THE SALMON AND TROUT OF ALASKA. 31 



others on its course to the sea, and through its lower 

 specific gravity, rested upon the salt water. These sick 

 salmon were so plentiful that I thought that a large per- 

 centage had lived and escaped the danger, but upon 

 landing at the mouth of the river, saw that I was mis- 

 taken. For several miles the river meanders through 

 an alluvial flat, the moraine of receded glaciers. The 

 moraine was covered with a thick growth of timothy 

 and wild barley, some standing six feet in height ; 

 much more pressed flat by layers, three and four 

 deep, of dead salmon, which had been left by the 

 waters falling. Thousands of gulls and fish crows were 

 feeding upon the eyes and entrails of these fish, and in 

 the soft mud innumerable tracks of bears and other 

 animals were interspersed with bodiless heads of salmon, 

 showing that they, too, had attended the feast. I waded 

 the river for over two miles, and the scene was always 

 the same. That wade was one to be remembered. In 

 advance of me generally, but checked at times by shoal 

 water, there rushed a struggling and splashing mass of 

 salmon, and when through the shoaling, or by turning 

 a short corner, I got among them, progress was almost 

 impossible ; they were around me, under me, and once 

 when, through stepping on one I fell, I fancy over me. 

 All were headed up stream, and I presumed, ascending, 

 until, while resting on a dry rock, I noticed that many, 

 although headed up, were actually slowly drifting down 

 stream. 



In many pools that I passed, the gravel bottom was 



