972 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 24, 1911. 
old St. Stephens, the first capital of Alabama. 
Here there is a perpendicular bluff of soft whit¬ 
ish limestone 100 feet high, an unportant spot 
for geologists, for it is the l.est known section 
of the formation which takes its name from this 
very place, the St. Stephens limestone. On its 
summit the Spaniards, thinking that the place 
was south of latitude 31 degrees, the boundary 
of their domains in North America, built a fort 
about 1789, and occupied it for ten years until 
the United States boundary survey showed that 
it was about thirty miles too far north. The 
fort was then evacuated by the Spaniards, and 
soon afterward became an Indian trading post. 
By 1817, when Alabama Territory was separated 
from Mississippi, and St. Stephens made the 
capital, it had become a town of 3,000 inhabitants 
with the necessary administrative buildings, land 
office, schools, hotels, a bank, theater, market, 
etc., but no churches, it is said. In 1819 Alabama 
was made a State, and the capital was soon 
moved to Cahaba on the Alabama River. St. 
Stephens then began to decline, and later when 
railroads were built near enough to take away 
its trade without sensibly increasing its acces¬ 
sibility, its doom was sealed. At the present 
time no buildings are in sight from the river 
there, not even from the top of the bluff, but 
about three miles away there is a village still 
I N various sections of the country there 
exist many springs, brooks, streams and 
ponds, and these waters may be used for 
the profitable and pleasurable industry of fish- 
culture. The spring is the forerunner of the 
brook, the brook is the feeder of the pond, and 
they together form the home of the trout. With 
these homes habitated, they will supply profit 
to the farmer or owner and supply an anglers’ 
paradise. 
A small brook runs through a farm, an in¬ 
consequential affair at first, not a foot in width, 
and at times with very little water. At points 
in its course by placing cross embankments, 
ponds may be made. These ponds add to the 
landscape, make watering places for the cattle 
and rearing places for fish. 
These small waters offer opportunities for a 
fish garden, the same as a plot of ground near 
the house offers space for a house garden, and 
advantage of the opportunity should be taken. 
Food fish are as valuable as fowls or. vegetables; 
all farmers raise the latter two at considerable 
expense of planting and continuous care—why 
not raise fish at very little initial expense and 
no great continuous care? 
Think of the sport for your friends and your¬ 
self in catching the fish. 
Probably the best fish to propagate in small 
waters is the speckled brook trout (Salvelinus 
fontinahs). They may be purchased from the 
hatcheries fingerling size; that is, from two to 
three inches long in the early fall at the rate 
of one and one-half to two and one-half cents 
apiece, the price ranging according to the supply 
and the demand. 
If these trout are placed in the waters in 
bearing the same name. At the time of our 
trip St. Stephens was still the county seat of 
Washington county, but even that distinction has 
since been taken away from it, and the seat of 
justice moved to Chatom, a station on a new 
railroad near the center of the county, so the old 
place has now little reason for continuing to exist. 
Shortly after 4 o’clock Friday the railroad 
bridge near Jackson was sighted, and we tied 
up at the steamboat landing, about a mile and 
a half from the town, which is on top of a hill 
and not visible from the river. Here the party 
disbanded, as there was believed to be nothing 
of special geological interest along the river in 
the remaining 100 miles between us and Mobile, 
and we had already spent about all the time that 
could be spared from our regular occupations. 
Baggage and fossils were hustled to the station 
before dark, and seven members of the party 
went off on the train that night and three the 
next morning. The houseboat was left at Jack- 
son to be sold, and the navigator and cook stayed 
with the launch until it could be brought back 
to Tuscaloosa. 
Thus ended one of the most memorable and 
enjoyable trips in which it has been my good 
fortune to participate, and no doubt all other 
members of the party entertain similar senti¬ 
ments. 
November, then by the following August they 
will be about seven inches in length; in the 
second year they will each weigh about one-half 
pound, and in the third year they will each 
weigh about one pound. The growth, of course, 
depends on good natural food conditions, and 
most waters will supply such a condition. Thus 
a fish costing so little and with no great amount 
of labor, will in the course of three years sell 
for many times its cost. Many fishermen will 
be very glad to get them at $1 a pound, and 
even if not so sold, the owner or his friends will 
have the pleasure of fishing with a certain 
surety of success, and will obtain food of as 
much value as if bought in the market in the 
way of meat or fish. Here is an opportunity at 
present taken advantage of by a few which 
might obtain to many. 
Trout are raised in the hatchery by stripping 
the female trout of their eggs and impregnat¬ 
ing with the milt stripped from the male trout. 
This process of stripping and impregnating oc¬ 
curs usually in November at the time when the 
fish mate. The eggs are at once placed on 
screens in running water, gradually they change 
in appearance and life. In January the fish 
forms and eyes show very plainly and in Febru¬ 
ary they are hatched and swim off the screens 
into the troughs. At this stage each tiny fish 
is supplied with a food sack under the body on 
which it feeds for a couple of weeks. Soon 
after the sack disapears and the fish takes read¬ 
ily to other foods. 
The fish grow very rapidly from the sack 
stage through the spring and summer, and by 
the fall of the same year become fingerlings. A 
great many hatcheries sell the fish at all times, 
extending from the fry until the fingerling stage. 
The loss to the purchaser is very great at the 
fry stage, gradually decreasing until the finger¬ 
ling stage, when it is practically nil, and for 
this reason the purchaser is more successful in 
his trout rearing project if he puts off his trans¬ 
planting, so to speak, until fall. No one will 
buy chickens until they are big enough at least 
to care for themselves. Chickens have pips, 
gaps and what not, and they are preyed on by 
rodents and caught by animals very readily 
until they are big enough to scamper away and 
so care for themselves. Thus it is with the 
young trout; some thrive and some do not. 
When small they have many enemies, and if put 
out too young are unable to withstand the 
changes in the temperature in the water or to 
protect themselves from being eaten by cannibal 
fish or other enemies. While at the fingerling 
stage they are big enough and lively enough to 
care for themselves. 
Many hatcheries like to sell their young fish 
in the fry stage, because they may hatch more 
ova in their troughs than they can rear as trout, 
and hence they wish to make room. It is an easy 
matter for a fish establishment to hatch out 
many more eggs than they may care for when 
the fry become fish of fair size. 
If the State wishes to make the propagation 
of fish certain, it should not transplant its fish 
until the fall of the year in which they are 
hatched. A law to the same effect also could 
well be applied to private hatcheries. 
It is stated that an equal amount of water 
used in trout farming is more valuable than an 
equal amount of arable land, and so it is that 
a farmer may add the industry of fishculture to 
his other pursuits, and reap a good harvest of 
pleasure and profit. 
Opening of a New Country. 
By the opening of a recently constructed rail¬ 
way across the Sierra Nevadas, a hunting coun¬ 
try, reported to be very good, and many streams 
and lakes abounding in game fish, has been ren¬ 
dered more accessible to the ordinary traveler. 
Singularly enough the recently completed line 
of the Western Pacific Railroad between Salt 
Lake City and the Pacific ocean, crosses this 
range—often so jagged and threatening—by the 
wagon trail used nearly two generations ago by 
the emigrants from the East seeking the gold 
fields of California, and along this trail occurred 
many tragedies of early travel now long for¬ 
gotten. 
The descent on the western side follows the 
Feather River, choosing a course of extraordi¬ 
nary ease, reported to have been picked out more 
than forty years ago by a Scotch engineer, but 
not discovered by railroad people until very many 
years later. The grade is said to be only one 
foot in a hundred. 
The mountains through which this railroad 
passes yield deer and bears, while in the coun¬ 
try to the northward there are said to be bears, 
deer and panthers or mountain lion. That coun¬ 
try contains not a few lakes large and small, 
which during the season of migration are great 
resorts for duck and geese, while upland birds 
are reported abundant. Many of the mountain 
streams and lakes abound in trout of different 
kinds. Altogether the region is one into which 
more and more sportsmen are before long likely 
to find their way. 
Fish Farming 
By WILLIAM S. WICKS 
