THE STORY OF A SALMON. 19 
he reached the foot of the Bitter Root Mountains 
in the Territory of Idaho, nearly a thousand miles 
from the ocean which he had left in April. With 
him still was the other salmon which had come 
with him through the Cascades, handsomer and 
smaller than he, and, like him, growing poor and 
ragged and tired. 
At last, one October afternoon, our finny travel- 
lers came together to a little clear brook, with a 
bottom of fine gravel, over which the water was 
but a few inches deep. Our fish painfully worked 
his way to it; for his tail was all frayed out, his 
muscles were sore, and his skin covered with un- 
sightly blotches. But 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 com- 
panion came and filled it with orange-colored eggs. 
Then our salmon came back again; and softly cov- 
ering the eggs, the work of their lives was done, 
and, in the old salmon fashion, they drifted tail 
foremost down the stream. 
They drifted on together for a night and a day, 
but they never came to the sea. For the salmon 
has but one life to live, and it ascends the river but 
once. The rest lies with its children. And when 
the April sunshine fell on the globules in the gravel, 
these were wakened into life. With the early au- 
tumn rains, the little fishes were large enough to 
begin their wanderings. They dropped down the 
current in the old salmon fashion. And thus they 
came into the great river and drifted away to the 
sea. 
