PROPAGATION OF SALMON ON THE PACIFIC COAST. 
207 
of the Pacific Railroad, who showed mo the Pacific Railroad surveys of the upper waters of the 
Sacramento, and pointed out a place on the map, near the junction of McCloud and Pitt rivers, where 
he assured me he had seen India, us spearing salmon in the fall on their spawniug-bcds. This point 
is 185 miles north of Sacramento City. Following this clue I proceeded to Red Bluif, the northern- 
most railway station of the California and Oregon Railroad, situated 50 miles trom McCloud River. 
From in(piiries made there I became so well convinced that the salmon were then spawning on 
McCloud River, that as soon as supplies and men could be got ready I took the California and Oregon 
stage for Pitt River ferry, a mile from the mouth of tlie McCloud. IVe arrived hero at daylight on 
the 30th of August. Leaving the stage at this point we followed up the west bank of Pitt River 
on foot to the mouth of the McCloud, and continued thence up McCloud River. 
At a distance of about 2 miles above the mouth of the river we came upon several camps of 
Indians with hundreds of freshly caught salmon drying on the bushes. Salmon could also be seen in 
the river in such numbers that we counted 60 in one sj)ot as we stood at the water’s edge. It was 
evident that this was the place to get the lireeding fish, and the next thing was .to find water to 
mature the eggs for shipment. This was not so easy a task as finding the salmon, but we at last 
discovered a spring stream flowing 1,000 gallons an hour, which I decided to use, this season at least, 
and on the morning of September 1, 1872, the hatching works of the first salmon-breeding station 
of the United States were located on this stream. 
The location is about 2 miles up McCloud River, on its western bank. It is 323 miles from San 
Francisco, via Pacific Railroad; 453 miles from Portland, Oreg., and is on the California stage road, 
which, at the time of our arrival, connected with the railroad at Red Bluff. The spawn found in the 
salmon that the Indians were spearing on our arrival indicated that there was no time to spare in 
getting ready for the hatching work. We were 25 miles from the nearest town or village, 50 miles 
from a railway station, over 50 miles from an available sawmill, and in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 
where the mule teams l)arely made 20 miles a day with supplies ; but we went to work, and in 15 days 
wo had a house built, filtering-tanks, hatching-apparatus, and flume in perfect running order, and on 
the 16th of September we were catching and corralling salmon. There were but three of us, and 
every day for a week the mercury ran from 105° to 112° F. in the shade. But although we worked so 
expeditiously through the broiling sun of those days, we were too late. The first few hauls of the 
net showed that the salmon had spawned. In fact, the salmon begin to spawn in McCloud River some 
time in August and are through spawning, or nearly throngh, by the 20th of September. 
We caught plenty of salmon in the seine, but only rarely a female with ova. By hard fishing and 
hauling the seine every night, and sometimes all night, we succeeded in catching 26 salmon, including 
both sexes, in spawning condition, by the 28th of September. On the night of the 28th, at midnight, 
as the returns did not seem to warrant the expense of handling the seine, I stojiped fishing. Of the 
26 breeding salmon cauglit, 12 were females, and yielded 50,000 eggs. Of this number, 20,000 were 
destroyed by the terrible heat of the last of September, the merciiry on some days reaching as high 
as 112° in the shade. The remaining 30,000 did well in spite of many dangers from sediment and 
from a fungoid growth which seemed to penetrate the brook water on hot days, and which rendered 
constant vigilance necessary; and on the 12th day of October the most advanced eggs showed eye- 
siiots. By Friday, October 18, all the eggs were ready to pack for shipment, but, owing to miscarriage 
of a letter, the moss, which was to be delivered on the previous Tuesday, did not arrive until the 
evening of the following Tuesday. On the next day, October 23, the eggs were packed and 8hij)ped 
to Sacramento, where I placed them in charge of IVells, Fargo & Co., by whom they were forwarded 
east on the 25th of October, 1872. 
These were the first live salmon eggs that crossed the contiueiit from the Pacific 
to the Atlantic. 
Here let Jiie quote again from the same report : ^ 
The conditions of hatching salmon eggs in California are wholly different from those which 
present themselves in similar work in the East. 
At the East you have to guard against cold, in California you have to guard against heat; at the 
East you can usually find a good si>riug in a favorable locality; hero it is out of the question; at 
the East a brook will usually answer the i)uri)oses of hatching water in the absence of a sjiring; in 
California the brooks as a rule are wholly unsuitable for hatching; at the East the eggs are hatching 
‘United States Fish Commissioner’s Report, 1872-73, i)ages 171-173. 
