How to obtain it. 293 
cool lakes, and in their tributaries, preferring waters whose 
highest temperature rarely exceeds fifty-five degrees. 
“The king salmon is the first to arrive on the shores in the 
spring. Itmakesitsappearancein May . . . . andearlyin 
June. The time of its coming into Norton Sound corresponds 
with the breaking up and disappearance of the ice. It continues 
to enter some of the rivers for the purpose of spawning until 
August. The height of the season, however, is reached by the 
middle of July in most localities. This fish travels up the rivers 
farther than any other species, except the red salmon. In the 
Yukon it ascends far above Fort Yukon, more than fifteen hundred 
miles from the mouth of the river. 
“The king salmon does not ascend rivers rapidly, unless 
the spawning season is close at hand. It generally plays around 
for a few days, or even a couple of weeks, near the river limit of 
tide water. As far as we can learn, only those fish that ascend the 
stream short distances return to the ocean after spawning, and 
September is the month in which the spent fish go down to the 
sea. There is no reason why the king salmon should not return 
down the Karluk, as the distance is very short. There is ample 
testimony, of a conclusive nature, to the effect that, after a king 
salmon ascends five hundred miles from the sea, it never returns 
to it alive. The humpback salmon (Oxcorhynchus gorbuscha) is 
' the smallest, most abundant, and most widely distributed of the 
Alaskan salmon. The height of the spawning season in the 
Kadiak streams is evidently about the middle of August. Messrs. 
Robert Lewis and Livingstone Stone found the humpbacks 
spawning in vast numbers August 15th. On the 24th of August 
Alexander Creek was full of humpbacks, in all stages of emaciation 
and decay. In Alitak Bay, September oth, the fish were nearly 
all dead in the creeks, and Snug Harbour contained many dying 
humpback salmon, floating seaward tail first. 
“After the great run in the Karluk, the fish came down 
dead, or in a dying condition, for a whole month, and the beaches 
were strewn with dead salmon. The last stages of this species are 
repulsive to look upon, but before the extensive emaciation and 
sloughing away of the skin has taken place, the colours of the 
breeding fish are rather pleasing, the lower parts becoming milky 
