STONE ON THE SACRAMENTO SALMON. 169 



numbers that we counted sixty in one spot, as we stood at the waters' 

 edge. It was evident that this was the phice to get the breeding lish, and 

 the next thiug was to find water to mature the eggs for shipment. Tliis 

 was not so easy a task as finding the salmon, but we at last discovered 

 a spring stream, flowing a thousand gallons an hour, which I decided to 

 use, this season at least, and on the morning of September 1, 1872, the 

 hatching-Avorks of the first salmon-breeding station of the United States 

 were located on this stream. The location is about three miles up the 

 McCloud River, on its left or western bank. It is one hundred and 

 eighty-five miles from Sacramento City; three hundred and twenty- 

 three miles fiom San Francisco via Pacific Eailroad; four hundred and 

 fifty-three miles from Portland, Oreg.; two hundred and seventy -two 

 miles from Oakland, Oreg. ; fifty miles from Red Bluff, Cal.; twenty-two 

 miles from Redding, Cal. The point selected is on the California and Or- 

 egon stage-road, which, at the time of our arrival, connected with the 

 railroad at Red Bluff. The raib^oad has now been continued to Red- 

 ding, and it is thought that next year it will run within ten miles of the 

 salmon-breeding station. The spawn found in the fish that the Indians 

 were spearing on our arrival indicated that there was no time to spare iu 

 getting ready for the hatching- work. We were twenty-five miles from the 

 nearest town or village, fifty miles from a railwaj" station, over fifty miles 

 from an available saw-mill, and in the Sierra ISTevada Mtnintains, where 

 the mule-teams barely made twenty miles a day with supplies ; but we 

 went to work, and in fifteen days we had a house built, filtering tanks, 

 hatching apparatus, and flume in perfect running order, and on the 16tU 

 of September were catching and corralHng the salmon. There were but 

 three of us, and every day for a "week the mercury ran from 105° to 112° 

 F. in the shade. But although we worked so expeditiously through the 

 broiUng sun of those days, we were too late. The first few hauls of the 

 net showed that the salmon had spawned. In fact, the salmon begin to 

 spawn in the McCloud River some time in August, and are through 

 spawning, or nearly through, by the 12th of September. 



We cauglit plenty of salmon in the seine, but only rarely a female 

 with ova. By hard fishing, and hauling the seine every night and 

 sometimes all night, we succeeded in capturing twenty-six salmon, includ- 

 ing both sexes, in spawning condition, by the 28th of September. On 

 the night of the 28th, at midnight, as the returns did not seem to war- 

 rant the expense of handling the seine, I stopped fishing. Of the 

 twenty-six breeding salmon caught, twelve were females and yielded 

 about 50,000 eggs. Of this number 20,000 were destroyed by the terri- 

 ble heat of the last of September; the mercury on some days reaching 

 as high as 112° in the shade. The remaining 30,000 did well, in spite 

 of many dangers from sediment, and from a fungoid growth which 

 seemed to permeate the brook water on hot days, and which rendered 

 constant vigilance necessary; and on the 12th day of October, the most 

 advanced eggs showed the eye-spots. By Friday, October 18, all the 



