826 ANIMAL FOOD KESOURCES OF DIFFEEENT NATIONS. 



average weight is from four to twenty-five pounds, but 

 they have been caught weighing over seventy. The 

 second kind are caught from June to August and are 

 considered the finest. Their average size is only five t6 

 .six pounds. The third coming in August, and continuing 

 till winter, average seven pounds and are an excellent 

 fish. The noan, or humpback salmon, comes every second 

 year, lasting from August till winter, weighing from six 

 to fourteen pounds. 



The hookbill arrives in September and remains till 

 winter, weighing from twelve to fifteen and even forty- 

 five pounds. Salmon is sold in the capital, Victoria, 

 at 3d. to 4d. per pound and there seems to be no 

 limit to the catch. The salmon fisheries in the pro- 

 vince now employ about 5,000 men during the season. 



It is while making their annual pilgrimage from the 

 sea that the salmon are caught, generally near the en- 

 trance to the streams, though often many miles inland, 

 and prepared for market. The salmon has always beeii 

 one of the most important of the various forms of food 

 used by the Indians of the Pacific coast, who annually 

 gather along the streams and catch thousands of them, 

 drying them in the sun for winter use. Long ago the 

 Hudson's Bay Company began salting thera for its own 

 use, and of late years many canning factories have been 

 established at favourable points, where thousands of cans 

 are prepared for market annually. 



The salmon packed on the Columbia river (American 

 section), in 1883, was 629,438 cases, from the Cali^ 

 fornian and Alaska fisheries 210,978 cases, and from 

 British Columbia 196,292 cases, making a total for the 

 Pacific coast of 1,036,708 cases of four dozen pound cans 

 each. 



Preserved Salmon is conspicuously the poor man's 

 luxury, and with the capacity of purchase by the lower 

 classes in England and on the Continent of Europe, th© 

 rise or fall of the market must materially depend. 



The first cargo of canned salmon of thfe catch of 1880, 

 from the Columbia Eiver,- when cleared from Port- 



