SALMON FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 
19 
The above considerations seem to indicate that Afognak Island possesses all the qualifications 
required for a place of safety for our Pacific Ocean salmon without presenting any objections to its 
being reserved by the Federal Government for salmon, or in other words converted into a national 
salmon park. 
The writer, however, would not urge the claims of Afognak or any other place to this distinction 
as against those of any locality that may be found to be better fitted for it. This island has been 
brought forward merely as showing that one place at least is known that would answer the purposes 
of a salmon park. There are doubtless others in our Alaskan possessions. There are possibly better 
ones. If a better place can be found, let us take it. If not, let us take Afognak Island ; but at all 
events let some place be selected and set aside by the authority of the National Government. If not 
Afognak Island, let it be some other place. Provide some refuge for the salmon, and provide it quickly, 
before complications arise which may make it impracticable, or at least very difficult. Now is the 
time. Delays are dangerous. Some unforeseen difficulties may come up which we do not dream of now, 
any more than we did a few years ago of logging on the Clackamas or railroad building on the upper 
Sacramento. 
If we procrastinate and put off our rescuing mission too long, it may be too late to do any good. 
After the rivers are ruined and the salmon are gone they can not be reclaimed. Exaggerated as the 
statement seems, it is nevertheless true that all the power of the United States can not restore the 
salmon to the rivers after the work of destruction has been completed. The familiar nursery rhyme 
about the egg applies here with peculiar fitness : 
“ Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, 
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. 
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men 
Could not set Humpty as before.” 
That is the whole thing, so to speak, in an eggshell. After the salmon rivers are ruined all the 
king’s horses and all the king’s men, that is to say, all the power of the Government “can not set 
them as before.” 
Let us act then at once and try to do something for the salmon before it is too late. Dangerous 
complications may come suddenly upon us which we can not foresee. How little we foresaw the 
danger to the buffalo and the fur seals. How suddenly the disastrous results came. Even if not 
impracticable, it may cost large sums of money to do hereafter what may be done now for nothing. 
No expense need be incurred at present. All that is required is to have Afognak Island or some other 
suitable place set aside by national authority, as Gen. Grant set aside the McCloud River Reservation 
during his administration, and it can be left to future events to decide whether it is expedient to 
expend any money on the reservation, a subject that can be safely left, we all know, in the hands of 
our efficient Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. There seems to be no impropriety in- the United 
States having a national salmon park, but on the contrary it appears eminently proper that a great 
natural salmon country like ours should have set apart some safe repository and fruitful breeding- 
grounds for this noble fish. 
Consider for a moment what the salmon has done for us, and then think how mercilessly we have 
treated him. Our salmon has been to us a source of national revenue, enjoyment, and pride, and 
what return have we meted out to him? He has been hunted pitilessly with hooks and spears, with 
all kinds of nets and pounds, with wheels and guns and dynamite, and there is not a cubic foot of 
water in the whole country where he can rest in safety. The moment he comes in from the ocean he 
meets the gill nets and the pounds at the mouth of the river, the sweep seines further up, the hook 
everywhere, and at last on his breeding-grounds, which at least ought to be sacred to him, he encoun- 
ters the pitchforks of the white man and the spears of the Indian. 
Let us now, at the eleventh hour, take pity on our long-persecuted salmon and do him the poor 
and tardy justice of giving him, in our broad land that he has done so much for, one place where he 
can come and go unmolested and where he can rest in safety. 
Allow me to add in closing that it seems to me highly appropriate that this society, which repre- 
sents with such intelligence and ability all the fishing interests of every kind of this country, should 
take the initiative in a matter in which those interests are so closely concerned. ’The writer trusts 
that it will, and ventures to predict that, if its efforts in that direction should happily be rewarded 
by the creation of a national salmon park, it would become an enduring monument to the usefulness 
of the society that would last as long as the nation lasts. — Livingston Stone. 
