19033 A Pathetic Theorist 



rushing "overfall" swells the narrow passage. A 

 similar condition occurs on the St. John River at 

 St. John, New Brunswick. 



On our way from cannery to cannery we were 

 joined by Captain J. W. Callbreath, a man of char- 

 acter and education who had established himself on 

 the otherwise uninhabited island of Etolin. There he 

 staked his fortune on the theory, in part correct, that cdi- 

 all salmon return in four years to spawn in the waters ^^^'^'^ 

 in which they hatched out. Arguing that Etolin 

 streams had no red salmon merely because none ever 

 spawned in them, he had yearly stocked the Jadgeska 

 River, expecting to begin to reap a rich harvest at the 

 end of four years. But the appointed time passed and 

 no red salmon came — only poorer kinds which he 

 at once destroyed. Confident, however, of the sound- 

 ness of the "parent stream" theory, he now decided 

 that his error lay in the supposed age of maturity. He 

 therefore waited five years, six years, seven years, 

 ten years, and so on, year by year, upheld by the 

 pathetic obsession until his death. The fatal flaw in 

 his scheme lay in the fact (of which he would hear 

 nothing) that red salmon, as I have already stated, 

 spawn only above lakes, never even entering a lake- 

 less river. 



In connection with our work, with my colleagues I From 

 crossed the mountains from Skagway at the head of ^*^^X« 

 Lynn Canal to the upper Yukon at Caribou Cross- crossing 

 ing,i the chief town of that region. The railroad (then 

 new) from SkSgway northward goes over a magnifi- 



' Here the Yukon narrows between Lakes Bennett and Tagish, and i 

 forded at times by the caribou or Canadian reindeer. 



IS 



n 139 3 



