THE PACIFIC SALMON. 75 



With rod in hand the engineer sought the boat-house, and 

 a short time later was ghding noiselessly over the water in 

 his Hyda canoe. Under wharves, among a fleet of all kinds 

 of smaller crafts, he pursued his noiseless way, until he 

 reached the city front. Then, threading among ships and 

 steamers, riding peacefully at anchor, he at last found him- 

 self alone on the bosom of the bay. When at sufficient dis- 

 tance from the shore he jointed his rod and attached a spoon 

 of his own construction to the line. Reeling ofi one hun- 

 dred and sixty feet of line, he knelt in the bottom of the canoe, 

 holding the rod between his knees, and began to paddle 

 swiftly across the bay. 



The Hyda canoe is a craft peculiar to the northwest coast. 

 Formed out of a log of cedar by slow and diligent chopping 

 with a crude adze in the hands of an Indian it becomes a 

 thing of shape, balance, and beaut}-, that a white man can 

 never successfully imitate. Superstition ever being prominent 

 in the savage mind, the prows of these canoes are alwa}'s shaped 

 into one of the totems by which the different families of their 

 tribes are designated — either the bear, the raven, or the wolf. 

 The canoe that carried the engineer this fateful morning was 

 about fifteen feet long and twenty inches beam. It was 

 gayly decorated at the prow with a wolf-head that possessed 

 two large, glaring eyes of an exceedingl}- j'ellow color. 



Evidently the Salmon were not hungry. The engineer pad- 

 dled half-way across the bay, but the savage rush that tells 

 that the Tyee is there was not telegraphed along the line. 

 Other boats now joined him. and four great scows loaded with 

 nets and Italians came creeping out from shore and anchored 

 in the middle of the bay, about a quarter of a mile apart. 

 Then the boats that had towed the scows out began to spread 

 the nets, forming a half-circle around the scows, perhaps two 

 hundred yards in extent. The foreign ruffians were evidently 

 happy, for, as they spread their nets, they sang a song very 

 much like this: 



