QUINNAT SALMON. 891 
go up with him; and one lost his eye, one his tail, and one had his lower jaw pushed back 
into his head like the joints of a telescope. Again he tried to surmount the Cascades, 
and at last he succeeded, and an Indian on the rocks above was waiting to receive him. 
But the Indian with his spear was less skillful than he was wont to be, and our hero es- 
caped, losing only a part of one his fins, and with him came one other, and henceforth 
these two pursued their journey together. 
‘‘ Now a gradual change took place in the looks of our salmon. In the sea he was 
plump and round and silvery, with delicate teeth, and as handsome and symmetrical a 
mouth as any one need wish to kiss. Now his silvery color disappeared, his 
skin grew slimy, and the scales sank into it; his back grew black and his sides turned 
red—not a healthy red but a sort of hectic flash. He grew poor, and his back, formerly 
as straight as need be, now developed an unpleasant hump ai ithe shoulders. His eyes 
—like those of all enthusiasts who forsake eating and sleeping for some lofter aim— 
became dark and sunken. His symmetrical jaws grew longer and longer, and meeting 
each other, as the nose of an old man meets his chin, each had to turn aside to let the 
other pass. And his beautiful teeth grew longer and longer, and projected from his 
mouth, giving him a savage and wolfish appearance, quite unlike his real disposition. 
For all the desires and ambitions of his nature had become centered into one. We do 
not know what this one was, but we know that it was a strong one, for it had led him 
on and on, past the nets and horrors of Astoria, past the dangerous Cascades, past the 
spears of the Iadians, through the terrible flume of the Dalles, where the mighty river is 
compressed between huge rocks into a channel narrower than a village street; on past 
the meadows of Umatilla and the wheat-fields of Walla Walla; on-to where the great 
Snake River and the Columbia join; or up the Snake River and its eastern branch, till 
at last he reached the foot of the Bitter-Root Mountains in the Territory of idaho, 
nearly a thousand miles from the ocean, which he left in Apri]. With him still was 
the other salmon which had come with him up the Cascades, handsomer and smé ller than 
he, and, like him, growing poor and ragged and tired. At last, one October afternoon, 
they came together to a little clear brook, with a bottom of fine gravel, over which the 
water was a few ixches deep. Our fish painfolly worked his way to it, for his tail was 
all frayed out, his muscles were sore, and his skin covered with unsightly blotches. 
But his sunken eyes saw a ripple in the stream, and under it a bed of little pebbles and 
sand. So there in the sand he scooped out with his tail a smooth, round place, and his 
companion came and filled it with orange-colored eggs. Then our salmon came back 
again, and, softly covering the eggs, the work of their lives was done, and, in the old 
salmon-fashion, they drifted tail foremost down the stream. 
‘‘Next morning, a settler in the Bitter-Root region, passing by the brook near his 
house, noticed a ‘ dog-salmon’ had ran in there and seemed ‘mighty nigh tuckered 
out.’ So he took a hoe, and wading into the brook, rapped the fish on he bead with it, 
and carrying it ashore threw it to the hogs. But the hogs had a surfeit of salmon- 
. meat, and they ate only the soft parts, leaving the head untouched. And a wandering 
naturalist found it there, and sent it to the United States Fish Commission to be iden- 
tified, and thus it came tome.” _ 
