Bangor, October 4, 1879.

DEAR PROFESSOR: My delay in replying to your kind letter has been from
no want of courtesy, but a desire to send you the required "data" you
asked. Neither myself nor Mr. Atkins have been able to procure them. The
weir fishermen keep no records at all, and it is difficult to obtain
from them anything reliable; while the fishermen above tidewater are a
bad set of confirmed poachers, whose only occupation is hunting and
fishing both in and out of season. They are always jealous and loth to
let us know how good a thing they make of it, for fear of us and fear of
competition from their own class.

Four or five years since I put in some 300,000 salmon fry into the
Mattawamkeag at Bancroft, Eaton, Kingsmore, and at Mattawamkeag village.
There are three dams between Mattawamkeag and Bancroft--none less than
12 feet high. About six weeks since Mr. Nathaniel Sweat, a railroad
conductor on the European and North American Railroad, while fishing for
trout from a pier above the railroad bridge at Bancroft, hooked a large
salmon and lost his line and flies. Salmon in great numbers have been
continually jumping below the first dam, which is called "Gordon's
Falls."

My colleague, Everett Smith, of Portland, a civil engineer, while making
a survey for a fishway, counted 15 salmon jumping in 30 minutes. A Mr.
Bailey, who is foreman of the repair shop at Mattawamkeag walked up to
the falls some three weeks since entirely out of curiosity excited by
the rumors of the sight, and counted 60 salmon jumping in about an hour,
within half or three-quarters of a mile of the falls. This is on the
Mattawamkeag, which is a great tributary of the Penobscot.