368 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



BIRDS, BEARS AND FISHES.— II. 



ONE of the prime requisites for a, journey with Alaskaoi 

 natives is tea, and of this we carried a bountiful 

 supply. During the tramp across the portage from Uyak 

 Bay we halted at noon to give our carriers an opportun- 

 ity to brew their favorite drink, and on the way up Karluk 

 River the two halves of our party met at a convenient 

 point on the shore and drank tea together. The natives 

 had a simple device for hanging the kettle over the fire 

 whenever low shrubs were available: they cut off part of 

 the top. removed the small branches and hung tbe kettle 

 filled with water on the end of the shrub, the elasticity 

 of which was sufficient to hold the utensil at the proper 

 elevation from the fire. When the natives furnish tea 

 themselves it is made very weak, quantity of the bever- 

 age rating higher in importance than strength. The 

 noonday tea we discovered to form one of the essentials 

 of a happy existence with our helpers, and we never 

 omitted this mode of ministering to their welfare; indeed 

 we soon acquired a decided taste for the innocent stimu- 

 lant ourselves, and were quite ready to join in the "chi- 

 peet" of the country. Hard bread is the necessary ac- 

 companiment of tea, ' and if you add to this a supply 

 of dried salmon, called ukali, a little sugar, salt and 

 pepper, some matches and tobacco, you will have fur- 

 nished enough to satisfy the wants of any paxty of 

 natives. In the fishing season they will easily catch 

 with their hands or despatch with stones all the salmon 

 they need in the fresh condition. One peculiarity of 

 these people is their improvidence. If they receive a 

 supply of bread, tea and other provisions sufficient to 

 last several days they will generally consume the whole 

 quantity in one day. For this reason I found it necess- 

 sary to deal out rations day by day arid abandon the at- 

 tempt to teach the natives economy. 



The morning of August 18 broke upon us with a per- 

 sistent fall of rain, which made walking along the lake 

 shore extremely difficult, owing to the presence of de- 

 caying vegetation and the residue of last season's dead 

 salmon. The shores for the most part are composed of 

 large rounded boulders, and the effect of the mixture of 

 rain, salmon oil and conferva?, can readily be imagined. 

 The lake stretched away to the southward, fadinc out 

 against a low-lying point and a barrier of undulating 

 mountains. Near the shore the clear water revealed the 

 bottom of boulders and irregular rocks, alternating 

 with occasional areas of clean sand over which salmon 

 in their vivid nuptial colors were hovering, intent upon 

 reproducing their kind. Lurking in nooks and crannies 

 on all sides was that small but vicious enemy and con- 

 temporary of the salmon, the fresh-water sculpin with 

 several significant aliases, such as "mullhead," "bull- 

 head " and " miller's thumb." Though always of small 

 size, the pigmy of his family, he is extremely hardy and 

 wonderfully prolific. In Karluk Lake his name is legion 

 and his ravages among the salmon eggs are deplorable. 

 The fame of this little pest as a destroyer of eggs and of 

 young trout and salmon is everywhere notorious among 

 fish breeders and students of the life history of the sal- 

 mon family. The fish assumes a bewildering variety of 

 forms and is co-extensive in distribution with the trout 

 and salmon. 



Notwithstanding the steady downpour, Mr. Booth and 

 I stowed away in the bidarkas a supply of food, our in- 

 struments, rifles, blankets and other necessaries, and 

 started on a reconnoissance to the head of the lake. This 

 sheet of water, roughly speaking, is Y-shaped and con- 

 tains near the middle of its length a group of three small 

 islands. On the south island of this group there is an 

 old barabara, which is used by winter hunting parties, 

 and this was our objective point for the first stage of our 

 journey. Two natives paddled the bidarka for each of 

 us, and we moved along clo?e to the shore at a nearly 

 uniform rate of about four miles an hour. Mak Cem 

 kept up a continual chatter, principally in his own 

 tongue, but the rest were less inclined to talk. We were 

 greatly hampered in our movements by our oil clothes, 

 but our companions were very snug and comfortable in 

 their light kamlaykas, or water-proof shirts made of bear 

 gut, which were securely tied at the wrists and around 

 the hatch of the bidarka. We reached the island about 

 eleven in the forenoon and hurried our belongings into 

 the barabara, where we soon had a welcome fire burning 

 and preparations under way for tea. Presently we dis- 

 covered that we lacked several necessaries of camp life 

 —salt, sugar, bacon and matches. One meal, a stew, 

 without salt was enough, and a bidarka was sent back 

 to our tent for the missing articles. Mak Cem remained 

 with us and exerted himself to make us as comfortable 

 as possible in our somewhat dilapidated quarters. A few 

 bunches of grass to mend the roof and a scanty supply of 

 wood to dry our wet clothing speedily improved our con- 

 dition. 



About the middle of the afternoon we crossed over to 

 the mainland to get a lot of dry wood from the cotton- 

 wood trees, and glance at the tributary lake which com- 

 municates with Karluk through a short, rapid and very 

 crooked river. We found the river to be nearly as wide 

 as Karluk River. Salmon, trout and sculpins were 

 abundant. Dead and dying fish were all around, and we 

 were soon made aware that many of the salmon had not 

 died a natural death. Traces of foxes and bears were 

 abundant; these animals had beaten down the grass in 

 many directions and left numerous evidences of recent 

 feasting on fish. The bears had consumed vast quanti- 

 ties of berries also, which appeared to be the common 

 and very showy red elderberry of the region, a species of 

 Samtntcns. Among the common birds were terns, gulls, 

 magpies, eagles and several kinds of ducks. The gulls 

 included a goodly proportion of kittiwakes in very fine 

 plumage. Magpies were met with frequently in small, 

 noisy colonies, and the eagles were in family groups, 

 generally among the tall cotton woods. The young eagles 

 were nearly as large as the adults, but not strong in 

 flight, and very easily obtained. The ducks were as shy 

 and difficult of approach as they are near the centers of 

 population. In this little unpremeditated excursion we 

 had with us only one native, and everything progressed 

 favorably enough until a moderate head wind raised a 

 small sea and swell on the lake; then we discovered the 

 unstable nature of our frail canoe in unskillful hands, 

 and wished ourselves safe in the barabara. 



We resolved never again to veuture out in deep water, 



and especially the very cold water of such a lake, except 

 in the care of two natives for each bidarka. Lisiansky 

 remarked upon the elasticity of the skin canoe as an ob- 

 jectionable feature to persons unaccustomed to this form 

 of boat, but we were more seriously annoyed by the fear 

 of capsizing. In the event of overturning there would 

 be practically nothing to do but to breathe a prayer and 

 indulge a farewell thought of home and kindred. The 

 position for paddling in the first hatch is attended with 

 great discomfort to a beginner, since it compels him to 

 kneel and bring his weight principally on the extended 

 foot, pressing the instep and soon causing a numbness of 

 the extremities. The disposition to rise becomes irresisti- 

 ble, and thus the danger of capsizing is greatly increased. 

 There is a good deal of misplaced confidence about 

 handling a bidarka on the part of white men, and numer- 

 ous accidents are the result. Sudden immersion in water 

 not many degrees above the freezing point is not a sub- 

 ject for joking, to say nothing about the great risk of 

 being immovablv fixed in the bidarka and carried down 

 with it. 



The party sent back for supplies returned to us in time 

 for breakfast on the 19th, and we were soon ready to 

 continue our voyage to the head of Karluk Lake. During 

 the run we made the unexpected discovery that our com- 

 panions knew next to nothing about the names of the 



Erominent headlands, mountains and rivers around us, 

 ut were always ready after a little consultation and 

 some half-concealed merriment to give us names manu- 

 factured for the occasion. Inasmuch as these natural 

 objects probably have no other nomenclature, we may as 

 well refer to some of them the names evolved out of the 

 lively imaginations of our Kadiakmuts. After we had 

 passed the spot where "Chuck-soo-wak-net,"' the big 

 mountain of the peninsula between the two arms of the 

 lake, speaks to "Ning-guh-wuck," the smaller long ridged 

 mountain on the opposite side of the lake, Goolia's sharp 

 eye discovered a grizzly with two cubs crunching salmon 

 near the mouth of •'■Nettick'" River, and you shoidd have 

 seen our swift canoes quiver under the rapid and power- 

 ful paddles of the thoroughly excited natives. 



"Ta-goo-gack !" "ta-goo-gack !" exclaimed first one and 

 then another, while we substituted the English equiva- 

 lent, bear! bear! and shared in the general enthusiasm. 

 We were skurrying to leeward of the bears, which none 

 hut the trained eyes of the natives could make out, owing 

 to their distance from us. In a very little while we 

 gained the shore and hauled up the bidarkas on the 

 beach. We were not seen by the bears and soon began a 

 nervous and stealthy descent in force, keeping concealed in 

 the tall grass. Slowly we neared the feeding place of the 

 grizzlies, occasionally raising our heads to discover them. 

 Presently about 100yds. ahead of us a huge hairy head 

 appeared above the grass and a clumsy paw was t brown 

 up to steady the sight of the now suspicious beast. A 

 sudden snap of a stick beneath the foot of one of our 

 party alarmed bruin just as some of us were preparing to 

 fire. The shaggy head disappeared and with it our first 

 chance to slay a grizzly on his native shores. T. H. B. 

 [to be continued.] 



PROTECTION OF FISH A BLESSING. 



BY J. LIVINGSTON REESE, D.D. 

 VTANY arguments and reasons have lately been called 

 jJJL. forth in the public press for the enforcement of the 

 game laws, and for the passage of such bill* by the State 

 legislatures as will preserve the game and fish of our 

 forests and streams. Almost all of them are written in 

 the interests of the sportsman who has the time and the 

 means to spend in hunting and fishing, and perhaps for- 

 tius reason all game laws are thought by some to be in- 

 tended for the pleasure of* a small, though important 

 class of our citizens. No doubt considerable jealousy has 

 grown up on this account on the part of those who are 

 deprived of these pleasures by the necessities of life, or 

 who have no taste for them. And such legislation in 

 some quarters does not touch the popular heart and is 

 difficult to be enforced because it has somewhat the odium 

 of class legislation. And yet there is not a family in the 

 whole community that should not be particularly inter- 

 ested in such legislation, especially in the laws wbich 

 protect the fish in their spawning season, and which pre- 

 vent their extermination by the net pirates. 



There is no civilized country in the world excepting 

 those countries that stretch their narrow boundaries along 

 the ocean, and whose people draw from it their living as 

 the farmers do from the soil, where the markets are as 

 well supplied with fish and where they are as cheap a diet 

 as in the United States. And this is as true of the fresh- 

 water supply as that which comes from the ocean. Our 

 great inland lakes and our grand rivers furnish food, 

 good, nourishing food, cheap and abundant, such as is 

 given to no other nation of the world. Let any one im- 

 agine how restricted the diet of our people would be, if 

 by any great catastrophe this supply should be cut off, 

 or be made so dear as to be only the* luxury of the rich. 

 Our fish are now so cheap that the poorest can afford 

 them. But if there were no fish laws and no protection 

 against netters, they would soon become the dearest 

 articles of food in the market. In demanding therefore 

 of the State such adequate protection, we are asking it 

 not for a small and favored class, but for the masses of 

 the people. It is the poor, the working man, who wants 

 fresh fish on Friday, who is especially benefitted by such 

 laws. The angler can always get his fishing somewhere, 

 either on his club preserve or in some remote district, far 

 away from civilization but accessible to men of means, 

 where they can carry their comforts and where they 

 can enjoy their sport unmolested. 



But the borders of our great lakes and of most of our 

 rivers and streams are now inhabited by large and ever 

 increasing populations. Among them, of course, men 

 whose sole thought is the gaining of the dollar for to-day, 

 and who give little thought for the morrow. They con- 

 sider the fish in these streams their natural property. 

 What care they, if in some few years these great bodies 

 of water be stripped of the food that should supply the 

 wants of the people for all time, providing they can 

 gather together by then- merciless nets the dollars which 

 wickedly earned are so often wickedly spent. The 

 poacher and the netter have neither conscience nor pity, 

 nor care for the morrow. To let them alone is to rob the 

 poor of the food which the Almighty made for them and 

 made so abundant as to be upon the table of every work- 

 ingman in the city and in the country. No class of 

 people should be "more interested in protecting our 



waters than the working classes. Let it be understood 

 that if in the spawning season, fish, though at that time 

 not fit for food, are allowed to be caught, and if netters 

 are permitted by their wholesale slaughter to strip our 

 streams, there is but one ending of it. Fresh-water fish 

 will be so scarce that the workingman must restrict him- 

 self to his salt codfish and his dried herring. We ask our 

 Fish Commissioners to keep this in mind. 



We would rouse the people all over the J and to protect 

 themselves in protecting the fish. We tell the Fish Com- 

 missioners of the State of New York, and some of them 

 we know personally to be most honorable and high-toned 

 men, to make it their main object to protect and multiply 

 the fish that are found on the tables of the working man. 

 They are not appointed nor paid by the State to stock 

 private ponds nor to protect club waters. Not a fish* 

 should be planted in club waters by the State without 

 the payment of every expense incurred. Fish hatch- 

 eries and fish protectors and fish commissioners are made 

 and paid by the State, not for tbe sake of private anglers, 

 but to keep up and replenish the food supply of fish for 

 the millions. Let our Fish Commissioners make it their 

 chief business to protect and replenish our great public 

 streams, the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Mohawk and 

 the hundreds of smaller streams accessible to the public 

 without paying for that privilege. If by their efforts 

 they will so' multiply the fish in such streams, as to make 

 the supply abundant and cheap, and fishing a means of 

 livelihood for hundreds of honest fishermen, they will 

 make themselves the most popular men in the State, and 

 t heir work will be cherished and encouraged by thousands 

 of grateful people. 



Private lakes and club preserves can and will take care 

 of themselves, but we ask in the name of the poorer peo- 

 ple, for our workingmen and our honest artisans, an 

 abundant supply of food fish. The St. Lawrence associa- 

 tion of anglers, though it may not know it, has done 

 more for this than it has done for the pleasure of the cot- 

 tagers and visitors who frequent those lovely waters. 



Will the Fish Commissioners of the State of New York 

 bend their energies to this one purpose, and make them- 

 selves and their work a blessing to thousands ? 



Albany, N. T., Nov. 22, 



CLUBS AND PRESERVES. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



In your issue of the 7th ult. I see a letter from "R. O. 

 S." on "Fishing Clubs in Canada." In it he exempts 

 Quebec; why, I am not aware, for that province does not 

 hesitate to lease its lakes or any other water by which 

 they can draw a dollar; and I have yet to know or hear 

 of New Brunswick not following suit. There are lakes 

 in both provinces teeming with trout, so far removed 

 from civilization that it is not possible to reach them ex- 

 cept in winter by snowshoes — often a journey from 

 thirty to eighty miles. Few visit them except poor Lo. 

 who hauls a hundred pounds of fish on his hand sled, 

 selling them at some station on tbe I. C. R,, or hauling 

 them to the nearest village, where he realizes from eight 

 to ten cents per pound: and as he is now shut out from 

 both moose and caribou this is about his only living for 

 the long winter. 



The pretense made by the local governments, who now 

 own all the inland waters, is that it will not answer to 

 exempt any waters from the cast-iron regulation, as it 

 would b3 a precedent for others to obtain the same priv- 

 ilege. In the good old days, when Charlie Hallock vis- 

 ited our country, not much law was in existence, and 

 what there was, was ignored. But times are now altered, 

 and without some more stringent regulations I confess 

 we would have been without a fish in either lake or 

 river. 



For eleven years the Federal Government claimed the 

 right to the inland as well as the tidvil and coast fisheries, 

 and they let them at a nominal rental; in fact were almost 

 glad to get clear of them, in order not only to have as- 

 sistance in protecting them, but to bring them into 

 notoriety. In those days every man wa3 nearly a law 

 unto himself, as far as catching either salmon or trout 

 went, and the rivers were far behind what they are 

 to-day. 



Riparian rights being acknowledged, changed things 

 very much. Men of wealth and leisure and fond of sport 

 came, saw and conquered, by buying from those who had 

 the power to sell, and by leasing when they could not 

 buy. Common men, who have to labor for a living, have 

 neither the mean3. inclination nor ability to undertake 

 the role of sportsmen; and as any other mode of captur- 

 ing fish in lake or river is now forbidden, those parties 

 who regret so much the decay of the old times, when 

 they could use the net and spear at all seasons, must bow 

 to the inevitable, and make the most they can in the way 

 of money out of those into whose possession it has fallen. 



Allow 7 me now to give you an item on the salmon fish- 

 eries in the Bay of Chaleur. The net-fishermen in the 

 bay and estuaiy number nearly 500. catching over 1,000,- 

 OOOlbs. of salmon, worth in round figures §100,000. 

 There are some six angling rivers leasing for somewhere 

 near .$20,000; some 200 anglers now visit them yearly; at 

 the most moderate calculation they themselves and 

 guides, with canoe, cost $200, giving $40,000. For pro- 

 tection, for five months those lessees and proprietors are 

 bound, not only by the terms of their leases, but in cases 

 of proprietorship for, I may say. self-preservation, to em- 

 ploy over fifty guardians at a cost of $15,000. The erec- 

 tion and maintenance of the buildings, ice houses and 

 the numerous conveniences men of leisure require make 

 up a balance more, than equal to the whole net catch; and 

 when it is considered that all this expenditure of money 

 arises from the catching by the anglers of, say, 2,500 

 salmon (not over), while the netters take 50,000 fish to 

 obtain the same amount of money, I think "R. O. S." 

 must admit that if they get the sport they pay for it, and 

 leave a lot of the "dust" in places where otherwise there 

 would not be a color. John Mowat. 



Campbelt/ton, N. B., Nov. 14. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I am not and never was a member of any club, nor do 

 I have any financial interest in any club or preserve, but 

 I do feel a growing interest in the good work they are 

 doing. Oh, that some club might have been organized 

 twenty years ago to protect and preserve the now nearly 

 extinct buffalo. 



From many parts of our country there has been sent 

 up the cry that no club can legally acquire the exclusive 

 right to shoot and fish on any tract of land. Now I would 



