THE STORY OF A SALMON. 13 



with huge half-human faces, long thin whiskers, and 

 blundering ways. The sea-lions liked to bite out 

 the throat of a salmon, with its precious stomach 

 full of luscious sardines, and then to leave the rest 

 of the fish to shift for itself. And the seals and 

 the herrings scattered the salmon about, till at last 

 the hero of our story found himself quite alone, 

 with none of his own kind near him. But that 

 did not trouble him much, and he went on his 

 own way, getting his dinner when he was hungry, 

 which was all the time, and then eating a little 

 between meals for his stomach's sake. 



So it went on for three long years ; and at the 

 end of this time our little fish had grown to be a 

 great, fine salmon of twenty-two pounds' weight, 

 shining like a new tin pan, and with rows of the 

 loveliest round black spots on his head and back 

 and tail. One day, as he was swimming about, idly 

 chasing a big sculpin with a head so thorny that he 

 never was swallowed by anybody, all of a sudden 

 the salmon noticed a change in the water around 

 him. 



Spring had come again, and the south-lying 

 snow-drifts on the Cascade Mountains once more 

 felt that the " earth was wheeling sunwards." The 

 cold snow waters ran down from the mountains and 

 into the Columbia River, and made a freshet on the 

 river. The high water went far out into the sea, 

 and out in the sea our salmon felt it on his gills. 

 He remembered how the cold water used to feel 

 in the Cowlitz when he was a little fish. In a 

 blundering, fishy fashion he thought about it; he 

 wondered whether the little eddy looked as it used 



