Photo by George Shiras, 3rd 
A NKW SPORT FOR OLD SPORTSMEN : A BOAT LOAD OP ANTLERS GATHERED ON THE 
OPEN MARSHES ON A SINGLE AETERNOON (SEE PAGES 45O-454) 
harbor, and here they collect by hundreds 
before making another effort to ascend 
the stream, only to be carried further 
down each time, until the death par- 
oxysm seizes each, when, after a few 
mad dashes with the head out of water 
gasping for air, they die with surprising 
suddenness. 
The salmon most abundant in the in- 
terior streams of northwestern Alaska 
is the sockeye, or red salmon. 
Investigations by the Bureau of Fish- 
-eries have shown that "this species is pe- 
culiar in that it rarely or never ascends 
a stream that has not one or more lakes 
at its headwaters, and the spawning 
grounds are usually in small streams 
tributary to such lakes or rarely in the 
lakes themselves." The average weight 
is about seven pounds, varying accord- 
ing to sex or condition. While dead, 
king salmon were occasionally seen float- 
ing down the Kenai River, some of 
which must have weighed 60 pounds, 
the kind coming under the writer's par- 
ticular observation, were the red salmon, 
the most graceful and active of the west- 
ern salmon. 
When these fish first come from the sea 
they are plump and vigorous and their 
silvery forms often gleam high above 
the surface of the waters in the slow 
advance to the spawning ground. Grad- 
ually the colors change to a light pink 
and then by degrees to a deep, blood red, 
splotched with yellow, when they resem- 
ble gigantic gold fish. At a later period 
the body becomes gaunt, the head nar- 
row and dark green, exhibiting gleam- 
ing rows of shark-like teeth, and then 
this once beautiful salmon of the high 
seas becomes reptilian in form and dis- 
position. 
It was in the quiet, shallow pools 
of the inside channels of the upper Ke- 
nai River, between long islands and the 
shore, where the milky glacial silt was 
precipitated to the bottom and the waters 
became clarified that the writer was able 
to observe and study for a number of 
days the action of the imprisoned fish. 
One hardly realizes in traveling on or 
along a glacial stream how beclouded 
are such waters. At the junction of the 
Kenai and Russian rivers this becomes 
strikingly apparent, where the latter, fed 
by the springs from the lower hills, is 
unusually clear, even though hundreds 
of dead salmon covered its bottom when 
we saw it. The photograph on page 470 
gives a fairly good idea of this contrast. 
Between August 29 and September 3 
461 
