How to obtain it. 



2 93 



cool lakes, and in their tributaries, preferring waters whose 

 highest temperature rarely exceeds fifty-five degrees. 



" The king salmon is the first to arrive on the shores in the 

 spring. It makes its appearance in May .... and early in 

 June. The time of its coming into Norton Sound corresponds 

 with the breaking up and disappearance of the ice. It continues 

 to enter some of the rivers for the purpose of spawning until 

 August. The height of the season, however, is reached by the 

 middle of July in most localities. This fish travels up the rivers 

 farther than any other species, except the red salmon. In the 

 Yukon it ascends far above Fort Yukon, more than fifteen hundred 

 miles from the mouth of the river. 



" The king salmon does not ascend rivers rapidly, unless 

 the spawning season is close at hand. It generally plays around 

 for a few days, or even a couple of weeks, near the river limit of 

 tide water. As far as we can learn, only those fish that ascend the 

 stream short distances return to the ocean after spawning, and 

 September is the month in which the spent fish go down to the 

 sea. There is no reason why the king salmon should not return 

 down the Karluk, as the distance is very short. There is ample 

 testimony, of a conclusive nature, to the effect that, after a king 

 salmon ascends five hundred miles from the sea, it never returns 

 to it alive. The humpback salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) is 

 the smallest, most abundant, and most widely distributed of the 

 Alaskan salmon. The height of the. spawning season in the 

 Kadiak streams is evidently about the middle of August. Messrs. 

 Robert Lewis and Livingstone Stone found the humpbacks 

 spawning in vast numbers August i5th. On the 24th of August 

 Alexander Creek was full of humpbacks, in all stages of emaciation 

 and decay. In Alitak Bay, September 9th, the fish were nearly 

 all dead in the creeks, and Snug Harbour contained many dying 

 humpback salmon, floating seaward tail first. 



"After the great run in the Karluk, the fish came down 

 dead, or in a dying condition, for a whole month, and the beaches 

 were strewn with red salmon. The last stages of this species are 

 repulsive to look upon, but before the extensive emaciation and 

 sloughing away of the skin has taken place, the colours of the 

 breeding fish are rather pleasing, the lower parts becoming milky 



