718 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



not been changed in the least since they killed George Crooka and 

 threw his body into the river. 



A few days after we had built our camp and begun work there, last 

 July, it happened one Sunday that one of the men was left alone in 

 charge of the camp. As the day wore on he thought he heard a slight 

 noise near him, and on looking up he saw to his great surprise three 

 Indians standing over him, each with a drawn knife in one hand and a 

 rifle in the other, and here, on the very spot where the last settler was 

 murdered, they told him the same story that they had told the mur- 

 dered man, viz, that this was their land, that the white men had no 

 business there, and that they did not want white men on the McCloud 

 Eiver at all. The young man had no weapons about him, and was wholly 

 at their mercy. They would undoubtedly have killed him, as they would 

 certainly have been glad to do, if they could have summoned up the 

 courage to face the consequences. But though they staid with him 

 three hours, their valor did not reach this point, and they finally left 

 him as they found him, in possession of the place. 



Some time after, in November, the same young man, whose name is 

 Loren Green, in climbing a bluff" to recover what he supposed was our 

 stolen dog, found the dog to be a panther, which prepared to attack him 

 so suddenly that he barely escaped with his life, by jumping into his 

 boat and pushing out into the river. I think I may say to my fellow 

 trout-breeders in the settled States of the Atlantic coast, that building 

 trout-ponds here is not like building trout-ponds at home. 



At first the men all slept, not only under the open sky, but on the 

 ground. After a while, however, they requested me to get them ham- 

 mocks, because the scorpions and rattlesnakes, of which they had killed 

 a considerable number, were so thick. Of course, I complied with their 

 request, but it did not prevent one of the men from being struck on the 

 leg by a rattlesnake, his heavy boot saving him from receiving a fatal 

 stroke. Nor did it save Mr. Myron Green from a nearly fatal bite from 

 a tarantula. Mr. Green, on retiring to his hammock for the night, 

 threw his clothes upon a rock near by. During the night a tarantula 

 crawled into his clothes, and on Mr. Green's dressing in the morning, 

 he was terribly stung by the venomous creature. Moistened tobacco 

 was immediately put upon the wound, and a tumberful of alcohol admin- 

 istered inwardly, after being somewhat diluted by water. This checked 

 the progress of the poison, and saved Mr. Green from a very serious if 

 not fatal consequences. 



I mention these incidents merely to show that with tarantulas, scorpions, 

 rattlesnakes, Indians, panthers, and threats of murder our course here 

 is not wholly over a path of roses. 



As the spawning season of the trout at this point does not come on 

 till the beginning of the next year, I can do nothing more in this report 

 than to give a description of the buildings that have been erected and of 

 the work that has been accomplished preparatory to the taking of the 



