THE SALMON-FISHERY 329 



Alaska a barrier of sand and gravel was once formed across 

 the mouth of a river by a phenomenal storm. The river 

 was, however, able to percolate through. When the salmon 

 returned to their river, so determined were they to get up, 

 they threw themselves out of the water on to the pebbly 

 beach, and some at least succeeded in wriggling and jump- 

 ing till they reached the other side. The natives profited 

 by the experience, though the devotion of the salmon 

 deserved a better fate. Only three things will apparently 

 keep salmon from their own home, pollution of the river, 

 insuperable natural barriers, and man's persecutions. All 

 these three are one, and that one is Death. If the summer 

 is early and the water warm, well and good; they return 

 to their river early. If it is late, they are content to " bide." 

 If it becomes too cold after they arrive, they will return 

 to the sea and go up again later. In these adventurous 

 journeys the larger fish are the leaders. Obstacles are only 

 things to be overcome. They will leap ten feet out of the 

 water up a cataract. With successive leaps they will 

 climb a fall of thirty feet. They will go on jumping till 

 they are dashed to pieces and, bruised and dying, are 

 borne down on the bosom of the river they loved, back to 

 a tomb in the great deep out of which they came. The 

 zeal of Kim and his old Lama in search of the river of the 

 arrow was no greater than that of this kingly-spirited fish. 

 The fact that he can no longer people our rivers is no fault 

 of his. 1 

 This very persistence of the salmon is his own undoing. 



1 A most interesting fact noticed about salmon by Mr. W. G. Gosling 

 is the existence in certain rivers below the falls of pot-holes scooped 

 out by the water in the solid rock. While watching salmon leap up 



