144 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
All the traders handle them and may deal in from 5 to 50 tons in a 
year. But they refuse to purchase dog salmon except as a last re- 
sort. The majority of the natives at the close of the fishing season 
sell a portion of their salmon supply to the trader with whom they 
deal, frequently leaving themselves without adequate provision for 
their families and their dogs. Later in the year they are often com- 
pelled to repurchase dried salmon at an advanced price, paying for 
it with the proceeds of their winter trapping. They are, of course, 
more or less improvident, as in the case of other primitive peoples. 
Their sale of salmon in the fall is frequently to liquidate their debts 
to traders who had extended them credit earlier in the season. 
In the section of the main river below Rampart, where salmon are 
still rich in oil and the rainfall during the summer months is usually 
heavy, resort is had to smoking the salmon in order to preserve 
them. There is no commoner sight along the Yukon than the cluster 
of white tents in some picturesque nook among the hills of the right 
bank, and with them one or more high, barnlike smokehouses, which 
emit a faint blue vapor. There will be a fish wheel turning in the 
current along the rocky shore and a number of open-air racks, more 
or less protected from the weather, on which the salmon are hung 
for a time until partially dried and ready to be smoked. The pic- 
ture is, of course, not complete without the native men, women, and 
children of the summer camp, nor without the invariable row of 
dogs closely tethered to stakes driven near the water’s edge. Here 
the dogs fatten on the salmon heads and back bones and other refuse. 
They scratch out shallow holes to lie in alongside their stakes or 
burrow deep into the adjacent bank, if one be at hand, to escape the 
implacable swarm of mosquitoes. 
Along the Tanana and the upper Yukon is a region of less rain- 
fall, in which also the salmon have relatively dry meat, which is 
easily preserved. Here smoking is frequently dispensed with and 
dependence had entirely on air drying. But, by whatever method 
prepared, the fish of the upper river, of the Innoko, the Koyukuk, 
and the Tanana, are of inferior grade, and bring a lower price than 
do fish imported into these districts from the main river. The best 
product of all is secured from the Rampart Rapids. Here the 
“silvers” are said to average larger and fatter than in any other sec- 
tion. It is not improbable that inferior strains of dogs and “ silvers ” 
have turned into the lower tributaries, leaving at the rapids almost 
exclusively high-grade fish bound far up the river. 
In the coastal district when salmon are running abundantly 
trenches are often dug in the soil by natives and hundreds of salmon 
are thrown in without preparation of any kind. They are then 
covered with earth and nature is permitted to have her unrestricted 
way with them. When the contents of these trenches are scooped 
out at some convenient season, perhaps in midwinter, they are said 
to make acceptable dog feed and to be not wholly shunned by the 
natives themselves. ; 
The king salmon intended for their own food is often carefully 
prepared and stored away by natives of the lower river. When sufh- 
ciently dried and smoked, the sides are cut into pieces of convenient 
size and packed solidly in large baskets made for the purpose of 
woven grass, or willow roots, or frequently of salmon skins which 
