30 FISHING WITH THE FLY. 



after every fair day's seining the sanely beach in front of 

 Russian town presents a picturesque appearance, dotted 

 as it is with heaps of from one to three tons of salmon, 

 whose silvery sheen reflects the light of the bonfires, 

 around which, knives in hand, squat all the old squaws 

 and children, cleaning on shares. Nearly all of the fish 

 taken by them are smoked for winter's use. 



Every glacial stream in Alaska is, in its season, full 

 of salmon, alive and dead. One, which for want of a 

 better, was given my name, and appears on the charts 

 as Beardslee River, I will describe ; for in it I saw, for 

 the first time, that which had been described to me, 

 but which I had doubted ; a stream so crowded with 

 fish that one could hardly wade it and not step on them ; 

 this and other as interesting sights fell to me that 

 pleasant August day. 



As we, in our little steamer, neared William Henry 

 Bay, situated on the west side of Chatham Strait, and an 

 indentation of Bar anoff Island, we found ourselves in a 

 pea-green sea, dotted here and there with the backs of 

 garbosha salmon ; the fish, which were of the few that 

 had survived the crisis of reproduction, having drifted 

 out of the bay, and with their huge humps projecting, 

 were swimming aimlessly, and apparently blindly (for 

 after anchoring, they would run against our boats, and 

 directly into hands held out to catch them), in the 

 brackish surface water ; made so and given its peculiar 

 color by the water of Beardslee River, which arising at 

 the foot of a glacier, had been fed by rivulets from 



