72 CKUISINGS IN THE CASCADES 



sources, where there is not water enough to cover 

 their bodies, and where they become an easy prey to 

 man, or to wild beasts. In such cases, Indians kill 

 them with spears and sharp sticks, or even catch and 

 throw them out with their hands. 



Or if their journeyings take them among farms or 

 ranches, as is often the case, the people throw them 

 out on the banks with pitch -forks, and after supply- 

 ing their household necessities, they cart the noble 

 fish away and feed them to their hogs, or even use 

 them to fertilize their fields. I have seen salmon 

 wedged into some of the small streams until you could 

 almost walk on them. The banks of many creeks, 

 far up in the foot-hills, are almost wholly composed 

 of the bones of salmon. In traveling through dense 

 woods I have often heard, at some distance ahead, 

 a loud splashing and general commotion in water, 

 as if of a dozen small boys in bathing. This would, 

 perhaps, be the first intimation I had that I was near 

 water,- and, on approaching the source of the noise, 

 I have found it to have been made by a school of 

 these lordly salmon, wedged into one of the little 

 streams, thrashing the creek into suds in their eiforts 

 to get to its head. 



After depositing their spawn the poor creatures, 

 already half dead from bruises and exhaustion 

 incurred in their perilous voyage up stream, begin to 

 drift down. But how different, now, from the bright, 

 silvery creatures that once darted like rays of living 

 light through the sea. Unable to control their move- 

 ments in the descent, even as well as in the ascent, 

 they drift at the cruel mercy of the stream. They 

 are driven against rough bowlders, submerged logs 



