STORY OF A SALMON, 3 



By-and-by the water began to change. It grew denser, and no 

 longer flowed rapidly along, and twice a day it used to turn about and 

 flow the other way. And the shores disappeared, and the water began 

 to have a different and peculiar flavor a flavor which seemed to the 

 salmon much richer and more inspiring than the glacier-water of 

 their native Cowlitz. And there were many curious things to see ; 

 crabs with hard shells and savage faces, but so good when crushed and 

 swallowed ! Then there were luscious squid swimming about, and, to 

 a salmon, squid are like ripe peaches and cream for dinner. There 

 were great companies of delicate sardines and herring, green and 

 silvery, and it was such fun to chase them and to capture them ! 



Those who eat only sardines, packed in oil by greasy fingers, and 

 herrings dried in the smoke, can have little idea how satisfying it is 

 to have one's stomach full of them, plump and sleek, and silvery, fresh 

 from the sea. 



Thus they chased the herrings about and had a merry time. Then 

 they were chased about in turn by great sea-lions, swimming mon- 

 sters with huge half -human faces, long thin whiskers, and blundering 

 ways. The sea-lions liked to bite out the throats of the salmon, with 

 their precious stomachs full of luscious sardines, and then to leave the 

 rest of the fish to shift for itself. 



And the seals and the herrings scattered the salmon about, and at 

 last the hero of our story found himself quite alone, with none of his 

 own kind near him. But that did not trouble him much, and he went 

 on his own way, getting his dinner when he was hungry, which was 

 all the time, and then eating a little between-meals for his stomach's 

 sake. 



So it went on for three long years ; and at the end of this time our 

 little fish had grown to be a great, fine salmon, of forty pounds' weight, 

 shining and silvery as a new tin pan, and with rows of the loveliest 

 round black spots on his head, and back, and tail. One day, as he was 

 swimming about, idly chasing a big sculpin, with a head so thorny 

 that he never was swallowed by anybody, all of a sudden the salmon 

 noticed a change in the water around him. 



Spring had come again, and the south-lying snow-drifts on the Cas- 

 cade Mountains once more felt that the " earth was wheeling sunward," 

 and the cold snow-waters ran down from the mountains and into the 

 Columbia River, and made a freshet on the river, and the high water 

 went far out into the sea, and out in the sea our salmon felt it on his 

 gills ; and he remembered how the cold water used to feel in the 

 Cowlitz when he was a little fish, and in a blundering, fishy fashion 

 he thought about it, and wondered whether the little eddy looked as 

 it used to, and whether caddice-worms and young mosqjiitoes were 

 really as sweet and tender as he used to think they were ; and he 

 thought some other things, but, as a salmon's mind is located in the 

 optic lobes of his brain, and ours in a different place, we can not be 



