The Salmon of the Pacific Slope. 2 1 7 



witness, owner or manager of a salmon cannery, and evidently 

 not over favourably inclined towards the proposed Government 

 interference, would solemnly testify that he had never seen 

 dead salmon floating on his river, and that, to the best of his 

 belief, the greater part of the salmon that ascended the rivers 

 during the run returned to the sea, another witness would testify 

 that he had seen rivers for miles covered with dead salmon, and 

 that he believed not one fish in a hundred ever got back to the 

 Pacific ! 



I remember once taking a globe-trotting friend, who had been 

 only a few days on the Pacific coast, to one of these sittings. He 

 knew nothing whatever about the subject, and had never heard the 

 old yarns of pigs in Oregon and California being fattened on 

 salmon and peaches, of the up-country farmers who annually 

 manured their fields with these fish, or of inland settlers who, it 

 was said, used to be able to walk across streams on the backs of 

 salmon. Hearsay evidence was also allowed by the Fish Com- 

 missioners, and some strange stories were related, but nothing was 

 more startling than the conflicting "personal knowledge" of 

 witnesses. As we entered the hall where the commission was 

 sitting, the owner of a salmon cannery happened to be under 

 examination, and by his evidence was trying to oppose a 

 prohibition the Government was endeavouring to enforce, prevent- 

 ing cannerymen from casting the offal of their establishments 

 consisting of hundreds of tons of fish entrails, and other equally 

 offensive refuse, back into the stream, which had been the general 

 practice throughout the coast country. He declared that he had 

 never heard of those people who lived further down the stream 

 being injuriously affected by it. " He had lived at the cannery half 

 the time, and his tea, coffee, and other food were prepared with 

 water out of the river." " Hogs," he went on to say, " are also 

 very fond of salmon, some people cooking the salmon before 

 giving them to the hogs." At this point the chairman of the 

 commission, Mr. Wilmot, interrupted the witness by stating that 

 " he had seen a herd of cows eat a canoe-load of salmon in a day ; 



