THE SALMON AND TROUT OF ALASKA. 25 



Indians, and the Creole boy in the belfry of the Greek 

 church, that when first the glad tidings are announced, 

 the fish are many miles away, and no signs of their ad- 

 vent visible to the unpracticed eye. Far away to the 

 southward, there hangs all winter a dense black bank, 

 the accumulation of the constant uprising of vapor from 

 the warm surface of the Kuro-siwo, or Japanese Gulf 

 Stream, which washes the shores of this archipelago ; 

 condensed by the cold winds sweeping over the snow- 

 clad mountains to the northward, it is swept by them, 

 and piled up as far as the eye can reach, covering and 

 hiding the southern horizon as with a pall. 



Presently our glasses reveal bright flashes upon the 

 face of this curtain ; and soon, to the naked eye, it ap- 

 pears as though the whole horizon had been encircled 

 with a coral reef, against which the dashing waves were 

 being shattered into foamy breakers. The breakers ad- 

 vance, and soon among them we discern black, rapidly- 

 moving forms, and here our previous nautical experience 

 comes into play, and, "Holy mither, d'ye mind the say 

 pigs ! " as shouted by Paddy Sullivan, the captain of the 

 afterguard, explains most graphically the phenomenon. 



The salmon are coming, and with them, among, and 

 after them, a host of porpoises ; an army so great, that 

 an attempt to estimate in numbers would be futile. 



The Bay and Sound of Sitka are dotted with many 

 beautiful, well-wooded islands ; between them, the 

 channels are deep and blue, and these are soon thronged 

 by the fleeing salmon and their pursuers ; the harbor is 



