42 FISH HARVESTING. 



About a mile from my camp was a large patch 

 of pebbly ground, dry even at the highest 

 floods, through which a shallow stream found its 

 way into the larger river. Though barely of 

 sufficient depth to cover an ordinary-sized sal- 

 mon, yet I have seen that stream so filled, that 

 fish pushed one another out of the water high- 

 and-dry upon the pebbles. Each, with its head 

 up-stream, struggled, fought, and scuffled for 

 precedence. With one's hands only, or, more 

 easily, by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, 

 tons of salmon could have been procured by the 

 simple process of hooking them out. 



It seems to me that thousands of the salmon 

 ascending these small mountain- streams never 

 can spawn from sheer want of room, or, if they 

 do, it must be under most unfavourable circum- 

 stances. At the end of the pebble-stream was a 

 waterfall, beyond which no fish could by any 

 possibility pass. Having arrived at this barrier 

 to all farther progress, there they obstinately 

 remained. Weeks were spent in watching them, 

 but I never, in a single instance, saw one turn 

 back and endeavour to seek a more congenial 

 watercourse : but, crowded from behind bv 



& 



fresh arrivals, they died by the score, and, drift- 

 ing slowly along, in time reached the larger 



