44 FISH HARVESTING. 
up-stream, or the obstacles they may have to 
overcome, have clearly nothing to do with their 
dying. In the Chilukweyuk river the distance 
from the sea is not over 200 miles, and that 
clear from any kind of hindrance; and yet they 
die in thousands. In the Columbia they ascend 
a thousand miles to the Kettle Falls, and they 
have been caught many hundred miles above 
that; still they die just the same as in the 
shorter streams. Up the Snake river they push 
their way to the great Shoshonee Falls, over a 
thousand miles against a rocky stream, but perish 
there just as they do in the Sumass and Chiluk- 
weyuk rivers, which are close to the sea. 
Unlike the salmon in our own streams, the 
spring-salmon in North-western waters spawn in 
midsummer, when the water is at its lowest tem- 
perature and greatest flood-height, from the melt- 
ing snow. As there is no impediment or hindrance 
to prevent them returning to the sea, why do they 
die in N.W. waters ? In my opinion, from sheer 
starvation. Careful observations, made at various 
Indian fishing-stations and extending over a long 
space of time, have quite convinced me that 
salmon (I more particularly allude to the spring- 
fish) never feed after leaving saltwater. My 
reasons for thus thinking are, first, no salmon 
