[3] SALMON-HATCHING STATION ON M’CLOUD RIVER, CAL. 599 
the hatching-house. From this time the taking of eggs proceeded with 
unusual steadiness until the night of the 14th of September, when we 
had taken 6,000,000 eggs, which was all that we wanted for the large 
hatching-house. 
The men having worked for over two weeks, Sundays and all, we took 
a holiday on Thursday, September 16, which was passed in rifle-shooting, 
ball-playing, boating matches, and the like. On the morning of Sep- 
tember 17 we began fishing again for the small hatching-house, but did 
not fish long, for we caught 167 spawning females at the first haul, and 
this being all that we wanted to keep in the corral through the day, we 
quit fishing until evening. In the evening we caught 108 more, and 
took a quarter of a million eggs. The next day we alternately fished 
and took spawn all day, taking three-quarters of a million eggs, which 
made one million in all for the supplementary hatching-house, which, 
being all that were needed for that house and making seven millions 
eggs in all as this year’s harvest, we hung up our net and stopped fish- 
ing and taking eggs for this season. 
I depended entirely this year upon horses for pulling in the lower 
rope of the seine, and have no hesitation in recommending their use 
for this work. After the season’s regular fishing begins it requires nine 
men to pull in the lower rope properly, and even with this force it does 
not come in always as steadily or as quickly as it ought to. With two 
horses only two men are needed at this rope, so that the expense of em- 
ploying seven men is saved, against which you have only to offset the 
use of two horses. 
From this time till we began to pack eggs for distribution to their 
various destinations the time was taken up in making packing-boxes 
and crates, in washing and picking over the moss used for packing, in 
gathering ferns, and in attending to the maturing of the eggs. One 
other thing we did during this time which must not be forgotten. This 
was putting up the telephone, a memorable event in this unsettled In- 
dian country. The telephone material arrived Tuesday evening, Sep- 
tember 28, and the next evening we were talking between headquarters 
and the post-office building. The Indians were in great glee over it, 
and were soon talking to each other over the wires. They have been 
in the habit of calling our hydraulic ram “mame debbil” (water devil) 
They call the telephone “teen klesch” (talking spirit). 
On Friday, October 1, we packed and crated 2,200,000 eggs, on Sat- 
urday 800,000, and on Sunday morning 800,000 more, making 3,300,000 
in all, occupying 76 packing-boxes and 38 crates. These were taken in 
wagons to Redding, Cal., where our stage road connects with the Cali- 
fornia Pacific Railroad, and where I had a car waiting for them with 
several tons of ice. The crates of eggs having been safely stored away 
in the car and the ice chambers filled with ice, the balance of the ice 
was placed on the tops of the crates, and the car shackled on the train 
which left Redding for Sacramento and the East early Monday morning, 
