QUINNAT SALMON. 891 



go up with him ; and one loat his eye, one his tail, and one had his lower j iw pushed back 

 into his head like the joints of a telescope. Again he tried to aurmoant the Cascades, 

 and at last he succeeded, and an Indian on the rocks above was waiting to receive him. 

 Bat the Indian with hij spear was less skillful than he was wont to be, and our hero es- 

 caped, losing only a part of one his fins, and with him came one other, and henceforth 

 these two pursued their journey together. 



"Now a gradual change took place in the looks of our salmon. In the sea he was 

 plump and round and silvery, with delicate teeth, and as handsome and symmetrical a 

 month as any one need wish to kiss. N^w his silvery color disappeared, his 

 skin grew slimy, and the scales sank into it; his back grew black and his sides turned 

 red — not a healthy red but a sort of hectic flash. He grew poor, and his back, formerly 

 as straight as need be, now developed an unpleasant hump at the shoulders. His eyes 

 — like those of all enttueiasts who forsake eating and sleeping for some lofcer aim — 

 became dark and sunken. His symmetrical jaws grew longer and longer, aud meeting 

 each other, as the nose of an old man meets his chin, each had to turn aside to let the 

 other pass. And his beautiful teeth grew longer and longer, and prcjsoted from his 

 month, giving him a savage and wolfish appearance, quite unlike his real disposition. 

 For all the desires and ambitions of his nature had become centered into one. We do 

 not know what this one was, but we know that it was a strong one, for it had led him 

 on and on, past the nets and horrors of Astoria, past the dangerous Cascades, past the 

 spears of the Indians, through the terrible flume of the Dalles, where the mighty river is 

 compressed between huge rocks into a channel narrower than a village street ; on past 

 the meadows of Umatilla and the wheat-fields of Walla Walla; on to where the great 

 Snake River and the Columbia join ; or up the Snake River and its eastern branch, till 

 at last he reached the foot of the Bitter-Root Mountains in- the Territory of Idaho, 

 nearly a thousand miles from the ocean, which he left in April. With him still was 

 the other salmon which had come with him up the Cascades, handsomer and smaller than 

 he, and, like him, growing poor and ragged and tired. At last, one October afternoon, 

 they came together to a little clear brook, with a bottom of fine gravel, over which the 

 water was a few inches deep. Oar fish palnfally worked his way to it, for his tail was 

 all frayed out, his masoles were sore, and his skin covered with unsightly blotches. 

 Bat his sunken eyes saw a ripple in the stream, and under it a bed of little pebbles and 

 sand. So there in the sand he scooped out with his tail a smooth, round place, and his 

 companion came and filled it with orange-colored eggs. Then our salmon came back 

 again, and, softly covering the eggs, the work of their lives was done, and, in the old 

 salmon-fashion, they drifted tail foremost down the stream. 



"Next morning, a settler in the Bitter-Root region, passing by the brook near his 

 house, noticed a ' dog salmon' had ran in there and seemed 'mighty nigh tuckered 

 out.' So he took a hoe, and wading into the brook, rapped the fish on he head with it, 

 and carrying ic ashore threw it to the hogs. Bat the hogs had a sarfeit of salmon- 

 meat, and they ate only the soft parts, leaving the head untouched. And a wandering 

 naturalist found it there, and sent it to the United States Fish Commission to be iden- 

 tified, and thus it came to me." 



