890 FISHES—SALMONIDZ. 
the whole foremost rank of the salmon felt it together, for it was a great gill-net, a 
quarter of a wile long, and stretched squarely across the mouth of the river. By-and- 
by men came in boats and hauled. up the gill-net and threw the helpless salmon into a 
pile on the bottom of the boat, and the others saw them no more. We that live outside 
the water know better what befalls them, and we can tell the story which the salmon 
could not. 
‘‘ All along the banks of the Columbia River, from its mouth to nearly thirty miles 
away, there is a succession of large buildings, looking like great barns or warehouses, 
built on piles in the river, and high enough to be out of the reach of floods, There are 
thirty of these buildings, and they are called canneries. Each cannery has about forty 
boats, and with each boat are two men and a Jong gill net, and these nets fill the whole 
river as with a nest of cobwebs from April to July ; and to each cannery nearly a thou- 
sand great salmon are breught in every day. These salmon are thrown in a pile on the 
floor; and Wing Hop, the big Chinaman, takes them one after another on the table, 
and with a great knife dexterously cuts off the head, the tail, and the fins; then with a 
sudden thrust removes theintestines and the eggs. The body goes into a tank of water, 
and the head goes down the river to be made into salmon-oil. Next, the body is brought 
on another table, and Quong Sang, with a machine like a feed-cutter, cuts it into pieces 
just as long asa one-poand can. Then Ah Sam, with a butcher-knife, cuts these pieces 
into strips just as wide as the can. Then Wan Lee, the China boy, brings down from the 
loft, where the tinners are making them, a hundred cans, and into each can puts @ 
spoonful of salt. It takes just six salmon to fill a hundred cans. Then twenty China- 
men put the pieces of meat into the cans, fitting in little strips to make them exactly 
full. Then ten more solder up the cans, and ten more put the cang into boiling water 
till the meat is thoroughly cooked, and five more punch a little hole in the head of each 
can to let out the air. Then they solder them up again, and little girls paste on them 
bright-colored labels showing merry little Cupids riding the happy salmon up to the 
cannery-door, with Mount Rainier and Cape Disappointment in the background ; and a 
legend underneath says that this is ‘Booth’s’ or ‘Badollet’s Best,’ or ‘Hume’s’ or 
‘Clark’s’ or ‘Kinnery’s Superfine Salt-water Salmon.’ Then the cans are placed in 
cases, forty-eight in a case, and five hundred thousand cases ara put upevery year. Great 
ships come to Astoria and are loaded with them, and they carry them away to London, 
and San Francisco, and Liverpool, and New York, and Sydney, and Valparaiso, and 
Skowhegan, Maine; and the man at the corner grocery sells them at twenty cents a 
can. : 
‘‘ All this time our salmon is going up the river; escaping one net as by a miracle, 
and soon having need of more miracles to escape the rest; passing by Astoria on a for- 
tunate day, which was Sunday, the day on which no man may fish if he expects to sell 
what he catches, till finally he came to where nets were few, and, at last, to where they 
ceased altogether. But here he found that scarcely any of his many companions were 
with him, for the nets cease when there are no more salmon to be cavght in them. So 
he went on day and night where the water was deepest, stooping not to feed or loiter on 
the way, till at last he came to a wild gorge, where the great river became an angry tor 
rent rushing wildly over a hung staircase of rocks. But our hero did not falter, and, 
summoning all his forces, he plunged into the Cascades. The current caught him and 
dashed him against the rocks; A whole row of silvery scales came off and glistened in 
the water like sparks of fire, and a place on his side became black and red, which, for 
a salmon, is the same as being black and blue for other people. His comrades tried to 
a 
