[17j EXPLORATIONS ON COLUMBIA RIVER. 253 



veatiires about it to recommend it. In the first place, it is-in a good 

 timber country, where lumber can be easily and inexpensively obtained 

 for building. Then the roads in all directions are hard and good, even 

 during the rainy season, which is an advantage that can be fully appre- 

 ciated by those who have lived in other parts of the Pacific coast, where 

 the roads become practically impassable during the rainy season on 

 account of the great depth of the mud. The ground is also almost 

 level from the mouth of the Little Spokane to the town of Spokane 

 Falls, which would make communication with the town and freighting 

 to and from the breeding station very easy. The climate also is a great 

 recommendation to this place ; as it is never very cold or very hot. 



By glancing over what has just been said about the mouth of the 

 Little Spokane it will be seen that it is known to be, in all the essential 

 [points bu,t one, an unusually favorable location for a salmon-breeding 

 jstation. . If it should prove to be capable of furnishing an abundance of 

 [breeders, I should not hesitate to recommend it emphatically as one of 

 the best situations to be found anywhere for taking and distributing 

 salmon eggs. If, however, it should fail to supply the required quan- 

 tity of spawning salmon, I do not know where we could look for any 

 one place on the Columbia Eiver or its North Fork which by itself 

 would be adequate and satisfactory, and I think we should then be 

 ! reduced to the necessity of going farther from the railroad or erecting 

 two or three separate stations at different points. Of these two alter- 

 natives it would probably be most prudent to choose the latter, on 

 account of the extreme difficulty of constructing a station for carry- 

 ; iug on the work of taking, distributing, and hatching salmon eggs at 

 I any great distance from the railroad. 



I think it proper to state here that perhaps the finding of another 

 < such place as the McCloud Eiver station, in California, should not be 

 expected. It may be that the McCloud Eiver station has spoiled us for all 

 other places by leading us to expect too much. Possibly there are no 

 other places in the United States, Alaska excepted, where nearly twenty 

 million salmon eggs could be obtained in one year*. It certainly is 

 not reasonable to expect such a combination of favorable circum- 

 stances to occur again as is found at the McCloud station. It is a 

 combination, against the second occurrence of which there are many 

 chances to one. In the case of the McCloud station, it so happened 

 that all the other main tributaries of the Sacramento, with one or two 

 exceptions, were so filled with the mud and dirt ("slickens") from the 

 hydraulic mines above that no salmon would enter them. These rivers 

 were as completely closed to the spawning salmon as if an impassable 

 dam had been built at their mouths on purpose to keep them out. The 

 consequence was that all the salmon passed by them, and, the McCloud 



*Iu 1878,14,000,000 salmon eggs were placed in the batching house at the station 

 on the McCloud River, California, and several millions more could undoubtedly have 

 been obtained if needed. 



