THIRTY YEARS A HUNTER. 51 



continued to take from twenty to thirty or forty eels 

 besides a number of other fish nightly, until about 

 the tenth of November, when there came another 

 rise of water in the creek, and in three hours we 

 took two barrels of good salmon and rock-fish, with 

 four wagon loads of suckers. At dark the eels began 

 to run, when my father, assisted by three of us boys 

 and a man, began to carry out the eels, but the other 

 fish came in so rapidly as to dam up the water, so 

 that the eels would go over the sides of the basket 

 and as they were difficult to catch, we threw out 

 fish and eels to make room for the eels. Finding 

 that we were losing many eels in this way, ray 

 brother brought the canoe, and placed it under the 

 basket at a place where the water did not come, and 

 raked the eels back into it as they came. We made 

 an opening in the basket, through which they fell, 

 and we found the plan to work admirably. In about 

 ten hours the river had risen so high as to overflow 

 the basket, which put an end to our operations for 

 that night. We had then carried out about twelve 

 wagon loads of suckers, three barrels of eels and 

 two barrels of salmon and rock fish, besides throw- 

 ing a great quantity out of the basket, to keep it 

 from overflowing. We then built a good tight 

 house of slabs, into which we put our suckers, and 

 threw over it a large quantity of pine and hemlock 

 boughs, to prevent their freezing. We fed our fat- 

 tening hogs for the next three weeks upon fish, when 

 we commenced feeding them corn, and at the end of 

 the next four weeks the pork was equally as good as 



