60 PACIFIC COD FISHERIES. 
that every part of the fish is covered. The layers are carried from 
18 inches to 2 feet above the top of the butts, so as to allow for the 
settling which will occur as the water is drawn from the fish. No 
pickle is necessary on these fish, as they make their own. When the 
fish have settled below the top of the butt, which they will do in a 
few days, several layers of new fish are added. In Alaska the pickle 
in the butts is kept usually at from 87° to 97° salinometer test, the 
average being about 90°. As the climate in Alaska is nearly always 
cold and damp, there is but little danger of fish spoiling if ordinary 
care is used. Fish will keep indefinitely in strong pickle so long as 
they are covered with it. If kept for a long time the pickle must be 
added to occasionally to repair the losses, particularly from leakage. 
At the stations the fish at the top of the butts are usually inspected 
every few days. When the pickle begins to weaken the top layer is 
turned backs up and a few bags of salt laid on top. ‘These press the 
fish down, and, the salt being in the bags, it dissolves much more 
slowly than if thrown loosely over the fish. 
At a few stations where the salinometer is not in use the agent 
depends upon the use of a potato to determine when the pickle is 
strong enough. If the potato floats at the surface of the pickle it 
is strong enough for curing cod. 
The pickle forms very rapidly in the early stages of the curing, 
and the surplus is allowed to escape at intervals through a bunghole 
in the butt. 
Care must be taken to see than the roof does not leak during 
the heavy rains, as should fresh water drip into the butts the fish 
will become slimy. 
Should the run vessel be delayed and a station become filled to its 
butt capacity, a space is usually cleared in the salt house and the fish 
taken from the first filled butts and kenched on the floor, a little 
salt being sprinkled between the layers and over the top. Every 
effort is made to hold them in the butts as long as practicable, as 
they retain their natural white color much better when in pickle, 
kenched fish usually acquiring a yellowish color. 
When the station vessel arrives the pickle is allowed to run off 
the fish, and they are pewed out into carts and wheeled along the 
dock to a point opposite the vessel’s hatch, where they are dumped 
into a chute and pass thence into the hold, where men receive and 
kench them in the same manner as on the fishing vessels, 2!most no 
salt being used, however, as the fish are already well cured and also 
shave a considerable quantity of salt adhering to them. 
At stations where the vessels can not lie alongside the dock, owing 
to shoal water, the vessel is usually anchored in the bay or harbor, 
and the fish are brought out to it in dories, which are loaded from 
