Popular Science Monthly 



99 



Salmon Fishing at the Mouth of 

 the Columbia River 



IF a fisherman has luck when seining for 

 salmon, he generally gets a haul weigh- 

 ing many tons. It is perhaps for this rea- 

 son more than for any other that so many 

 launches and seining-skiffs may be seen 

 with their nets just inside the great 

 promontory near the mouth of the Colum- 

 bia River. For net-fishing for salmon — 

 seining, as it is called — at this fruitful spot 

 is nearly always very dangerous. Never- 

 theless, in some seasons nearly five hundred 

 tons of Chinook salmon — the most valuable 

 and most prized fish of the species — are 

 taken by a single crew. Individual hauls 

 sometimes reach eighteen tons, and the 

 record catch for one day has reached as 

 high as fifty-two tons. 



Because of the promontory on one side 

 of the fishing-grounds and Sand Island 

 lying directly opposite the river's mouth, 

 the breakers constantly ride high. When 

 the steamers of the Great Northern Pacific 

 ply through the narrow grounds at a speed 

 of twenty-three miles an hour, the breakers 

 pushed out from their side pile so high 

 that fishing is utterly impossible. If the 

 launches and skiffs are caught too close in- 

 shore to weather the breakers, there will 

 be little chance for them to get to safety. 



Certain conditions seem to be most 

 favorable to the formation of high waves by 

 the steamers. During an ebb tide and an 

 off-shore wind, the water is piled into solid 

 waves often six and eight feet high. The 

 suction produced at the sides of the steam- 

 ers is very great, and heavy nets are 

 known to have been drawn in from a 

 distance of two hundred feet and finally 

 destroyed by the rapidly revolving pro- 

 pellers of the ship. 



Salmon fishing at the mouth of the Columbia River is dan- 

 gerous. Small skiffs and launches are often capsized and 

 tiirown high and dry on the beach if not dashed to pieces 



The instrument used in making the coast 

 surveys is a telescope mounted on a port- 

 able tripod and having a delicate spirit level 



Endangering Your Life for an 

 Imaginary Line 



FROM the mosquito-infested swamps of 

 our lowlands to the highest peaks of 

 our mountains and from the ice-locked 

 northland of Alaska to the blistering sands 

 of the tropics, the engineer in the service 

 of the United States Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey is facing privation and hardship for 

 the sake of precision. He is laying a net- 

 work of imaginary lines upon the maps of 

 the States that we may know just how 

 high a given place within the national 

 boundaries is and in just what latitude 

 and longitude it lies. 



Thus, the surveyor in the accompanying 

 photograph is establishing a line along a 

 coast where it is necessary for him to 

 stand in water up to his waist. He is 

 obliged to work from this par- 

 ticular spot because it enables 

 him to see his observation 

 point far away on the horizon. 

 Otherwise he could not make 

 his measurements and estab- 

 lish his line. 



However, he is taking fewer 

 chances while he is working 

 in the water than when he is 

 establishing a line in a heavily 

 wooded country. Where the 

 land is flat and the trees of 

 excessive height he sometimes 

 has to work on giddy plat- 

 forms more than a hundred 

 feet above the ground. 



