt eaten. This was done that his lordship might be enabled to boast in the south of the wonders that existed in the Highlands, which were then little known, and to say that in his country provisions abounded so much, that if a fire was made, and a pot set to boil on the banks of the river, the salmon would of themselves leap into the pot to be boiled, without requiring to be caught by a fisherman.

The fifteenth of February, 1809, Harry Fenn, a fish-salesman at Billingsgate, sold an uncrimped Severn salmon, weighing nineteen pounds, for the immense sum of one guinea per pound to Phillips, the fishmonger in Bond Street. N.B. It was the only salmon at market.