598 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [2] 
saplings, also, the poles became weak and very brittle after one season’s 
use, and could not be relied upon to do service more than one year, 
which was, of course, another disadvantage. By making the rack of 
fir stakes cut from old-growth trees we hope not only to save expense, 
but to make the rack wear a year or two longer than the former mack 
have done. 
I cannot speak in too high terms of the chabaetey of the work which 
some of the Indians do for us. There are now nearly a dozen of them 
who have been with me, more or less, since I came to the McCloud River, 
who are splendid workers. They are faithful, steady, industrious, and 
very intelligent. During my first year here I gave all the Indians the 
same pay; now I discriminate between the best workers and the others, 
and give the higher class 25 or 50 cents a day more than the rest. This 
little addition to their pay, or probably the distinction which it implies, 
affects them perceptibly, and it becomes quite conspicuously a matter 
of pride with them to make their work correspond with their increased 
pay. 
After the closing of the river to the ascending salmon was made 
secure beyond a doubt, we turned our attention more particularly to 
the special preparations for catching the salmon and putting everything 
about the place in satisfactory shape. The California climate is such > 
that a great deal of whitewashing and painting, and that very often, 
is necessary to keep a place of this sort looking as itought to. Then there 
are the necessary repairs incident upon keeping up a half a dozen build- 
ings and the thousand and one things to be done to put flumes, hatch- 
ing-troughs, trays, filtering tanks, &c.,in order. Besides doing all these 
things we built a wagon road to the garden and another from the house 
to the stage road. The corrals were putin the river at the fishing 
ground, and the spawning-house built with its apparatus for taking sal- 
mon eggs. Wealso did a good deal of hard work on the river trail 
opposite the house. This narrow trail, which in the Eastern States, 
would be called a bridle-path, extends along a rough, rocky, and pre- 
cipitous hillside for fifty rods or so, and was positively unsafe. I my- 
self have seen a horse and rider fall headlong over the cliff just opposite 
our front door. The horse fell fifty feet down to the water’s edge and 
was killed. The rider fell about 20 feet and was saved by being caught 
against a tree. 
By some hard digging and by the free use of giant powder we con- 
verted the trail into a safe and easy path. 
On the 20th of August we found the first ripe female salmon. To 
save the trouble of taking small lots at a time, I postponed the taking 
of eggs until a sufficient number of spawning salmon appeared to 
authorize the beginning of steady work. This occurred on Monday, 
August 30, when we began the season’s regular fishing for spawning 
fish. We did not begin to take eggs, however, until the next day, when 
we inaugurated the spawning season by placing 130,000 salmon eggs in 
