OPERATIONS IN CALIFORNIA IN 1873. 385 



practically exterminated. I have no means of ascertaining with, any 

 exactness how many Chinese fishermen there were on the river, but 

 there are a large number, and Mr. Ingersoll said that they were increas- 

 ing every year. Most of their fish they send to the San Francisco 

 market as soon as caught ; but they also dry great quantities of them 

 on bars and floors prepared for the purpose. These are partly eaten 

 by themselves, and the balance are sent packed in barrels to the Chinese 

 market in San Francisco. While at Eio Vista, in February, 1873, 1 visited 

 a Chinese fishing-station on the Sacramento Eiver. It was located about 

 eighty rods above the Eio Vista steamboat-lauding, and consisted of a 

 nest of Chinese fishiug-boats, numbering' seven small boats and three 

 large ones. There were also on the shore, just across the road, two old 

 tumble-down buildings, with drying bars and floors near by, in the open 

 air, where some of the fishermen lived, and attended to the drying of the 

 fish. The small boats were common flat-bottomed dories, square at the 

 stern, sharp at the bow, about fifteen feet long, and strongly built. The 

 large boats were also strongly built, but narrow and pointed at both 

 ends, and constructed after the Chinese fashion. Two of these large 

 boats had one mast, and the other one had two masts, considerably 

 raking, with Chinese sails, which were not like any sails used in this 

 country. Nearly amidships, but a little nearer one end than the other, 

 was a tent iu which the Chinamen lived. There was also considerable 

 space in the hold of this really Chinese junk, which added a good deal 

 to their house-room. The whole air and look of these crafts was 

 decidedly foreign, and I might say oriental. If I understand their method 

 rightly, the small boats are to visit the " slews" and various fishing-points 

 with, when they go out to draw the seine, and the large boats are really 

 only movable dwelling and store houses, where they live and receive the 

 fish that are brought in by the small boats, and which, of course, they 

 move from place to place on the river as the exigencies of the changing 

 fishing-seasons may require. 



C— CALIFQBNIA AQUAEIUM CAE. 



After leaving the Sacramento Eiver, I went to San Francisco, and 

 immediately began making preparations forgoing East to procure a car- 

 load of live fish, under the auspices of the California commissioners ; but 

 as the United States contributed toward defraying the expenses of this 

 expedition, I will introduce the following account of it here. I left San 

 Francisco on the 17th of March, 1873, and arrived in Boston on the 28th 

 of March, having made a short stop at Sacrameuto to arrange for the 

 transportation of the car, and also at Salt Lake City to provide for the 

 reception and hatching of a consignment of shad and salmon which 

 Professor Baird proposed to send to Great Salt Lake, Utah. 



I quote the following account of the aquarium-car trip from my report 

 to the California commission of that expedition : 



"My plan of operations for the whole undertaking was, first, to 



