310 
ZOOLOGY. 
or richness, and consequently in market value. They include the “ hook-nosed’ ’ species, 
besides the emaciated “spring salmon,” and others of more or less excellence, yet scarcely any 
are found at that season equalling the fine kinds of spring. In this connexion Mr. Gibbs 
makes the following remarks: “The spring salmon of the Columbia reach a great size, forty 
pounds being not an unusual weight for them to attain, and I have heard of some reaching 
seventy. They are excessively fat when they first enter the river, and make much better eating 
than when caught further up. ‘ Chinook’ salmon bring the highest price. 
1 ‘ In the autumn the white fleshed or masachee salmon, as they are often called, arrive. It is 
observed that the spring kinds do not run up the small streams near the coast, but keep up the 
great rivers . At the season of the annual freshet (in June) they overcome the falls of the 
Columbia, and as it backs up the Willamette, they mount the falls at Oregon City also. The 
autumnal salmon, on the contrary, run into all the small creeks , and even into ponds formed by 
the rains on the prairies. The spring salmon enter but few of the rivers on the coast, and only 
those eiilier of considerable size, or coming from snow mountains. Both the spring and winter 
kinds run up the Klamath and Sacramento rivers in vast numbers.” 
He adds : “There is a salmon that runs up the Quinaiutl (a river heading in a lake in the 
Olympic range, and emptying into the ocean just above Point Grenville, between Cray’s Harbor 
and Cape Flattery) which is said to be a different species, small, but very fine. The Indians 
brought us two about the 20th of February—much earlier than the other salmon enter the 
Columbia—but they were dressed and partly dried, so that I had no good opportunity of 
examining them.”* 
In 1853 and 1854 large quantities of salmon were salted for market at the fisheries near the 
mouth of the Columbia, and at the Cascades, about 150 miles above. Although the fish, being 
those taken in spring and summer, were of the finest quality, second to none in the world, [ I 
say this understanding^, having eaten excellent salmon in Great Britain and on the continent 
of Europe, as well as those brought to the New York markets from Nova Scotia,] owing to 
carelessness in packing, and to the expense and difficulty that then attended the procurement of 
proper barrels and good salt, nearly all who went into the business lost money ; and the 
salmon thus miserably preserved reached the mai'kets of San Francisco and New York in such 
bad condition that they obtained a bad reputation among dealers. I am convinced that 
should the business be undertaken properly by men skilled in the business, who, with ordinary 
care and a selection of none but the silvery spring salmon (S. quinnat, S. gairdneri, and S. 
paucidens ) on the Columbia, and the schedadhoo, skwowl, and satsup, or those known to the 
Indians as tyee salmon, on Puget Sound, it will be found highly profitable, and that salmon thus 
preserved would in a very short time be in great demand in all the principal markets of the 
world. 
To attain this result great care in packing would be necessary, and a rigid determination to 
salt none of the autumnal or inferior kinds, a temptation to which many have succumbed, owing 
to the cheapness and abundance of such indifferent material. The skowitz (or S. scouleri ) may be 
an exception to the rule regarding autumnal salmon ; yet even when in its best conditon it is 
a second-rate fish compared to the others. Of this salmon Mr. Gibbs says : “ Messrs. Riley & 
Swan, the proprietors of the Puyallup fishery, on Puget Sound, consider the §kowitz (skokwid) 
a good fish for curing, because they are of so fit a size, being not too large . They put up 800 
barrels in six weeks, and were the first persons on the sound to use the seine in capturing 
* It is possible that this kind may be the species described by Girard as the Salmo (Fario) aurora. —(See Gen. Rep., p. 308 ) 
