(312 HISTOEY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



eler take off his coat (more persuasive, perhaps, than pleasant) the Indian squaw has recourse to 

 In order to make the clam open his shell. 



" Hollowing out a ring in the ground about 8 inches deep, they fill the circle with large 

 pebbles, made red hot in the camp fire near by, and on these heated stones put the bivalve 

 martyr. The heat soon finds its way through the shelly armor, the powerful ropes that hold the 

 doors together slacken, and, as his mansion gradually grows ' too hot to hold him ' the door opens 

 a little for a taste of fresh air. Biding her chance, armed with a long, smooth, sharp-pointed 

 stick, sits the squaw dusky, grim, and dirty anxiously watching the clam's movements. The 

 stronghold opens, and the clam drinks draught after draught of the cool life-giving air ; then 

 down upon him the savage pounces, and astonishes his heated and fevered imagination by thrust- 

 ing, with all her force, the long sharp stick into the unguarded house : crash it goes through the 

 quivering tissues ; his chance is over ! Jerking him off the heated stones, pitilessly his house is 

 forced opeu; ropes, hinges, fastenings crack like packthread, and the mollusk is ruthlessly dragged 

 from his shelly home, naked and lifeless. 



" Having got the clam out the next thing is to preserve it for winter. This is effectually 

 accomplished by stringing-up and smoking. A long wooden needle, with an eye at the end, is 

 threaded with a cord made from native hemp, and on this the clams are strung like dried apples, 

 and thoroughly smoked in the interior of the lodge. A more effectual siuoking-house could 

 hardly be found; I can imagine nothing in the ' wide, wide world' half as filthy, loathsome, and 

 disgusting as the interior of an Indian house. Every group has some eatable fish, mollusk, bird, 

 or animal and what the men and squaws do not consume, is pitched to the dusky little savages, 

 that, naked and dirty, are thick as ants in a hill ; from these the residue descends to the dogs, and 

 what they leave some lower form of animal life manages to consume. Nothing eatable that is 

 once brought in is ever by any chance swept or carried out again, and either becomes some other 

 form of life, or, decomposing, assumes its elemental condition. 



"An old settler once told me a story, as we were hunting together, and I think I can vouch for 

 the truth of what he related, of having seen a duck trapped by a clam : ' You see, sir, as I was 

 a cruising down the flats about sun-up, the tide jist at the nip, as it is now, I see a whole pile of 

 shoveler ducks snabbling in the mud, and busy as dog-fish in herring-time ; so I creeps down, 

 and slap I lets 'em have it : six on 'em turned over, and off went the pack gallows-scared and 

 quacking like mad. Down I runs to pick up the dead uns, when I see an old mallard a playing 

 up all kinds o' antics, jumping, backing, flapping, but fast by the head, as if he had his nose in a 

 steel trap; and when I comes up to him, blest if a large clam hadn't hold of him, hard and fast, 

 by the beak. The old mallard might a'tried his darndest, but may I never bait a martin-trap 

 again if that clam wouldn't a' held him agin any odds 'til the tide run in, and then he'd a' been 

 'a gone shoveler sure as shooting ; so I cracked up the clam with the biwt of my old gun, and 

 bagged the mallard." 



In addition to this a large number of other edible bivalves exist in the waters of the Pacific, 

 and have added to the food resources of the Indians on that coast, or are yet eaten by white men 

 and Chinese. Some of these are described elsewhere, such as the mollusks and abaloue (Haliotis), 

 or have been alluded to in the introductory volume, Section I, of this report upon the fisheries. I 

 shall content myself therefore by mentioning that the bay of San Francisco, in particular, and 

 some other portions of the sea-shore of California, are now being peopled with the eastern clams 

 of both species which have been taken thither, mainly or wholly by accident, with eastern trans- 

 planted oysters. They thrive in their new quarters, increase and grow rapidly and are figuring 

 largely in local markets. To what extent Prof. Jordan has included native mollusks with these 



