310 ZOOLOGY. 



or richness, and consequently in market value. Tliey include the ' hook-nosed" species, 

 besides the emaciated "spring salmon," and others of more or less excellence, yet scarcely any 

 are found at that season equalling the fine kinds of spring. In this connexion, Mr. Gibbs 

 makes the following remarks: "The spring salmon of the Columbia reach a great size, forty 

 pounds being not an unusual weight for them to attain, and I have heard of some reaching 

 seventy. They are excessively fat when they first enter the river, and make much better eating 

 than when caught further up. ' Chinook ' salmon bring the highest price. 



"In the autumn the white fleshed or mmachee salmon, as they are often called, arrive. It is 

 observed that the spring kinds do wo< run up the small streams near the coast, but keep iij) the 

 great rivers. At the season of the annual freshet (in June) they overcome the falls of the 

 Columbia, and as it backs up the Willamette, they mount the falls at Oregon City also. The 

 autumnal salmon, on the contrary, run into all the small creeks, and even into ponds formed by 

 the rains on the prairies. The spring salmon enter but few of the rivers on the coast, and only 

 those either of considerable size, or coming from snotv mountains. Both the spring and winter 

 kinds run up the Klamath and Sacramento rivers in vast numbers." 



He adds : "There is a salmon that runs up the Quinaiutl (a river heading in a lake in the 

 Olympic range, and emptying into the ocean just above Point Grenville, between Gray's Harbor 

 and Cape Flattery) which is said to be a difteront species, small, but very fne. The Indians 

 brought us two about the 20th of February — much earlier than the other salmon enter the 

 Columbia — but thej- were dressed and partly dried, so that I had no good opportunity of 

 examing them."* 



In 1853 and 1854 large quantities of salmon were salted for market at tlie fisheries near the 

 mouth of the Columbia, and at the Cascades, about 150 miles above. Although the fish, being 

 those taken in sj)ring and summer, were of the finest quality, second to none in the world, [I 

 say tliis understandingly, having eaten excellent salmon in Great Britain and on the continent 

 of Europe, as well as those brought to the New York markets from Nova Scotia,] owing to 

 carelessness in packing, and to the expense and difHculty that then attended the procurement of 

 proper barrels and good salt, nearly all who went into the business lost money ; and the 

 salmon thus miserably preserved reached the markets of San Francisco and New York in such 

 bad condition that they obtained a bad reputation among dealers. I am convinced that 

 should the business be undertaken properly by men skilled in the business, who, with ordinary 

 care and a selection of none but the silvery spring salmon (aS*. quinnat, S. gairdneri, and S. 

 pavcidens) on the Columbia, and the schedadhoo, skwowl, and satsup, or those known to the 

 Indians as tyee salmon, on Paget Sound, it will be found highly profitable, and that salmon thus 

 preserved would in a very short time be in great demand in all the principal markets of the 

 world. 



To attain this result great care in packing would be necessary, and a rigid determination to 

 salt none of the autumnal or inferior kinds, a temptation to which many have succumbed, owing 

 to the cheapness and abundance of such indifferent material. The skowitz (or 8. scouleri) may be 

 an exception to the rule regarding autumnal salmon ; yet even when in its best condition it is 

 a second-rate fish compared to the others. Of this salmon Mr. Gibbs saj^s : ' ' Messrs. Riley & 

 Swan, the proprietors of the Puyallup fishery, on Puget Sound, consider the skowitz (skokwid) 

 a o-ood fish for curing, because they are of so fit a size, heing not too large. They put up 800 

 barrels in six weeks, and were the first persons on the sound to use the seine in capturing 



" It is possible tliat this kind may be the species described by Girard as the Scdmo (Fario) aurora.— (See Gen Rep., p. 308. ) 



