THE FOOD FISHES OF ALASKA. °- 385 
die after spawning stranded in piles, three or four deep, on the banks 
of the Unalaklik River, a small stream flowing into Norton Sound. 
The following notes in regard to the running of the Yukon salmon 
were obtained from the natives at Fort Derabin, Nulato. ing salmon: 
arrive at Nulato “‘ when the trees have got into full leaf,’ about the 20th 
of June, and continue to run about three weeks. The last that come 
up are poor and lean. Hotkoh: the first arrive about the 10th of July, 
just as the king saimon are about gone, and they last about three weeks. 
Stragglers are occasionally canght as late, as January. fed fish: this 
arrives about a week or ten days after the first hoikoh, and continues 
with the latter until about the end of August. A few straggling dog- 
fish are occasionally caught with it, but the majority of this species do 
not ascend the river as high as Nulato. eezich: this is the last of the 
salmon to ascend the river, and is obtained until the cold weather sets 
in and puts a stop to the summer fishing. 
In Kazarn Bay, Clarence Sound, a Russian, in July, 1868, put up two 
hundred barrels of salmon a week, and, had he been provided with 
sufficient facilities, might have packed double that number. The salmon 
run there from July 1 to August 39. 
The United States Coast Survey has made a sketch of the outlet of 
Glubokoi, or Deep Lake, near Sitka, on the south side of Sitka Sound, 
where the Russian American Company have built traps, dams, foot- 
bridges, and houses in the most substantial manner. The dams and 
traps lie across the upper part of the rapids, which have a fall of nine 
feet over rocks. The traps are large rectangular spaces, made with 
stakes placed near enough to each other perpendicularly to allow a free 
flow of water, and yet to prevent the salmon passing between them. 
The side of the trap toward the descent has an opening like the entrance 
to an ordinary rat-trap on a large scale. The fish rush up the rapid and 
pass through the opening to the staked inclosure, where they remain 
swimming against the moderately strong current. When several salmon 
have entered, they are lifted out with a kind of wicker basket and placed 
in large boxes lying between the traps, of which there are six, with 
means of adding as many more. The last year’s catch that was packed 
for market amounted to five hundred and twenty barrels, containing 
eighteen to twenty-five salmon each, and weighing, when packed, about 
two hundred and fifty pounds. As high as one thousand salmon have 
been taken in one day. In 1868, the year’s catch, under the impetus of 
American enterprise, was two thousand barrels. 
There are, however, many localities at which salmon are much more 
plentiful than at Sitka. Mr. Davidson states that at the Russian trading 
post and salmon-fishery at Karta Bay, in 1868, it was expected that three 
thousand barrels of salmon would be put up. Mr. J. Piluger, Hawaiian 
consul at Petropaulovsk, on the west coast of Bering Sea, informed us 
that, with the aid of two men and a few native women, he was enabled 
to put up six hundred barrels of salmon in the course of the season of 
1866. The fish were caught with a seine, in a smail cove of Avacha 
Bay, and, being sent to the Sandwich Islands, were sold at a great profit, 
the gain from this operation alone amounting to much more than the 
profit upon the trade in Siberian sables, in which he was engaged for the 
previous three years. Large fisheries have been for some years located 
upon the Columbia River. The fish are taken only in gill-nets, at night, 
when the water is clear. Two men, with their boat and net, will average 
twelve hundred pounds in one night. The river being a mile and a half 
wide at the locality of the fishing grounds, most of the salmon escape, 
and the product of a night’s work seems paltry and insignificant, com- 
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