SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 



Indian tribes. These catch the salmon more for their 

 own consumption than with a view to selling, though 

 some of the younger men make a good living by the sale 

 of their catches in the towns. Some of them use a kind 

 of landing-net, which they dip in front of any fish which 

 may come near enough to the surface. 



But the spear is the more scientific and among the 

 young Indians the more popular implement. When you 

 get a couple of hundred miles up the Columbia it is full 

 of rapids, and at the foot of any one of these is the happy 

 fishing-ground of the natives. During the upward and 

 the downward migration the redskins, with light spears, 

 some tethered, some free, sit in their birch canoes and 

 watch for the jumping or the dropping of the salmon. 

 The accuracy with which these fellows aim is extra- 

 ordinary; some will stand and throw harpoons at the 

 curved, glistening bodies as they shoot through the air; 

 others, more deft, will spit them as they rise or fall, never 

 leaving hold of the spear. 



The Fraser fisheries are carried on in much the same 

 way as those of the Columbia, but a word or two ought 

 to be said about the Canadian river-mouth fishing, which 

 is done by moored gill-nets. The work connected with it 

 makes the river-bank fishing seem very safe and easy, for 

 it is done in small, two-manned boats, and often in as 

 choppy a sea as the Pacific can boast which just here, 

 almost within the sweep of the Japan ~kuro shiwo current, 

 can be very ugly when it likes. Here you may see a 

 couple of thousand small boats for at least that number 

 is employed in the British Columbian fleet tossing about 



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