SALMON FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 
17 
on the Connecticut, or the vast water traffic of the great metropolis at the mouth of the Hudson, 
which doubtless drove the salmon out of these rivers. Protective laws may regulate the salmon fish- 
ing of the Sacramento, but no laws can stop the mining, the logging, and the railroad building that are 
destroying the spawning- grounds of the tributaries of the~Sacramento. It is not in the power of law 
enactments to save the salmon from all their dangers. 
Artificial breeding can do a great deal, and has done a great deal, but it can not be relied upon for 
a certainty. In the first place, it is very uncertain where one can find a suitable place for hatching 
salmon. The writer traveled over 4,000 miles up and down the Columbia and its tributaries, from the 
Continental Divide to the Pacific coast, looking for a good place for salmon hatching, first in 1877 for 
the Oregon and Washington cannery men, and afterward in 1883 for the U. S. Fish Commission, and 
found only two places in that great stretch of country which were suitable; one on the Clackamas 
River, where the writer built a hatching station, and the other on the Little Spokane, a few miles 
from Spokane Falls, which is still unoccupied. 
There is in all the great State of California but one stream suitable for salmon hatching on a large 
scale, and on this stream, strange as it seems, there is but one spot that meets all the requirements of 
the case, and that is the place that the writer selected and built upon on the McCloud River in 1872, 
and named Baird, in honor of the distinguished Commissioner under whose direction the work was 
done. Allow me to add by way of confirmation that subsequently the State fish commissioners of 
California, after hunting all over the State for another place for hatching salmon, have given it up, 
and now get their supply of salmon eggs from the Government station at Baird. 
The above instances illustrate the difficulty of finding suitable places for hatching salmon on a 
large scale; and not only is it not easy to find such places, but they can not be relied on to a cer- 
tainty when they are found, for they are always in danger from logging, mining, railroad building, lum- 
ber manufacturing, and other causes, which yearly become more imminent and dangerous as the country 
gets settled up and the population increases, and which threaten at any time to destroy their efficiency. 
We must come to the conclusion, then, that even with the help and support of protective laws and 
artificial breeding, our salmon, like the buffalo of thirty years ago, are ixot safe. The destroying 
agencies of advancing civilization drove the buffalo to the last ditch, so to speak, and then the last 
survivors, or almost the last, were slain. They were obliged from sheer necessity to come to feed 
where from all directions the hand of man was raised against them. Whether they turned to the 
north or to the south, to the east or to the west, they went to their certain death, and in an incredibly 
■ short space of time they practically disappeared. 
The story of our salmon is analogous. They are obliged to come inland to breed. They are 
compelled from sheer necessity to come up the rivers into the very midst of their human enemies. 
They can not stay in the ocean like other fishes of the sea, where they are safe from the hand of man, 
but they must necessarily come, one might say, into his very grasp, and, like the buffalo, whether 
they turn to the north, south, east, or west they go into the very jaws of death; for what hope is 
there for a salmon to escape after he has entered a river, if man chooses to employ his most effective 
agencies for his capture? There is none. The salmon is doomed. There is no altar of refuge for the 
salmon in this country any more than there was for the buffalo. 
Ought not something to be done then? Ought this state of things to continue? The salmon of 
the United States are one of our most valuable possessions. As a matter of ordinary prudence, ought 
not the country to have some place, if it is possible, where the salmon can come and go in safety? If 
a stock-raiser saw that his cattle were daily diminishing because they had no spot where they were safe 
from beasts of prey, what kind of man should we think he was if he did not very soon fix a place 
where they would be safe? We should, to draw it mildly, think he was very improvident and negli- 
gent. Is it any less improvident and negligent for this country not to provide a place for its rapidly 
diminishing salmon where they will be safe? It seems to the writer that not a day ought to be lost, 
but that if it is possible to provide a place where our salmon can resort unharmed and remain safely 
their allotted time, it should be given them without hesitation. If there is such an asylum of refuge 
within our borders, by all means secure it for the salmon and let the salmon have it for an eternal 
heritage. 
Is there such a place within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States? The writer can say 
from personal kiiowledge that there is one place at least. Most fortunately for us Americans there is 
in our Alaskan possessions just such a place as is wanted — probably more than one — and so exception- 
ally fortunate is America in this respect that it is not likely that this side of the frozen and uninhabit 
F. C. B. 1892—2 
