2O2 Sport and Life. 



which, from the very earliest times unto this day, a number of 

 human lives are yearly sacrificed, for they are the most 

 treacherously shifting banks known to the navigator in any part of 

 the world. A little further up the river, where the channel gets 

 narrower, begin the various deadly snares that waylay our friend. 

 Two thousand seine nets, from 1500 to 1800 feet in length, spread 

 their deadly snare without " let up " from the first day of the run 

 to the last.* They bar, or to speak more correctly, they barred 

 for since the Columbia catch has fallen off to the extent of fifty 

 per cent, a decrease in the number of nets has occurred the 

 salmon's progress most effectually. Further up the river those of 

 the fortunate few who escaped the meshes had to run the gauntlet 

 of traps and salmon wheels, t mechanical contrivances by which 

 thousands of these noble fish were caught or scooped up and 

 delivered over to the choppers and knives of the pig-tailed 

 employees standing alongside of the wooden troughs into which 

 the wheel threw the fish. So quick is the manipulation that the 

 lordly quinnat, weighing in the Columbia from 15 to yolb., is 

 decapitated, "tailed," gutted, and cut up and placed in the vats 

 from which the pieces find their way into the tins, all within less 

 than five minutes from the time that the fish was stemming the 

 current of the majestic Columbia. The heads and tails were flung 



* There is a law which prohibits Sunday fishing in order to allow a day of 

 grace, but it is for various reasons practically inoperative. 



f This was a huge erection, like a broad mill wheel, but furnished with wire 

 buckets instead of paddles. The current set it in motion, and the buckets, 

 rotating round the axle, scooped up the fish and deposited them in a trough, 

 which brought the fish in a never ceasing stream, under the knives of China- 

 men employees. These deadly contrivances, which during the run worked day 

 and night, Sunday and week-days, and were the cheapest of all the means 

 employed to catch salmon, were subsequently suppressed by the Federal 

 Government to protect the fisheries. It was not accomplished, however, without 

 bloodshed and the loss of lives, for your genuine frontiersman, selfish and 

 improvident as he generally is, believes in grasping with both fists the easiest 

 harvest provided by an over-bountiful Providence, and is hostile, on principle, 

 to all interference by a paternal Government however much it may be one of 

 his own choice that curtails in any way the profits of his wasteful ways. 



