BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 235 



five were counted jumping in the space of a minute. There was an 

 Indian war in Idaho this year. Dangerous threats of burning the fish- 

 ery were made by neighboring Indians. All our men were furnished 

 by the War Department with rifles and ammunition. 14,000,000 salmon 

 eggs were taken and two car-loads sent East. 



1879. 



The McCloud River trout-pond station was established this year. 

 7,000,000 salmon eggs were taken, of which 2,000,000 were hatched for 

 the Sacramento, and the remainder sent to the Eastern States, Europe, 

 and Australia. The Indian war being over, the Indians were friendly 



again. 



1880. 



This was an uneventful year at the salmon fishery. Seven and a half 

 million salmon eggs were taken. At the trout-breeding station 338,000 

 trout eggs were taken and a great number of large parent trout were 

 caught in the river and added to the stock in the pond. Salmon were 

 very abundant indeed in the McCloud River this year. 



1881. 



The flood of February 3 carried away almost the whole of the salmon- 

 breeding station. During the night of February 2 the rain, which had 

 been falling in torrents for several days, seemed to increase in volume, 

 and the river rose at the rate of a foot an hour. Long before midnight 

 the water had risen above the danger mark, and at half past two on the 

 morning of February 3 the large dwelling house toppled over with a 

 great crash and was instantly swept down the river by the irresistible 

 current, followed soon after by the other buildings. Nothing of any con- 

 sequence was left. My report for the year says : 



" The men's house, where the workmen had eaten and slept for nine 

 successive seasons, and which contained the original cabin, 12 by 14 feet, 

 where the pioiieere of the United States Fish Commission lived during 

 the first season of 1872 ; the hatching house which, with the tents that 

 preceded it, had turned out 70,000,000 salmon eggs, the distribution 

 of which reached from New Zealand to St. Petersburg; the large dwell- 

 ing house, to which improvements and conveniences had been added each 

 year for five years, these were all gone, every vestige of them, and noth- 

 ing was to be seen in the direction where they stood except the wreck 

 of the faithful wheel which through summers' suns and winters' rains 

 had poured a hundred million gallons of water over the salmon eggs in 

 the hatchery, and which now lay dismantled and ruined upon the flat- 

 boats which had supported it and which were kept from escaping by 

 two wire cables made fast to the river bank. 



u The river continued to rise the next forenoon, until it reached a max- 

 imum height of 20 feet and 8 inches above its summer level. This, *)f 

 course, is not a very extraordinary rise for a slow-moving river, but 



