254 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [18] 



being the uioldest and most inviting of the tributaries that were left, 

 they swarmed up this river in vast quantities. 



Besides, a good seining ground being found at the junction of the 

 river with the California and Oregon stage line, the station was enabled 

 to be built at a convenient place for communication with the outside 

 world. A good place was found for putting a rack or fence across the 

 river just above the seining ground, so that the vast hosts of salmoiy 

 going up the river were stopped just where they were wanted most.! 

 There was an abundance of good water for hatching and it was easily 

 obtained. All the land about the river was wild land, so that the site 

 of the fisherj'^ cost nothing, and no one objected to the rack that was 

 put across the river to stop the salmon, because only one white man 

 lived up the river. Here was a collection of first-class qualifications 

 which it is obvious would be extremely unlikely to be found combined 

 together again, and it is possible that, in point of fact, no other such i 

 place will be found again south of the British possessions. If this s 

 should prove to be the case, then we should have to be satisfied 

 with stations of smaller capacity and more of them, unless, as just sug- 

 gested, it is thought desirable to go to a greater distance from railroad "• 

 communication. In the meantime it seems safe to say that the mouth 

 of the Little Spokane Eiver appears at present to be the most favorable 

 point now known for establishing a salmon-breeding station on the 

 Columbia or its tributaries, which shall at the same time be near the 

 line of the Northern Pacific Eailroad. 



I wish to add, however, that if Washington Territory and the State 

 of Oregon, between which the lower Columbia flows, could agree upon 

 a code of good protective laws for the salmon, the Clackamas Eiver 

 would again teem with salmon as before, and in that event perhaps the 

 best point for a breedyig station would be on that river where the 

 station of the Oregon and Washington Fish Propagating Company 

 was built in 1877. Before the times of canneries and excessive netting 

 of the salmon in the lower Columbia, the Clackamas in Oregon was as 

 good a salmon river as the McCloud in California, and if the salmon 

 should ever be allowed to reach it, it might be again. There is no 

 ground for the objection that the Clackamas salmon are an inferior 

 variety of fish, for it has been proved repeatedly and indisputably that 

 the Clackamas salmon are the Spring or Chenook salmon ( Oncorhynchi 

 quinnat) [0. chouicha (Walb.) J. & G.], and of precisely the same varietl 

 as those which are canned at the mouth of the Columbia, and which ai 

 held to be of the highest value for canning. Kor is the difficulty oi 

 obtaining water for the hatching house at this point a very serious ob^ 

 jection, for if an abundance of breeders could be obtained it would war^^ 

 rant the incurring of suflicient expense to overcome this difficulty. It'i 

 therefore, the laws should ever protect the salmon of the Columbia^ 

 so that they could reach the mouth of the Clackamas, it might be founc 



