AND OTHER HUNTING ADVENTURES. 73 



and snags, or through raging rapids by the fury of 

 the torrent, until hundreds, yes thousands, of them 

 are killed outright, and thousands more die from 

 sheer exhaustion. 



I have seen salmon with their noses broken and 

 torn off; others with a lower jaw torn away; some 

 with sides, backs, or bellies bruised and bleeding; 

 others with their tails whipped and split into shreds, 

 and still others with their entrails torn out by 

 snags. In this sad plight they are beset at every 

 turn in the river by their natural enemies. Bears, 

 cougars, minks, wild cats, fishers, eagles, hawks, 

 and worst and most destructive of all, men, await 

 them everywhere, and it would be strange, 

 indeed, if one in each thousand that left the salt 

 water should live to return. The few that do so, 

 are, of course, so weak that they fall an easy prey 

 to the seals, sharks, and other enemies, that wait 

 with open mouths to engulf them. So, all the leap- 

 ing, rushing multitude that entered the river a few 

 months ago, have, ere this, gone to their doom, but 

 their seed is planted in the icy brook, far away in 

 the mountains, and their young will soon come forth 

 ' to take the place of the parents that have passed 

 away. The instinct of reproduction must, indeed, 

 be an absorbing passion in poor dumb creatures, 

 when they will thus sacrifice life in the effort to 

 deposit their ova where the offspring may best be 

 brought into being. 



