390 REPORT CF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



We found our car detached from the train, and nearly all under water, 

 both couplings having parted. The tender was out of sight, and the 

 upper end of our car resting on it. The engine was three-fourths under 

 water, and one man in the engine-cab crushed to death. Two, men wero 

 floating down the swift current in a drowning condition, and the balance 

 of the train still stood ou the track, with the forward car within a very- 

 few inches of the water's edge. The Westinghouse air-brake had saved 

 the train. If we had been without it, the destruction would have been 

 fearful. 



" One look was sufficient to show that the contents of the aquarium- 

 car were a total loss. No care or labor had been spared in bringing the 

 fish to this point, and now, almost on the verge of success, everything 

 was lost. 



u I immediately telegraphed the state of affairs to Mr. S. R. Throck- 

 morton, chairman of the California fish-commissioners, and to Hon. 

 Spencer F. Baird, the head of the United States Fish-Commission at 

 Washington. 1 received instructions, by telegraph, from Washington 

 the next morning, to return east immediately, with my assistants, and 

 take on a shipment of young shad to California under the auspices of the 

 United States Fish-Commission." 



D— OVERLAND JOURNEY WITH LIVE SHAD. 



1. — PREPARATION FOR TEE TRIP. 



As soon as was practicable after the accident to the first California 

 aquarium-car, I reported to Professor Baird at Washington, reaching 

 that city on the morning of June 15th. 



Having received here more explicit instructions in regard to the trip 

 with shad, I made immediate preparations for undertaking this journey, 

 and arrived at Castleton, on the Hudson, with my men, on the 25th day 

 of June. The New York State shad-hatching works, under the immedi- 

 ate charge of Mr. Monroe Green, are located here, and it was at this 

 point that I was to procure my consignment of shad for California. 



2. — THE START. 



At G o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, Wednesday, June 25, 

 I left the shad-hatching camp, with 40,000 young shad. They were 

 packed in eight 10-gallon cans, each can containing 5,000 fish. They 

 had been just taken from the shad-hatching boxes in the river by Mr. 

 Green, and appeared very healthy and lively ; but they looked so frail 

 and delicate that it seemed almost a hopeless task to undertake to carry 

 them. alive 3,000 miles, and deposit them in a river at the other 

 extremity of the continent, and I certainly despaired of getting them 

 there safely. 



There were four of us in all at the start : Mr. H. W. Welsher ; Mr. 

 W. T. Perrin ; Mr. Myron Green ; and myself. Mr. Welsher accom- 



