i.ll ORNIA lisil AND QAME 



i • l ii taken several 



miles op thi a during the rainy season, when, owing to the strong current, 



I had been washed out six miles up this stream is Templeton's 



iwmill. and s few miles further up, on a northern branch of this tream, is 



till, and a few miles further op the same branch i L I' Pharis' 



tie mill. All these mills dump their sawdust and blocks into the stream, 



- the water that ii has b tn intolerable nuisance to all the 



ream below, and will soon exterminate the trout. 



"Potn\ I four miles from Sun Gregoria, and is a clear water trout 



mil volume emptying upon the beach. No mills; plenty of trout. 

 ••/•. o stream Is three miles from Pompons Creek, and is n fine clear 



water troul stream, empties into the sea aboui two miles below ili«' town, and 

 connects, one inil<' from the beach, with the Butena River, which is also a fine clear 

 water troul stream running to the southeast; is about twenty feel wide, and six 

 fee) deep. For a miles tins makes :t fine resort for the Balmon and silver salmon 

 from the sea which frequent these waters, with other lesser sea fish, for the purp 

 pawning. From October to .March a wagon load of these beautiful fish, weighing 



from two to thirty pounds, arc taken daily and sold all along the road, .as high up as 



tishtown, at seventy-five cents per pound. These fish are only taken during the 

 spawning season, they being a deep water fish and go out to sea in March. Three 

 miles up the Pescadero stream which is aboui four feet wide and a fool deep, at 

 present is B. Bayward's steam sawmill, and three miles further up is Anderson's 

 sawmill, run by a turbine wheel, having a well constructed dam, built of hewn logs, 

 well secured right across the creek. The dam is twenty feet long and about ten 

 feet high, built in eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and all the water from above 

 passes at present through the sluiceway at the turbine wheel. As the water has 

 never been half way up to the top of this dam since it was built, no fish have ever 

 passed. A sluice box with stop waters in it for fish could be introduced through 

 this dam near its base and outside the sluiceway for the wheel, this being the only 

 place where the box could reach the -water below, as all the rest of the bed of the 

 stream is dry. Large quantities of sawdust and blocks are deposited in the stream 

 below the dam ; fish are found dead, their eyes eaten out by the strong poisonous 

 acids in the water, and their bodies covered beneath the skin with disgusting blisters, 

 like the smallpox, whilst the inside is as black as ink. The waters are rendered at 

 times wholly unfit for use. Eight miles further up this stream is Wolf's steam 

 sawmill, the lumber from wdiich is hauled out to the eastward, whilst the sawdust 

 conveyed down the river, fatal to the fish and to the interests of everybody. 

 There is but one sentiment existing among the settlers along the si ream, .and it is 

 this: that they have arrived at a point where forbearance ceases to be a virtue, and 

 have resolved to exhaust all legal measures, by their united efforts and similar 

 means to protect their interests against the oppressive and persistent practice of the 

 mill owners in dumping the sawdust into the streams, whereby the whole community 

 below suffer, some hundreds and others thousands of dollars. The effects of the 

 sawmills, during eighteen or twenty years, are scarcely perceptible in these almost 

 impenetrable forests, and the united efforts of many mills for the next twenty years 

 will be required before the woodman's axe will have waning from the settlers of this 

 nature's retreat in her solitude that beautiful prayer of 'Woodman, spare that tree.' 

 "I have communicated with many of the settlers along the banks of all these 

 streams, and have 'the experience of the oldest settlers in this part of the country, 

 and there can be but one conclusion in regard to the fish interest of these si reams. 

 and that is that the redwood sawdust poisons the water, and unless some other 

 method is adopted to get rid of it, such as burning it or repairing roads with it, 

 there will not be a breed of trout left in a few years. Where thousands were taken 

 daily (thirteen hundred by one person), now scarcely a trout can be seen. If there 

 are laws to protect them I can see no good reason for not enforcing them, and if 

 this be done every man's table in this district will be abundantly supplied with trout 

 —a healthy and cheap article of food — while large quantities w T ill find their way, as a 



