746 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



a fire "when they come out of the water to warm themselves by, as I have 

 often seen them, when the surrounding air is ah^eady at 130° Fahrenheit 

 from the natural heat of the sun. 



Salmon-jumiying. — Soon after the salmon were shut off from ascending 

 the river, I frequently took a boat and went out into the river below the 

 dam to watch the salmon jumping. On the 21st of July I counted 75 a 

 minute (4,500 an hour) jumping in a space iierhaps a hundred yards 

 long by thirty yards wide. On the 28th of July I counted 100 a minute 

 (6,000 an hour). On the 31st of July I counted 145 a minute (8,700 an 

 hour). This is the largest number of salmon that I have ever seen 

 jumping in the McCloud Eiver in a minute. 



Heat of the sun. — For some unknown reason there are usually one or 

 two days, but no more, during the summer when it is exceptionally hot 

 in the sun. In 1875 this peculiar day came on the 22d of July, when 

 the temperature was 153'^ in the sun. This year it came on the 26th of 

 July. The thermometer on that day in the sun at 4 o'clock i>. m. rose 

 to 1490. 



The eclipse of the sun. — On the 29th of July an eclipse of the sun took 

 place. I had told the Indians two months before that it was going to 

 happen, and from that time till the day of the eclipse they came to me 

 every little while to inquire how many days before the " grizzly bear 

 would eat the sun," that being their explanation of the darkening of 

 the sun at an eclipse. When the day arrived, twenty or thirty of them 

 came to the fishery and looked at the sun with the greatest interest 

 through pieces of smoked glass which we prepared for them, and which 

 enabled them to watch the progress of the eclipse much better than they 

 could do in their own way, which is by observing the reflection of the 

 sun in the water. It is a great mystery to them how the white man is 

 able to predict so long beforehand the coming of the " grizzly bear 

 that eats the sun." 



On the 25th of March, 1876, an eclipse of the sun occurred, and, at the 

 height of the obscuration, an otter came out of the water in front of the 

 house, looked around, and disappeared. Tbe Indians remembered it, 

 and kept on the watch for the otter during the eclipse this year (1878). 

 No otter came ; but it was a singular fact that the next day an otter — 

 the only one we saw during the season — swam down past the house and 

 back again, and disappeared. I think that the Indions who saw these 

 otters will always think that an otter, as well as a grizzly bear, is re- 

 quired to accomplish an eclipse of the sun. 



The Indian scare. — On the 21st of July an Indian m^senger came in 

 great haste from Copper City, on Pitt Eiver, about eight miles from the 

 fishery, with a letter from the superintendent of the silver mines there, 

 stating that alarming rumors had reached that place about large num- 

 bers of northern Indians having been seen on the McCloud, and that the 

 people there had heard that the Indians were meditating an attack on 

 their settlement, and asking if we knew anything about it. About the 



