384 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
purple, and olive, with scarlet spots, and are very slender, almost sub- 
cylindrical in shape. 
Brook TROUT. Salmo sp. 
Brook trout are not found north of the peninsula of Aliaska, on the 
American side of Bering Sea. They are obtainable at Avacha Bay, on 
the Asiatic side, but probably do not go much farther north. They have 
been observed at North Harbor, Unga Island, in the streams of Cook’s 
Inlet, and near Sitka. They are usually very dark colored, indeed 
almost black. 
THH SALMON FISHERY. 
Next to the cod and herring, the salmon fishery is undoubtedly the 
most important branch of this traffic. The number of this fish on the 
Alaska shores is inconceivable. ‘Chatham Harbor,” writes Portlock, 
“is filled with salmon; the smail river which empties into it is swarm- 
ing with them; the bears come down and feed upon them, catching the 
fish with their paws, and eating only the head. I have sometimes seen 
twenty bears thus engaged in one day.” On the same authority, the 
anchorage at Port Ktches afforded two thousand salmon at one haul of 
the seine; they existed in such numbers that any quantity might have 
been obta ined. Vanc couver reports ‘‘ salmon in great quantity leaping 
in all directions” in the Portland Canal, July 29, 1793. Salmon and 
trout were found in great abundance in the rivers falling into Lituya 
Bay by La Perouse. The Stikine River, according to Mr. Davidson, of 
the United States Coast Survey, abounds in salmon, which are split 
and the back-bone taken out, and are then cut into strips and smoked 
by the natives. Thirteen hundred natives, living between Chugach 
Gulf and Yakutat Bay, live exclusively upon fish, which they obtain 
with the greatest ease, according to Tebenkofi. Mr. Davidson says: 
At some of the entrances to shallow fresh-water streams the water is packed with 
salmon. On some ef the beaches near these streams the seine will take them in 
thousands. In the bays leading to the small streams at their head, on the southeast 
side of Aliaska Peninsula, the salmon are crowded so thickly that the progress of a 
boat is impeded, and should a southeast storm arise at such times, the fish are driven 
upon the beach in innumerable quantities. One of the Russian navigators assures us 
that he has seen the beach strewn two or three feet thick with the stranded salmon. 
The chief winter food of the natives is salmon, dry and smoked, of 
which they provide very large quantities. Seemann says: 
Salmon, so numerous in Norton Sound, latitude 64° north, are not found to the north- 
ward of Buckland River, emptying into Kotzebue Sound, in latitude 66° 05’ north. 
They appear, however, to be replaced by the mullet, which attains a considerable size. 
I obtained for a blue bead a mullet thirty-three inches long, weighing twenty-one 
pounds. 
The number of salmon annually consumed by the natives of Alaska 
cannot be less than twelve millions, at the lowest estimate. At the 
Russian fishery near Deep Lake, Baranoff Island, eighty-four thou- 
sand one hundred and fifty-nine fish were obtained during a single 
season, of which two-thirds were salted. At the fisheries upon Kadiak 
and Cook’s Inlet, four hundred and sixty-five thousand salmon were 
caught annually. Among the articles sent by Baranoff to the Sandwich 
Islands were four thousand three hundred and forty-four casks of salted 
salmon, which realized the sum of $69,871 in coin. At the mouth of 
the Yukon not less than two million salmon are annually dried for winter 
use, and probably double that number. Words fail to give an adequate 
idea of their number. We have seen the weak and injured fish which 
