42 FISH HARVESTING. 
About a mile from my camp was a large patch 
of pebbly ground, dry even at the highest 
floods, through which a shallow stream found its 
way into the larger river. Though barely of 
sufficient depth to cover an ordinary-sized sal- 
mon, yet I have seen that stream so filled, that 
fish pushed one another out of the water high- 
and-dry upon the pebbles. Each, with its head 
up-stream, struggled, fought, and scuffled for 
precedence. With one’s hands only, or, more 
easily, by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, 
tons of salmon could have been procured by the 
simple process of hooking them out. 
It seems to me that thousands of the salmon 
ascending these small mountain-streams never 
can spawn from sheer want of room, or, if they 
do, it must be under most unfavourable circum- 
stances. At the end of the pebble-stream was a 
waterfall, beyond which no fish could by any 
possibility pass. Having arrived at this barrier 
to all farther progress, there they obstinately 
remained. Weeks were spent in watching them, 
but I never, in a single instance, saw one turn 
back and endeavour to seek a more congenial 
watercourse ; but, crowded from behind by 
fresh arrivals, they died by the score, and, drift- 
ing slowly along, in time reached the larger 
