Oct. 26, 1901.1 
f^UJrlEST AND STREAM,^ 
S25 
Iheir cradled offspring, and their deeply sunken eyes 
watch, with perhaps anxious solicitude, the place of 
burial. But the glad day of resurrection is not for them; 
their fins, worn white and ragged and crippled by a 
fungus growth, ieebly hold them against the current. 
Gradually they succumb, and, though borne downward, 
it is with head? turned toward their buried brood, save 
occasionally, in some mad fiurry, they may rush a short 
distance with the hurrying stream. Parasites invade their 
gills, and thus, with impeded respiration and enfeebled 
body, the end draws near; a violent thrashing of the 
water, perhaps a dart into the air, and it is only another 
dead fish floating down to the distant and all-receiving 
sea. 
At all distances exceeding 500 miles, it seems certain 
that none of the fish regain the ocean alive, and that 
within such distance the survivors form but a small por- 
tion of the original host. It follows that in the upper 
waters of the Columbia, whose remoter spawning beds 
are far beyond that limit, that the finny pilgrims immo- 
late themselves to the last individual. This great river 
was not always known as now; its former and more im- 
pressive designation, when it traversed an unknown wil- 
derness, is embalmed in Bryant's liiles: . 
"Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings. 
The poet's language implies that, even within a few 
years of its discovery, it was known to be a turbulent 
stream, and such it is to-day. From its remote source 
to near its mouth, its course is marked by a swift current; 
its navigable reaches broken by fierce rapids, impassable 
to vessels. Vainlj^, however, is the might of the furious 
river exerted against the indomitable salmon, that, with 
masterful strength and activity, overcome each and all 
of the varied oppositions of the shouting waters. If con- 
fronted with a foaming rapid, where the chafed and angry 
flood; in mazy whirls, darts hither and yon, the fearless 
adventurers, undismayed by the mad riot of confused 
.-ind opposing currents, fling themselves into the-fray.^ 
There is in all creatures whose habits confront them 
with peculiar exigencies a wonderful adaptation thereto, 
the mode of accomplishment being often inscrutable. 
The chamois of the Alps, the Rocky Mountain goat, and 
the argali, if suddenly lacing an tmlooked-for danger, 
will plunge down a precipice and, alighting upon a nar- 
row ledge, will again and again repeat the startling per- 
formance, until reaching the bottom. Here is a wonder- 
ful correlation of propulsive and restraining effort, an 
accurate and instantaneous adjustment of momentum 
to weight, accompiished with certainty of result, though 
under stress of sudden alarm. If the animal puts too 
much effort in his leap, he will overshoot his little mark, 
and fall headlong; but landing, he must at once arrest his 
momentum, preparatory to another bound, else his im- 
paired balance would entail disaster. With his precarious 
footine and narrow lodgment, he automatically deter- 
mines the amount oi restraining force, exerting it gradu- 
ally, and then expanding it into another propulsive move- 
ment, of like mathematical accuracy, he bounds down- • 
ward like a rubber ball. An expert gymnast, by frequent 
experimental effort, might ascertain the precise degree of 
force necessary to perform a single step of the series 
mentioned; but the chamois, in fear^ and discomposure, 
at all the different stages of descent, varies its expendi- 
ture of energy with a nicety of precision that would 
seem to imply powers of perception almost verging 
upon a distinct sense. 
Some such apprehension or sense, if sense it be, must 
seemingly be attributed to the royal salmon, who, in the 
turmoil and tumult of wildly seething waters, discerns 
ways and means of progress,* not open to our scrutiny, 
or. perhaps, to our understanding, even if revealed to 
our wishful eyes. With careful venture, the finny acrobat 
slowly climbs the water steeps, and, in his advance, 
nurses his strength by tarrying in every pool, or reach 
of slackened water ; even the depths of a boilmg cauldron 
may afford him needed rest, for, amid the roar and not 
his' occult sense perhaps reveals the neighborhood of 
hidden waters of comparative quietude. 
Within two hundred miles of the Columbia's mouth 
there are two effective obstructions to navigation, the 
first known as the Cascades; the second, forty miles be- 
yond, the Dalles, through which latter the river, nar- 
rowed by vertical walls, rushes with tumultuous speed. 
In each of these dangerous reaches, perhaps many salmon 
meet with grievous injury, for skill and adaptiveness may 
not guprd against every manifestation of wildly erratic 
waters. Beyond are yet other rapids, and. with the pass- 
age of all, there follow foaming cataracts,^ whose vertical 
plunge confronts the toiling wayfarers with loud-voiced 
defi?nce; but the wasted, yet undaunted, band assail the 
barrier Again and again, in graceful vault, they hurl 
themselves against the water's thundering front; if beaten 
back bruised and lacerated by jagged rocks, the assault 
is renewed until exhaustion, defeat, or success, crown 
their endeavor. Thus struggling onward and upward, 
ever battling with the varied outbursts of the contending 
stream, thev attain, at last, its shallows, where, if the 
depth be insufficient to float their worn bodies, they force 
3 When a barrier is reached, salmon charge it repeatedly and per- 
sistently without regard to the injuries they sustain.— L. ^- f 'sli 
Bull 1892 As evidence of their dauntless purpose, it is related 
that at the'hatcherv upon the McCloud River, Cal a stout, wooden 
barrier was assailed by them so violently as to enable a feW to U,rcc 
a oassage. Over a hundred a minute were counted hurling them- 
selves through the air and striking the structure with a great shock. 
— LT S. Fish Com. Report, 187S, p. 745. 
•• A trout will zigzag up a vertical fall so swiftly that the eye can 
only follow with difficulty his movement; but if a fin happen to 
project beyond the edge of the cascade he drops to its base. A 
salmon, by reason of his greater size cannot resort to the same 
t-'ctics A vertical fall of water, of sufhcient thickness and breadth 
to immerse his body, and give it freedom of scope of motion, is 
d such fall could probabtv be more easily leaped than 
themselves along upon their sides, or, with straining ef- 
fort, hop along until deeper water is attained- Now do 
they near the bourne of their long and arduous pilgrimage; 
beyond is their natal bed, the very cradle, where rocking 
waters ushered them into existence. "As a bird that 
wandereth from her nest," so does the attenuated pil- 
grim from the far-off sea know the place, the identical 
spot, of his birth, and he regains it but to die." 
Among the various tributaries of the Columbia it is 
difficult to determine the furthest attainment of the sal- 
mon; they ascend to the Bitter Root Mountains, far up 
in Idaho, to Spokane Falls, Lower and Upper Kettle 
Falls,' and, perhaps, beyond, for the extrerne limit at- 
tained in the days of departed abundance is not now 
known, but was probably not far from a thousand miles 
of toilsome ascent. 
Against the mighty ocean that thunders upon the 
Western coast of our hemisphere there is uplifted a 
mountainous wall that, with varying elevation, stretches 
from the border of the South to that of the North polar 
zone. Nearing the latter, it no longer opposes its soar- 
ing peaks to the retreating sea, but, with drooping crest 
and diminishing base, loses itself in wide wastes of fro- 
zen soil, to which an Arctic summer lends a passing flush 
of green. Across these barren tundras there winds a 
flood of waters, gathered from the landward slope of the 
snowclad Rockies; a rolling tide that forms our Conti- 
nent's largest Western outflow. This river is the Yukon, 
that in length and in volume exceeds the lordly Colum- 
bia, and, also, in the wealth and in the range of its sal- 
mon. From its remote beginning in the Pelly Lakes, to 
where it meets the embrace of the welcoming sea, the 
eager river hastens over an oft-vexed and troubled course 
oi 2,300 miles. Between these far distant points, and 
through the long, intervening stretch of fiercely oppos- 
ing waters, do the toilers of the widely sundered sea 
struggle to accomplish the supreme end of their brief 
and imthinking lives.^ 
In ascending a large river, having a number of tribu- 
taries, the first. of the arriving shoals are usually those 
that strike for the remotest waters. Next may follow 
those bound for a lower and a nearer tributary, and, so, 
in due order, the various '"runs," as they are called, make 
their successive appearance, and it may be some months 
before the last of the mailed legions crosses the bar of 
its fateful Rubicon. In the Sacramento the first "run" 
ascends leisurely, perhaps averaging but two or three 
miles a day, reaching the head waters, near Mount Shas- 
ta, in five or six months. In the Columbia the move- 
ment is more rapid, and in the Yukon it is the speediest 
of all. To effect the deposition of the spawn by the first 
of November, the seasonable period, requires, of course, 
an expedition of m.ovement corresponding to the remote- 
ness of the destination, and thus the Yukon salmon need 
to be far more active than their brethren of the Sacra- 
mento, who probably prolong the daily siestas that they 
take in quiet pools. In the Yukon the run begins in 
June and lasts but five <weeks, so that in about four 
months tlie head water fish attain their far distant bourne. 
It would almost appear as though these timely voyagers 
possessed an itinerary of the route, the fish of one river 
knowing that a daily jaunt of two or three miles would 
suffice; the others, that they must set for themselves a 
task five or six times as great. It would seem, however, 
to be probable that each school of fish starts with an in- 
herited impulse to perform the daily average that the 
distance calls for: it being, moreover, evident that the 
fish conserve their strength to the utmost, and extend 
their jouvnev to the full limit of the time that is required. 
This nicety of adjustment is the accomplishment of the 
race, not of individuals. For thousands of years the route 
has probably been traversed, and those of each generation 
whose eft'ort was most economical and most timely, were 
those that maintained their species, but for those that 
dallied, or blindly stumbled into divergent paths, the pen- 
alty was that of the Mosaic law. "Ye shall sow your seed 
in vain." 
In his descent of the Yukon the explorer, Schwatka, 
found its current impetuous and rapid, much of his down- 
ward drift being accomplished at the rate of four miles 
an hour." In what he styles the "Grand Canon of the 
Yukon," the river enters a chasm, with vertical walls, 
between which it is compressed to a tenth of its former 
width. Through this narrow cleft the tortured stream 
rushes in a foaming, billowy mass, its angry roar, rever- 
berated from the inclosing walls, being thundered afar; 
but the salmon, braving the wrath of the maddened 
waters, penetrate the gorge and emerge upon the 
smoother reaches beyond." Other rapids are passed; 
other dread obstacles overcome; day by day the implaca- 
ble current's wearing flow is mastered; many droop and 
to 
"^w/m'^^'^ThT wat"eV"aT'th7foot' oVa vert?^ fall of 16 feet ^quld 
attain a velocity of eleven miles an hour; but. if there be a sufhcient 
depth of water, the fall can be approached with a rush and a bound 
that may »nable the fish to clear it. Unless with such deep water, the 
salmon cannot gain the requisite impetus, and in acquiring it he 
exerts his utmost energy, his tail vibrating with exceeding rapiaity. 
1* At Lower Kettle Falls there is a vertical descent of 10 feet, 
followed by 20 or 30 feet of a boiling, seething rapid. Here the 
salmon have been obsers'ed to dart out of the water like an arrow, 
sometimes sustaining themselves for 20 f^ct in the air. then drop- 
ping into the sec-thing cauldron at the base. Sometimes he strikes 
the vertical portion, tnit rarely impinges near the crest, and "then, 
with every muscle strung to its utmost tension, his body quiver- 
ine in every inch of its length, he fights the descending current."— 
, u; S. Fish. Bull., 1885, p. 258. 
« Well-ascertained fact.— U. S. Pish. Bull., 1893, p. 99. 
' Lord in his "Naturalist in British Columbia," p. 74, says that 
he has seen fifty salmon in the air at one time, struggling to sur- 
mount Upper Kettle Falls, which, except at highest flood, were 
impassable. After every futile effort they would take refuge in com- 
paratively still water, behind a rock, or in a hollow, to rest before 
renewing the attempt. • n j .. • j v . n,. 
The height of a salmon's leap, as officially deterniined by the 
Norwegian Government, is 16 feet. Swamson, Chap. IV.. Habit.s 
of Animals," says on the Irish river Liflfey there is a 19-foot fall 
that has been cleared by salmon. In Labrador 10-pound fish have 
been obser\'ed to vault 18 feet, presumed to need a preliminary 
velocity of twenty-three miles an hour. It is not unlikely that the 
giant salmon of the Pacific, with sufficient water to exert their fu l- 
est energy could exceed these leaps; but such fish as probably 
cleared both Lower and Upper Kettle Falls will never do so again, 
for they have been practically exterminated. 
8 Warburton's "Through the Sub-Arctic Forest, p. 175. 
" Those who have followed Schwatka have not been so moderate 
in their estimates. N. A. Beddo. president of Yukon Trans. Co.. 
and contractor for carrying the mail, is quoted as saying that for 
50O miles the Yukon current averages eight miles an hour. A letter 
from a corporal in the Can. Mtd. Police states that below the rapids 
it averages at least seven miles an hour. — London Times, Aug. 17, 
1897 
" Various voyagers differently describe the caiion as from 39 to 60 
feet wide but join in saying that the terrible velocity of the current 
heaps its waters in the middle, where it is much higher than at the 
sides One correspondent (N. Y. Sun, July 25, 1897) says he shot 
through this "hell of waters" three-quarters of a mile in two min- 
utes ten seconds. Another (Leslie's Weekly. New York, Jan. 2(1, 
1898) accomplished it in two minutes twenty seconds. A third 
(Cosmopolitan Mag., September, 1897) says two minutes twenty- 
nine seconds; but the poet Joaquin Miller bears off the palm with 
a passage of one minute forty-five seconds, or about twenty-six 
miles an hour.- N. Y. Journal, Aug. 30, 1897. _ 
How long it takes the salmon to overcome these rapids is an in- 
teresting speculation. Among the other rapids are the White Horse, 
known as the Miner's Grave, and which arc described as being 
more dangerous than those of the canon. 
downward drift, but the dwindlitig caravan struggle* 
unfalteringly on, a trail o£ death bthiudj but before die 
goal of a dawning Hfe. 
The brief Arctic summer is past; the awakened winter, 
with a grasp of his icy hand, has closed the gateway of 
the far-flowing river; then, firmly fettering each succes- 
sive bend and branch, follows southward in the wake of 
the ascending fish. For the remoter voyagers, ihose '.hat 
have attained the upper waters, there can now be tio 
retreat, but of that no suggestion can find lodgnieat ia 
their barren brains. The followers of the Prophet that 
journey to his tomb over deserts whitened by the bones 
of generations of predecessors have not a tithe of the 
purpose that sustains these hitrrying, witless pilgrims. 
The utmost fervor cf religious zeal is not comparable to 
the tyranny of a remorseless instinct that lashes its 
straining victims to their doom. The salnron of the head 
waters may be regarded simply as an exquisitely devised 
autom.aton, sensible of but one end, one purpose, the 
attainment of its place of oviposit; to that consummation 
it devotes the last spark of its energy, and tlien ceases 
to exist. 
The river's source attained, the bourne that becomes at 
once a cradle and a tomb, it is but a portion of the wasted 
remnant that fully accomphsh the object of their being. 
Yet they linger, ghastly reminders of departed strength 
and ravaged grace, until, one by one, they are borne down 
m the swirl of the stream, and thus, with the uncertain 
found,at-ion of the coming, the present generation passes 
away. Still,, the Frost King, careering wide, is sweeping 
down from the North; but a few days and the breath of 
his desolation will fall upon the land. Then this brawl- 
ing stream \yill be still and dumb, and these tiny caskets 
of an incipient life lie beneath thick armor of ice and deep 
drapery of snow; for, eve by eve, the waning sun droops 
lower in the south. It sinks, and nature, hushed _ m 
sheeted sleep, awaits the distant day when the returning 
orb. with brighter glow and wakening call, shall deeply, 
stir her latent life. Its fetters riven, the pulseless stream 
will lift its voice again, and, with wild tumult and exult- 
ing rush, speed to its furthest bound. Such joyous resur- 
rection m.ay not be that of the embosomed germs; these 
may be whelmed beneath the wilful torrent's changing 
bed; but, if undisturbed, may then be nurtured into life. 
.Doubtful is this apparent boon to the tiny creatures flung 
into a pool of perils, for they escape the freshet to be- 
come the prey of a multitude of enemies, of both fin and 
feather. Comparatively few survive; it may even happen 
that none reach the far-distant sea, and then vain was 
the parental toil and travail, and barren the long pilgrim- 
age, with its strain of suffering and death." 
Upon arriving at the mouth of the great river, whose 
tumultuous course they may have followed for over two 
thousand miles, the young salmon of the head waters 
find themselves confronted with the chill obscurity of 
the Arctic Ocean. Without halt or hesitation, unguided 
and undirected, save by a mysterious impulse, the tiny 
voyagers plunge into the far-stretching gloom, and, hold- 
ing- no doubtful or uncertain course, attain their destined 
goal. That goal is certainly not in the frozen sea, but 
must be in the distant Pacific, whose vivifying waters 
abotind with the sustenance whereupon the pigmy 
starveling may develop into the giant salmon. The ac- 
complishment of this marine journey, through, probably, 
nearly a thousand miles of shadowy depths, by young, 
tender and untutored fledglings, to whom every foot of 
the long way is unknown, or, at least, strange, is the most 
bewildering incident of a most marvelous pilgrimage. The 
feathered voyager that, with wanton wing, speeds through 
the upper deep, carols gaily as the green world gl.des_ be- 
neath him, but the finny migrant has no panoramic view, 
he toils in darkness his allotted and unerring way. 
For twenty-six hundred miles or more the salmon as- 
cend the Amoor River, a great stream flowing into the 
Okhotzk Sea. which is frozen over for nearly halt the 
year, and thus their progeny need, when emerging there- 
upon, to traverse its length and gain the ocean beyond, 
the same adverse conditions, in equal or in greater de- 
gree, opposing the issuing salmon of most of the Kam- 
chatkdYi rivers, as well as those of Russia that empty 
into the Arctic Sea. 
That the migrating salmon project their uncharted 
course with absolute certainty and direciness, can only 
be inferred, not indubitably proved; but from the mass of 
collateral evidence may be cited that of the former mi- 
gration of the Ontario salmon. Seventy years ago. not 
only all of the hundred and odd tribmar'es of the St. 
Lawrence, but every a/fluent of Lake Ontario, affording 
reproductive facilities, abounded with salmon."* from 
the far-distant sea, each of the numerous ascending colo- 
nies fought its way through the many swift rapids of 
the great lacustrine river, and, traversing Ontario's broad 
expanse, attained its natal stream. At the western ex- 
tremity of the lake are three rivers— the Credit, the Hura- 
ber and the Ronge — all in the vicinity of Toronto, each, 
in its day, containing an abundance of salmon. In the 
initial voyage of their lives, the young fish, upon quit- 
ting the parent river for the remote ocean, encountered 
in the waters of the inland sea a problem of navigation 
•substantially as difficult as that facing the emergent mi- 
grants of rivers discharging into the great deep. Two 
hundred and fifty miles away was the great lake's effluent, 
fifteen miles broad, with a s'uggish and sca. cely percepti- 
ble current, and thither the finny travelers pursued their 
uninstrutted but, probably, undeviating way. .'\t the base 
of an escarpment, extending along the northern lake bot- 
tom, the water attains its greatest depth, 600 feet, and if 
is most likely that over these deeps the seaward course 
was projected. Similarly, it is recorded Jhat the salmon 
were formerly plentiful in Otter Creek, Vermont, a stream 
emptying upon the easterly shore of Lake Cham plain. 
Tn this case, as in the other, the seaward hound fish, upon 
meeting the still waters of the broad lake, had no longer 
a current to follow; they, however, turned to the north, 
descended the lake's distant effluent, followed it to the 
St. Lawrence, and upon reaching the great gulf p( the 
latter river, still held their course for the ocean, .and> 
# 
" It has been definitely aacertnined with respect to EnsHsU 
salnion t.hat about one-half of the hatching goes to Bea the first 
year, nearly one-half the second year, and tile small remainder the 
third venr. It is also confidently believed that the adult fish only 
ascend the streams every second year, and (he s,ame habit? arc 
probably incident to all salmon, being protective, acquii cmcnts of 
obviously great value to the race. 
