890 FISHES — SALMONJD^. 



the whole foremost rank of the salmon felt it together, for it was a great gill-net, a 

 quarter of a mile long, and stretched squarely across the month of the river. By-and- 

 by men came in boats and hauled up the gill-net and threw the helpless salmon into a 

 pile on the bottom of tha boat, and the others saw them no more. We that live outside 

 the water know better what hefuUsthem, and we can tell the story which the salmon 

 could not. 



"All along the banks of the Columbia River, from its mouth to nearly thirty miles 

 away, there is a succession of large buildings, looking like great barns or warehouses, 

 built on piles in the river, and high enough to be out of the reach of flaods, -There are 

 thirty of these buildings, and they are called canneries. Each cannery has about forty 

 boats, and with each boat are two men and a long gill net, and these nets fill the whole 

 river as with a nest of cobwebs from April to July ; and to each cannery nearly a thou- 

 sand great salmon are brought in every day. These salmon are thrown in a pile on the 

 floor ; and Wing Hop, the big Chinaman, takes them one after another on the table, 

 and with a great koife dexterously outs off the head, the tail, and the fins ; then with a 

 sudden thrust removes the intestines and the eggs. The body goes into a tank of water, 

 and the head goes down the river to be made into salmon-oil. Next, the body is brought 

 on another table, and Quong Sing, with a machine like a feed-cutter, cuts it into pieces 

 just as long as a one-poand can. Then Ah Sam, with a butcher-knife, cuts these pieces 

 into strips just as wide as the can. Then Wan Lee, the China boy, brings down from the 

 loft, where the tinners are making them, a hundred canH, and into each can puts a 

 . spoonful of salt. It takes just six salmon to fill a hundred cans. Then twenty China- 

 men put the pieces of meat into the cans, fitting in little strips to make them exactly 

 full. Then ten more solder up the cans, and ten more put the cans into boiling water 

 till the meat is thoroughly cooked, and five more punch a little hole in the head of each 

 can to let out the air. Then they solder them up again, and little girls paste on them 

 bright-colored labels showing merry little Cupids riding the happy salmon up to the 

 cannery-door, with Mount Rainier and Cape Disappointment in the background ; and a 

 legend uudemeath says that this is 'Booth's' or 'BadoUet's Best,' or 'Home's' or 

 'Clark's' or 'Kinnery's Superfine Salt-water Salmon.' Then the cans are placed in 

 .cases, forty-eight in a case, aadiive hundred thousand cases are put upevery year. Great 

 ships come to Astorii and are loaded with them, and they carry them away to Loudon, 

 and San Francisco, and Liverpool, and New York, and Sydney, and Valparaiso, and 

 Skowhegan, Maine ; and the man at the corner grocery sells them at twenty cents a 

 can. 



■'All this time our salmon is going up the river; e3capi"g one net as by a miracle, 

 and soon having need of more miracles to escape the rest ; passrng by Astoria on a for- 

 tunate day, which was Sunday, the day on which no man may fish if he expects to sell 

 what he catches, till finally he came to where nets wen few, and, at last, to where they 

 ceased altogether. But here he fjund that scarcely any of his manyr companions were 

 with him, for the nets cease when there are no more salmon to be caught in them. So 

 he went on day and night where the water was deepest, stooping not to feed or loiter on 

 the way, till at last he qame to a wild gorge, where the great river became an angry tor 

 rent rushing wildly over a hung staircase of rocks. But our hero did not falter, and, 

 summoning all his forces, he plunged into the Cascades. The current caught him and 

 dashed him against the rocks; A whole row of silvery scales came off and glistened in 

 the water like sparks of fire, and a place on his side became black and red, which, for 

 a salmon, is the same as being black and blue for other people. His comrades tried to 



