242 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [6] 



a salmon-breeding station, their great volume and width making it 

 wholly impracticable to collect any large number of spawning salmon 

 from them. Below Snake Eiver on the north or Washington side of 

 the Columbia there are many salmon streams flowing into it, as Alder 

 Creek, Klikitat Eiver, Wind Eiver, Washougal Eiver, Lewis Eiver, 

 and Cowlitz Eiver, besides many others ; but, with the exception of 

 perhaps the Cowlitz and Klikitat, they are all short, diminutive rivers 

 which would never furnish breeders enough to supply any great number 

 of eggs, and although the Cowlitz and Klikitat are of greater size 

 and would yield a larger supply of eggs, they nevertheless could not 

 furnish enough to warrant the establishment of a salmon-breeding 

 station anywhere along their course. On the south or Oregon side of 

 the Columbia its tributaries are much larger, but each one of them is 

 open to some objection which would be fatal to the collecting and dis- 

 tributing of salmon eggs on a large scale. 



The first river below Snake Eiver, on the Oregon side of the Colum- 

 bia, is the Walla Walla.* This river, although on the same side of the 

 Columbia that Oregon is, is nevertheless in Washington Territory, as 

 the Columbia from the mouth of the Snake Eiver to a few miles below 

 Wallula lies wholly in Washington Territory. The larger affluents of 

 the Walla Walla Eiver rise in the Blue Mountains, about 100 miles 

 east of the Columbia. About 15 miles from the Columbia they become 

 united, and now, under the name of the Walla Walla Eiver, their com- 

 bined waters empty into the Columbia at Wallula Junction. Although 

 several persons have recommended the Walla Walla as a good river for 

 our purpose, and although in times of high water many salmon run up 

 this stream, it is nevertheless, I am convinced, too small a river to con- 

 duct any large operations on in the way of collecting salmon eggs. The 

 river is scarcely more than 60 feet in width at low water, and shallow a 

 quarter of a mile from its mouth ; and a river of this size would not 

 carry a sufficient volume of water to induce salmon enough to enter it 

 to furnish any great number of eggs in these times of canneries ; for it 

 should be remembered that the immense canning operations carried on 

 along the Columbia Eiver have entirely revolutionized matters, as far as 

 the abundance of salmon eggs is concerned. Twenty years ago, before 

 the business of canning salmon on the Columbia was inaugurated, 

 salmon literally swarmed up all the small creeks and little tributaries of 

 the main river in such immense quantities that several million eggs 

 could, without doubt, have been easily collected from the spawning fish 

 at the head of comparatively insignificant streams ; but that day has 

 gone by, probably forever. The vast number of nets that are being'^ 

 continually dragged through the water at the canneries on the main 

 river during the fishing season catch millions of full-grown salmon on 

 their way up the river to spawn, and of course reduce to a correspond- 

 ing extent the number of parent fish that reach the spawning-grouuds. 



* Three luindred and twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Columbia. 



