[7] OPERATIONS AT THE m'cLOUD RIVER SALMON STATION. 1069 



workmen had a house to eat and sleep in. We began with carefully 

 examining the ground by going over it with a boat, and by feeling of 

 the bottom of the river with long poles. After finding out in this way 

 where both the depressions and projections were, we went to work with 

 giant powder and blasted for two or three days till we had broken up 

 and leveled down to a great extent the projecting ledges and bowlders. 

 We then took one of our large flat boats or scows and ran it out over 

 the places to be filled up, and, bridging over the space between the boat 

 and the shore, we set a force of a dozen Indians or so at work on a soft 

 bank on the shore. The Indians with picks and shovels cut down the 

 bank, and then with wheelbarrows carried the earth and gravel out to 

 the scow and dumped them into the holes where the earth was needed 

 in the seining ground. This work was carried on until all the depres- 

 sions on the seining ground were filled up, and the tops of the broken 

 rocks wholly covered over. After this was done a few hauls of the net 

 smoothed the whole place over, and the seining ground was as good or 

 better than before. 



Before proceeding further with tbe taking of the salmon eggs, I ought 

 to say that a strange and fatal disease made its appearance among the 

 salmon of the river about the 25th of June. We first discovered it from 

 observing dead salmon collecting in the eddies, and others floating down 

 the river. Dead salmon during and after the spawning season are 

 common enough in the river, but to see them in June was a very unu- 

 sual sight. In fact it was a sight never seen before in our ten years' 

 experience on the McCloud. The chief peculiarity of the disease was 

 that many, if not most, of the dying fish presented a perfectly healthy 

 exterior. They were clean, plump, silvery fish, free from fungus and 

 parasites, and without a mark or sign on the surface to show that any- 

 thing was wrong about them. I examined several to discover the cause 

 of the mortality. In most of the fish that I dissected the mouth and 

 gills seemed healthy and intact, while the viscera were very much con- 

 gested with dark blood, and the spleen was very much enlarged. Later 

 in the season, those that I examined all had unhealthy gills. The gills 

 in these cases were very much abraded on the outer edges, and were 

 almost stuck together by a slimy or gummy substance, as if the gills 

 had been injured and had freely maturated. This was found to be the 

 case with many living fish which were caught in the seine. Il^either of 

 the symptoms just described were ever observed here in the salmon 

 before this year. I preserved in alcohol several specimens of the viscera 

 of salmon dying from this disease, and sent them to the National Museum 

 at Washington, where an examination of them will probably throw 

 some light upon the causes of this mysterious epidemic. 



Proceeding now with the taking of salmon eggs, I will go on to say 

 that the number of ripe salmon caught at each haul in the seine soon 

 commenced to increase, and on the 18th of August I thought it safe to 

 begin to collect salmon eggs for the hatching house. On that day we 



