A GROUP OF SPOKAN INDIANS
(Drawn from a Photograph).

THE NATURALIST
IN
VANCOUVER ISLAND AND
BRITISH COLUMBIA.

BY
JOHN KEAST LORD, F.Z.S.
NATURALIST TO THE BRITISH NORTH AMERICAN BOUNDARY COMMISSION.

THE ‘KETTLE’ FALLS: A SALMON LEAP ON THE UPPER COLUMBIA.

IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. I.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY.
1866.

PREFACE.

Many interesting and useful works have been already published relating to the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which, however, contain little if any information on the subject of their Natural History.

This missing link I venture in some measure to supply. But ‘The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia’ is not intended to be a book on Natural History merely; neither does the Author desire to weary his reader with tedious descriptions of genera and species. Comparative anatomy and physiology can be acquired at home, but habits are only discoverable by those who devote themselves to the rough though pleasant life of a wanderer, or by the actual observation of a careful investigator.

In the following pages, the Author has purposely avoided any definite system of arrangement, preferring a pleasant gossip, chatting, as it were, by the fireside about North-Western Wilds.

A detailed list of the Zoological collection made whilst Naturalist to the Government Commission will be found in the Appendix.

John Keast Lord.

LONDON: May 28, 1866.

INTRODUCTION.

Before setting sail from Southampton, it may perhaps be as well to devote a few pages explanatory of the early history and discovery of Vancouver Island; why we are going there; and the object of the Commission to which I belong.

In the year 1587, we learn, that a Captain Cavendish, in order to repair his shattered fortunes, fitted out three ships for the purpose of plundering on the high seas. After many unsuccessful raids, we next hear of him lurking in his ship behind a spit of land, Cape St. Lucas, on the Californian coast (a prominent rocky bluff, not unlike ‘the Needles,’), waiting for the ‘St. Anna,’ a galleon freighted with rich merchandise and a hundred and twenty-two thousand Spanish dollars. She heaves in sight, little dreaming of her danger; is pounced upon, boarded, and taken, her treasure transferred to the hold of the buccaneer; the crew rowed ashore, and their ship set on fire. Death seemed inevitable, when a breeze, which soon increased to a gale, drifting the burning hull on the rocks providentially proved a means of escape, for a raft was made, and launched. Upon this the men stood out to sea.

After enduring frightful privations, a friendly ship picked them up, and they eventually reached Europe in safety. Amongst the sailors rescued from the raft was a Greek, Apostolos Valerianos, who for some reason was nick-named by his shipmates Juan de Fuca. Nine years after his escape from the raft we hear of him in Venice.

In 1596 Mr. Locke, a merchant, and his friend John Douglas, a sea-captain, were residing in Venice, and nightly smoked their pipes at a snug wine-shop, the resort of sea-faring men. A constant visitor at this house of entertainment was a pilot on the Greek seas, who had attracted Douglas’s attention by the wonderful stories he related; so much so that he induced his friend, Mr. Locke, to listen to the old man’s adventures.[1]

The story of the raft we already know. The remainder was to the effect that he entered into the service of the Viceroy of Mexico, by whom he was sent, in a small caraval, to explore the Californian coast. He managed to reach lat. 47° N., and finding the coast inclined towards the N. & NE., and that a wide expanse of sea opened out between 47° lat., his position, and 48°, he entered the Strait, and sailed through it for twenty days. Finding the land still tended to NE. & NW. and also E. & SE., he proceeded, passing through groups of beautiful islands, and so sailed on until he came into the North Sea; but being quite unarmed, and finding the natives very hostile, he made his way back, and reported his discovery of the entrance to what he believed the North-West Passage.

But the Viceroy was not impressed with the value of the old man’s report, and paid him nothing for it. Disgusted with the government and all belonging to it, he worked his way back to the Mediterranean, and we next meet with him as a pilot on the Adriatic.

Master Locke at once wrote to Sir Walter Raleigh, Master Hakluyt, and to Lord Cecil, asking for 100l. to bring over the mariner who possessed such a knowledge of the north-west coast. All thought the information invaluable, but no one felt disposed to pay the money. Time wore on; the old storm-worn pilot, growing feeble, left for his native island. Locke again and again urged his request. At last the long-coveted means came, but too late, the old sailor was no more.

This strange story was current in England long after he who told it was dead and forgotten. A few believed it, but the many thought it an entire fabrication.

In 1776, Captain Cook missed the entrance to the Straits, and, mistaking the west side of Vancouver Island for the mainland, reported the story to be a fiction as told by the old sailor. It will suffice for explanation to skip a crowd of events, and take up the narrative of the discovery of the island in 1792, when Captain Vancouver was sent to Nootka Sound, for what purpose does not matter now. Coasting southwards, he entered the Straits, and eventually came out at Queen Charlotte Sound: which settled the question. The Island bears the name of its discoverer (Vancouver Island), the Straits that of the old sailor (Juan de Fuca).

By the treaty of Washington, the 49th pl. of lat. N. was to be the recognised Boundary Line, the course through the sea to be the centre of the Gulf of Georgia, and thence southward through the Channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island, to the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

The duties of our Commission were to mark the Boundary line from the coast to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.

May 1866.

CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.

ILLUSTRATIONS
FOR
THE FIRST VOLUME.

ERRATA IN VOL. I.

• Page 88, line 19, for blubbering read blubbery
• 〃 105, 〃 20, for within read in
• 〃 157, 〃 2, for scenery on my left. The read scenery. On my left the
• 〃 158, 〃 23, for Nimkis read Nimkish
• 〃 164, 〃 9, for this cannon read these cannons
• 〃 177, 〃 13, for cauiare read caviare
• 〃 179, 〃 9, for are read is; and line 16, for fourteen read seven
• 〃 195, 〃 9, for three read one
• 〃 232, 〃 8, for pack and equipment read pack equipment
• 〃 268, 〃 5, heading to chapter, for The Desert Prong-horned read The Desert—Prong-horned
• 〃 296, 〃 8, for Reiney read Reiner
• 〃 349, 〃 12 for Actomys read Arctomys

VANCOUVER ISLAND
AND
BRITISH COLUMBIA.

CHAPTER I.

THE VOYAGE.

Whether Good Friday was more unlucky than Fridays usually are, in the estimation of sea-going men, I know not, but from England to St. Thomas we encountered a succession of headwinds and terrific seas. Of course it was the regular typical storm: ‘waves running mountains high, threatening instantaneously to engulph the struggling ship in a watery abyss; rent sails, creaking timbers, men lashed to the wheel (real tarry Ixions); screaming mothers, and remarkably sick papas and passengers,’—that ended in our case, as it usually does in all sensation sea-voyages. St. Thomas was arrived at in perfect safety, some few days after time.

Amongst the passengers was a lady, fat beyond anything I have ever seen (of the human kind) outside a show. From the time of her appearance in the morning until her bedtime, she invariably sat in one place—her throne a small sofa, behind the cabin-door. Flying-fish were constantly driven on the deck of the steamer, or flung up into the sponsons by the paddlewheels; and being most anxious to preserve some of these curious tenants of the ocean, I tried every means to procure them; but the ‘stout party,’ by resorting to most unjustifiable bribing, so enslaved the sordid mind of the steward, that he got hold of the fish in spite of me, and actually had the delicate beauties cooked, and ignominiously fried at the galley-fire, for that terrible old lady to eat. With regret and indignation I have watched her munching them up, and wickedly longed to see her prostrated by that terrible leveller seasickness, or the victim of dyspepsia—evil wishes of no avail: she ate on, in healthful hungry defiance of wind and waves, and the wrath of an injured naturalist.

The first peep one gets of the little Danish town of St. Thomas, too well known to need more than a casual notice, is picturesque and pretty. Built on the scarp of a steep hill, its houses arranged in terraces, and all painted with bright and gaudy colours; its feathery groves of tamarind-trees; gay gardens decked with flowers, possessing a brilliancy and magnitude seen only in a hot climate; together with the showy dresses of the natives, it becomes the more impressive as contrasted with the sombre island so recently left behind.

Scarcely had the ‘Parana’ steamed into the harbour—much more, by the way, like a stagnant cesspool than a rocky inlet, filled with pure sea-water—when boats of all sizes, and far too numerous to count, crowded round us. Everyone, seeming at once to forget seasickness and rough weather, scrambled into this medley fleet, and with all speed were rowed ashore—there to remain, during the transference of the mails and baggage from the English steamer to the other vessels waiting to take their departure.

It has often puzzled me to imagine, why travellers in steamboats and sailing-ships invariably do the same thing. Take this very case as an instance of what I mean. Though yellow-fever was raging like a plague, still the greater number of the passengers made straight for the hotel, and there and then devoured a heavy breakfast composed of bad fish, raw vegetables (libellously called salad), unripe fruits, followed by a brown substance, in size, shape, and texture, vastly like to the heel of a boot floating in hot oil, which we are informed by the polite waiter is ‘bef steek à la Anglais’—the whole washed down with copious libations of intensely sour claret iced to the freezing-point.

The next thing in the programme is the exploration of the town, during which all sorts of things are purchased at fabulous prices, that can never, by any possibility, be required. Such unusual exercise in a hilly place, exposed to the scorching heat of the sun, soon begets a feverish thirst, necessitating copious draughts of iced-water dashed with cognac, unlimited cobblers, or more cold sour poison. Raw vegetables, acid wine, cobblers, cognac, cocoanut, and other ‘comestibles’ soon produce disagreeable admonitory twinges: dread of yellow-fever immediately suggests itself—bang goes the signal-gun! A hasty scamper for the boats dispelling further alarm, all rush on board, there to compare notes, groan over their pains and stupidity, and go through precisely the same performance at the next place of landing.

At St. Thomas we exchanged the commodious steamer ‘Parana’ for the ‘Trent,’ much more famous for getting into trouble than for getting out of it. The run from the island across the Caribbean Sea to Santa Marta, after the tumblings and buffetings that would have been good training for an acrobat, endured betwixt England and St. Thomas, seemed to me the very perfection of sea-travelling. Although a most enjoyable passage, still it became monotonous: one tires of old threadbare jokes and yarns, and wearies even of gazing day after day into the clear blue sea, each day appearing the very counterpart of the other.

Sluggish lump-fish, with their uncouth heads and misshapen bodies, continually wriggle slowly and idly along with us; sun-fish, in their parti-coloured armour, float by, ever performing eccentric undulations. Now a stiff black fin cleaves the water suspiciously, leaving a wake behind, as would a miniature ship—the danger-signal of a greedy shark; huge leaves of kelp, wrack, and sea-tangle drift by, rafts to myriads of crustaceans and minute zoophytes; the rudder creaks and groans to the music of its iron chains, clanking over the friction-rollers, as the helmsman turns the wheel; sea-birds peep at us, then wheel away to be seen no more; whilst ever following are the ‘Chickens of Mother Carey,’ dipping, but never resting, on the ripple at the stern.

I had both heard and read of a formidable fortress that once guarded the entrance to the snug harbour, on one side of which stands the neat little town of Santa Marta, embowered amidst the trees. We sighted the land before it was dark, but the captain deemed it expedient to lay-off and await the daylight, ere venturing through the narrow entrance between the rock on which stands the remains of the fortress and the mainland. Issuing strict orders, coupled with a silver refresher, to my cabin-boy to call me before daylight, I turned in, and was soon in dreamland; my dreams were dispelled by a sudden shake, and the voice of the faithful darkie boy screaming into my ear, ‘Hi, massa, him no see fort if him no tumble out and tumble up pretty quick.’ Lightly clad and hardly awake, I rush, glass in hand, on deck, and quietly seat myself in the bow of the steamer. It was just in the grey of the morning; not a sound disturbed the deathlike silence, save the ‘splash-splash’ of the slowly-revolving paddlewheels. I could discern on my right a dim line of trees, that looked as if they grew from out the water; on my left the dark rock, crowned with its ruined fort, that, as the light increased and the rays of the rising sun slanted down upon it, looked like a mass of frosted silver—so brilliant was the contrast to the dark water and darker woods, still in shadow, behind and around it.

Delighted with the singular beauty of the scene, and wandering, in imagination, far away into the vistas of the past, recalling scenes of frightful atrocity once enacted within the dreaded gates of the buccaneers’ stronghold—wondering too if gems and gold, plunder wrenched from many a rich argosy, still lay hidden amidst the dust of its crumbling walls—a sudden flash, and a jerk that sent me sprawling on the deck, at once recalled my thoughts from the past to the present. Utterly oblivious of what had happened, as I scrambled on my legs, a stifled laugh induced me to look round. ‘Wish I may never taste rum again, Cap’en, if I ever see you a-sittin on the signal-gun,’ said a sly-looking rascal in sailor’s dress. There was a roguish leer in his eye that revealed the whole secret. Seeing me seated on the signal-carronade, loaded to announce our arrival, was too tempting a chance to indulge in a practical joke for Jack to resist; so he quietly touched off the gun, without giving me any notice. No doubt he has had many a hearty laugh at my expense since then, when telling the ‘yarn’ in far-away latitudes. Our stay in the harbour was very brief; the mails and a passenger or two landed, away we steamed again.

At Carthagena we only lay-off a short time, to land the mails, and take on board the strangest assemblage of natives I ever saw. They were bound for Colon, to sell the various products of their farms, gardens, and native forests. We were about half a mile from the beach; a good rolling swell broke, in small waves, against the ship’s sides, and spread its foam far up the shingle inshore. Up to their waists might be seen the dusky forms of the natives, launching long, ugly, shallow canoes, dug from out the solid wood. Soon a perfect fleet of them neared us, each striving to be first alongside; as they converged, and steadily packed together, into a confused mass, the yelling, screaming, and swearing in bad Spanish, mixed with some unknown tongue, baffled all description. Bad as the hubbub was when some distance from the steamer, it was ten times worse as they literally fought and struggled to get on board. Those who were to be passengers, in dread of being left behind, dashed from canoe to canoe, reckless of the rage of those intent only on selling their wares. Here one held up a poor little drenched and shivering monkey, another a screaming parroquet, a third a squirrel; others fruits, strings of beads, vegetables, bunches of bananas, and cocoanuts—all shrieking at the very top of their voices, but what they said no living soul could tell. Soon the deck forward was filled with its live and dead freight. The first turn of the paddlewheel sent the queer-looking assemblage scudding out of the way, to ply back again, with their unsold wares, to dingy old Carthagena.

As we steamed quietly along, I had time to examine the new arrivals. Squatted in little groups or families, each group had all its property, piled or stowed in some fashion, amidst them, consisting of bundles of all shapes and sizes, crockery, parrots and parroquets, quantities of eggs and live poultry, fruits such as are usually consumed in tropical countries; bananas, mangoes, cocoanuts, water-melons, bad oranges, and vegetables; but what was most valued and cared for, clearly the grand object of the visit, were numbers of gamecocks, all trimmed, according to the most approved fashion, and tied by the leg, either to the bedding or, failing anything else, to the person of the owner. These Carthagenian blacks are evidently of mixed descent; most likely a sprinkling of Spanish blood flows through their veins. The men, of small stature, are lithe, sinewy, and extremely active; the women have a decided tendency to become fat; one or two of them had attained to such a state of obesity, that walking was next to an impossibility. The children are the most singular little frights imaginable; guiltless of garments, they seemed all eyes and stomach, arms and legs being merely trifling unessential appendages; a singularity of form that may, I presume, be traced to the habit of consuming such vast quantities of innutritious vegetable food.

We reached Colon (or Aspinwall, as the Americans have named it) in due course, and landed about midday. The outfit being enormously heavy, some time had necessarily to be occupied in landing; and as the afternoon train was about to start, it was deemed the wiser course to send the men and officers at once to Panama, where Her Majesty’s ship ‘Havannah’ was waiting to take us to Vancouver Island—the Commissioner and myself remaining at Colon, with a sergeant and small working-party, to bring on the baggage. All the attendant miseries of unshipping such a heterogeneous medley of packages as we had on board was finished at last, and our equipment safely stowed away in the goods-vans of the Panama Railway Company.

An invitation from the manager of the railway to the Commissioner to sleep at their messhouse was by him gladly accepted; a favour not extended to myself, so I had to take up my quarters at the ‘Howard House.’ Now the ‘Howard House’ was managed precisely on the same plan as a travelling wild-beast show; the entire attraction was on the outside. The bar-room, brilliantly lighted, and glittering with gilt, glass, and gaudy ornaments, was open to the street; an array of rocking-chairs, before the pillars supporting the verandah, enabled the luxurious lounger to sit with his heels higher than his head, and in smoky abstraction contemplate his toes. The barman, all studs and shirt-front, hardly deigned to answer my request for a bed, but, pointing to the entry-book, said, ‘Waal, you’d better sign.’ My name duly inscribed on the page of a huge and particularly soiled book, a key was handed me, adorned with a brass label, attached to a chain of like material, with No. 10 on it. ‘Guess, stranger, I want a dollar—and you jist look here: there are two beds, so if anyone comes along, he’ll jist have to room with you.’ This I decidedly objected to. ‘Waal, can’t help it nohow; thar ain’t no other room.’ ‘If I pay for both beds,’ I replied, ‘surely I can have it all to myself?’ This was at length agreed to, the money paid, and at an early hour I turned in, to enjoy a good sound sleep ashore.

Excepting two miserable, hard, curtainless beds, an old rickety chest of drawers, and a couple of chairs, the room was destitute of furniture; but spite of all discomfort, mosquitos, and other pests, felt if not seen or heard, I fell fast asleep, soon to be roused again by a loud knocking at my door, the sound of numerous feet scuffling hurriedly up and down the passage, and a very Babel of voices. Hardly awake, my ideas were in a jumbled sort of chaos as to the cause. Fire, burglars, riots, a house-fight, were all mixed in strange confusion, until an angry voice, that appeared to come through the speaker’s nose, yelled, rather than spoke, ‘Say, ar you agwine to open this door? Our women want them beds for a lay-out, and jist mean to havin em, anyhow.’ ‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘they want the spare bed I have paid for.’ Of course I refused—who would not?—and, dragging the old chest of drawers against the door, defied them to do their worst.

In the angry parley that ensued, I discovered that a steamer had just arrived from New York, en route to the new gold-diggings in British Columbia, with 1,500 passengers, who, rowdy-like, demanded everything. Threats of administering the summary law of Judge Lynch—of firing their six-shooters through the door, and riddling me like a rat in a hole—together with sundry hard names (it is better to imagine than mention), were heaped profusely on my devoted head. As it appeared to me quite as unsafe to surrender as to remain in my fortress, I determined on holding out to the last.

Fortunately, daylight soon came, and with it the shrill whistle and clanging bell, announcing the departure of a railway-train. Peeping cautiously through the window, I saw, to my intense delight, a long train specially put on, and the rowdies just ready to start. I watched them scrambling in, and as the engine with its freight dashed into the tropical jungle, I emerged from my room and the ‘Howard House’ with all possible speed, completed my toilet at the barber’s shop, breakfasted with the Commissioner at the Company’s messroom, and thus ended my night in Colon.

The agency and mess establishment of the Panama Railway Company are really delightful residences, overshadowed by cocoanut trees, and surrounded by perfect bijous of gardens entirely reclaimed from the swamps: the papaw, the banana, blossoming creeping plants, fruit-bearing vines, and curious orchids, all growing together, a wild tangle of loveliness, yielding beauty, fruits, and shade. The cool verandah, and cane-chairs from China, together with the comfortably-furnished interior, gave ample proof that the products of a tropical country may be used to good account, as additions to our northern ideas of a substantial home.

One of the most singular flowers growing in this pretty garden was an orchid, called by the natives ‘Flor del Espiritu Santo,’ or the ‘Flower of the Holy Ghost.’ The blossom, white as Parian-marble, somewhat resembles the tulip in form; its perfume is not unlike that of the magnolia, but more intense; neither its beauty nor fragrance begat for it the high reverence in which it is held, but the image of a dove placed in its centre. Gathering the freshly-opened flower, and pulling apart its alabaster petals, there sits the dove; its slender pinions droop listlessly by its side, the head inclining gently forward, as if bowed in humble submission, brings the delicate beak, just blushed with carmine, in contact with the snowy breast. Meekness and innocence seem embodied in this singular freak of nature; and who can marvel that crafty priests, ever watchful for any phenomenon convertible into the miraculous, should have knelt before this wondrous flower, and trained the minds of the superstitious natives to accept the title the ‘Flower of the Holy Ghost,’ to gaze upon with awe and reverence, sanctifying even the rotten wood from which it springs, and the air laden with its exquisite perfume? But it is the flower alone I fear they worship; their minds ascend not from ‘nature up to nature’s God;’ the image only is bowed down to, not He who made it. The stalks of the plant are jointed, and attain a height of from six to seven feet, and from each joint spring two lanceolate leaves; the time of flowering is in June and July.

We were to have a special train (the cost of crossing the isthmus was something enormous—the actual amount I do not now remember); and as we were most desirous to see as much of the country as possible, an open goods-truck was appropriated to our use, in which we could stand, and have a full peep at everything as we steamed along. Whilst the train was getting ready, I took a turn over the Company’s wharf and round the town.

The Wharf, built on piles driven into the coral reef, extends about a thousand feet in length, and forty in width, with a depth of water at its landing-end sufficient to float the largest ship. The piles are from the forests of Maine, and have to be coppered above high-water-mark, to resist the destroying power of a boring worm (Teredo fimbriata), that would otherwise destroy them in a very few months. The Freight Department is a handsome stone structure, three hundred feet long by eighty wide, through the arched entrance to which is a triple line of rails.

Man, it is said, differs from all other animals, in being ‘a tool and a road-making animal,’ the truth of which was well exemplified in the curious assemblage of products collected from all parts of the world, and stowed in this huge house, brought by man’s ocean highways, and awaiting removal by his iron roads and horses.

Ceroons of cochineal and indigo from Guatemala and San Salvador, cocoa from Eçuador, sarsaparilla from Nicaragua, coffee from Costa Rica, hides from the North and South Pacific coasts, copper-ore from Bolivia, linen goods from the French and English markets, beef, pork, hard bread, cheese from the States, and silks from China.

The town of Colon, as everybody perhaps does not know, stands on a small island called Manzanilla, cut off from the mainland by a narrow frith; the entire island being about one square mile in extent, composed of coral reefs, and only raised a few feet above highwater-level. It has no supply of fresh water but what is obtained during the heavy rains; this, collected in immense iron tanks, that hold over four thousand gallons, supplies the inhabitants during the dry seasons.

The most conspicuous objects one meets with in this dismal place are flocks of turkey-buzzards (useful inspectors or nuisances, as they do their own work of removal), pigs, naked dirty little children in legions, blear-eyed mangy curs that do nothing but growl and sleep; together with peddling darkies, bummers, and loafers (I know no other names so expressive of this species of idler as these Transatlantic ones), that employ their time much in the same fashion as the curs. A line of shops faces the sea, and at a little distance is the ‘mingillo,’ or native marketplace, a spot no one would be disposed to linger in or visit a second time, unless the nose could be dispensed with. ‘Noses have they but they smell not,’ must surely apply to the dwellers in the marketplace; the air is literally (and not in figure of speech only) laden with the mingled fragrance of past and present victims, an odour far more potent than pleasant. Surely ladies never go to market in Colon!

The train was by this time ready to take us to Panama, and, with a parting scream, the iron horse rushed into the tropical wilderness. On leaving Colon, the line winds its way through a deep cutting across a morass, and along the right bank of the Rio Chagres; glimpses are caught of the river from amidst the tangled and twisted foliage that shuts it in on either side like dense walls. From out this leafy chaos rise the gaunt trunks of the mango, cocoanut, plane, cieba, and stately palm. Plantains, too, spread their green succulent leaves—sunshades of nature’s own contriving—to protect the tender growths that love to live beneath them. Every tree seemed strangling in the coils of trailing vines and climbers; real ropes, pendents, and streamers of brilliant blossoms, fit resting-places for the birds and butterflies, themselves like living flowers. Wondrous orchids, grotesque in form and colouring, grew everywhere, springing alike from the living and the dead; for amidst this flood of vegetable life, decay and beauty, like twin sisters, walk hand-in-hand.

We stopped at Gatun for a short time, the station being close to the little village of bamboo huts thatched with palmetto-leaves, and only remarkable as being the place where the ‘bongoes’ (or native boats) used to stop for the travellers to refresh themselves ere the railroad was. From here the line skirts the bases of an irregular series of hills to cross the Rio Gatun, tributary to the Rio Chagres, on a well-made truss girder-bridge of seventy feet span; passed Frijoli, where the fields of golden maize were decked with what looked, at a distance, like immense bouquets of scarlet flowers; and along the banks of the Rio Chagres, which are here very deep, to cross it at Barbacous on a wrought-iron bridge, six hundred and twenty-five feet in length, eighteen in breadth, and forty feet above the surface of the water. There are six spans, each over a hundred feet; iron floor girders, three feet apart, support the rails—the entire structure resting on five piers and two abutments.

After crossing the river, the country becomes open, and large patches of rich land are seen under a rude kind of cultivation, until the native town of Gorgona is reached, where, in old days, boats were exchanged for horses and mules, on the overland route.

Leaving the course of the river, the line passes through deep clay banks and rocky cuttings, suddenly emerging on the green meadowlands surrounding Matuchin. I never gazed on a more exquisite panorama. Dotting the foreground was a pretty native village; to the left the Chagres, and its tributary the Rio Obispo; on the right a group of conical hills, so clothed with vegetation that it was impossible to imagine what the land would look like if the trees were cut away. During our stay at this station we were regularly beset; numerous vendors of native merchandise crowded into and round about the open van; grey-haired old men, and women, pushed trays under our very noses, covered with filthy pastry, gingerbread, sweetstuff, and other like abominations; whilst little black urchins sat like imps on the rails of the truck, each with some live captive for sale—monkey, squirrel, parrot, or other bright-plumaged bird.

Following the valley of the Obispo, which river is crossed twice within a mile on iron bridges, we ascend gradually (the gradient being about sixty feet in the mile) to reach the watershed, over which the descent commences to the Pacific. About a mile from the summit the line winds through a huge pile of basaltic columns, that look as if some Titan force had hurled them into the air, and let them fall again one over the other, like a mass of driftwood piles itself in a North American river. Below, the Rio Grande may be seen, a mere brawling burn; a short distance through thick woods, and we are at Paraiso; as unlike one’s ideal of paradise as Cremorne Gardens or Ratcliff Highway. Again we reach the swampy lowlands with their dense growths; ahead, and looming high in the glowing atmosphere, stands Mount Ancon, whose southern base is bathed by the blue waters of the Pacific; on the left, Cerro-de-los-Buccaneros, or the Hill of the Buccaneers, from whose summit the terrible Morgan first looked on old Panama in the year 1670. We rattle past San Pedro Miguel and Caimitillo, small tidal tributaries to the Rio Grande, scream through the Rio Grande Station, sweep round the base of Mount Ancon; and before us are the tall spires of the cathedral, the long metal roofing of the terminus, and the quiet waters of the Pacific.

Captain Harvey, R.N., then in command of Her Majesty’s ship ‘Havannah,’ met us at the terminus; the ship’s boats were in waiting to take both men and baggage on board, so that I saw but little of Panama. My old foes (that waged war against me at Colon), the gold-seekers, were assembled on the wharf, awaiting the small tugboat to take them off to the larger steamer anchored in the offing. To judge from appearances, there were amongst them a goodly sprinkling that would have deemed lynching or riddling a Britisher, a capital joke.

A tropical sun soon makes one thirsty. I wanted ‘a drink,’ and for the first time tasted iced cocoanut-milk; never in my life have I ever drunk anything half as delicious. Don’t imagine that, in the least degree, it resembles the small teacupful of sweet insipid stuff dribbled out from the cocoanut as we buy it here in England. What we eat as kernel is liquid in the young nut, and the outer husk soft enough to push your thumb through. Surely the cocoanut palm must have been specially designed for the dwellers in the tropical world! It supplies everything uncivilised man can possibly need, to build his ships, rig, paddle, and sail them; from its products, too, he can make his houses, and obtain food, drink, clothing, and culinary utensils. Strictly littoral in its habits, the cocoa-palm loves to loll over the sea, and let the frothy ripple wash its rootlets. This also looks like another link in the chain of Divine intentions. The nuts necessarily fall into the sea—winds and currents carry them to coral reefs, or strand them on desert shores, there to grow, and, by a sequence of wondrously-ordered events, in time make it habitable for man. The ‘Havannah’ dropped down to the beautiful island of Tobago, to take in water ere she sailed for Vancouver Island.

As we crossed the Bay of Panama (which is, I believe, about 135 miles wide, running inland 120), pelicans, far too numerous to count, were floating high in the air, some of them mere specks. The species Pelecanus fuscus (the brown pelican) is a permanent resident on the southern coasts of America, frequenting in great numbers the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, California, the Bay of Panama, and other sheltered inlets. They frequently build in the trees, although the nest is quite as often placed on the ground, even when the former are close at hand. My acquaintance with the pelicans in the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park had given me an idea of clumsiness, and to see them spooning the fish from out their pond is certainly no indication of being adepts at fishing. I know no prettier sight than to watch the brown pelican fishing in the Bay of Panama; no awkwardness there, every movement easy and graceful. Soaring high in the lurid atmosphere, to the eye little more than a tiny dark spot, suddenly down comes the bird as if hurled from the clouds; plunging in head-first, its sharp beak cleaves the water like a wedge; a fish seized is at once pouched; and, rising without any apparent effort from the sea, it soars off again, to look out for another chance. Should the fish be missed, an event that does not often happen, the bird sits quietly on the water, and stares round in stupid astonishment.

We remained several days at Tobago; and as we rode at anchor in the deep roadstead, I could have easily pitched a penny into the groves of tamarind and orange-trees, that grew on the very beach. From the sea-line to the summit of the island, which is quite a thousand feet in altitude, the hills rise in terraces, but so densely clothed with cocoanut, banana, tamarind, orange, and other tropical trees, that one hardly credits the existence of terraces, or that hill and valley are hid beneath the unbroken surface of green. A little village lies hid in a palm-grove at the base of the hill, and in the ravine behind it bubbles up the spring of pure fresh water, that never fails, and from which all vessels touching at Panama obtain their supply.

Mr. Baurman, a geologist, accompanied me on a ramble through its woods and along the seacoast. We did nothing to distinguish ourselves save getting frightfully hot, being well-nigh famished with thirst (for we were far away from the water), and although I fired at the cocoanuts in the hope of bringing one down, only succeeded in making holes in them and letting out the much-coveted milk, that fell on us like a shower of rain; shooting a few doves amongst the pineapples, and a turkey-buzzard on the summit—a frightful crime in Tobago, of which, at the time, I was in happy ignorance; but, fortunately for me, Baurman carried the bird, and was deemed, for his good nature, the greater culprit. The most singular sight we stumbled on was a bull, saddled and bridled in equine fashion, with a black man riding on his back. Tauro might have been a good hack, but he certainly did not look so as he waddled lazily along with his sable rider.

The inhabitants, with few exceptions, are blacks. There was one girl (the property of as repulsive an old demon as one could well see) perfectly blonde, fair even to paleness, with soft blue eyes and long golden hair, that hung in wavy ripples down to her waist—her feet and hands delicately small, and a figure Venus might have envied. Where she came from no one knew: one might have supposed her the descendant of some Viking, if Vikings had ever cruised in the Pacific. Perhaps her owner was a ‘Black Pirate,’ who stole the damsel, and knifed her friends; not bad material for a sensation story—‘The Fair Captive of Tobago.’

The view from the summit was exceedingly lovely. Behind, and to the right and left, the dark-green slope looked as if one could have slid into the vessels at their anchorage; before, a vertical wall of rock a thousand feet from the sea. It looked to me as if the island had been broken in two in the centre, and that one-half had sunk into the water and disappeared; the air quivered even at this height, as it does over a limekiln; not a leaf stirred— the intensely blue sea was unrippled far as eye could reach; the very birds and insects, too hot to fly, sat panting under the shadow of the leaves. We gathered a pineapple, but it tasted hot, as if half-roasted.

I am not favourably impressed with the honesty of the islanders that do the washing, or rather that do not do it. Following the example of the officers of the ‘Havannah,’ I delivered my bag of clothes, the accumulation since leaving England, to the washer, who promised, as only a black washerman will promise, to have it on board before we sailed: he kept his word, for he came when the ship was under weigh, had his money, and with bows, and prayers for my welfare in this world, vanished over the side. We were well out to sea when I looked at my bag; imagine my wrath at finding everything just as I had given it. It was lucky for the rascal he was out of reach, and perhaps quite as well for me; a dollar (4s.) a dozen to carry one’s clothes ashore, most likely to wear, and bring back again dirtier than it went, would enrage the meekest saint!

The voyage in the ‘Havannah’ from Panama to Vancouver Island was a long and wearisome one. We left Tobago on June 4, and entered the Straits of Juan de Fuca on July 12. Reference to the track-chart shows how we idled and idled along on the sea, sauntering, rather than sailing; with a blazing sun right over the masthead, the heat was intolerable, and attended with a depressing languor, that forbade all energy, and fairly melted one in body and mind. The only land sighted was a very distant view of the Gallopagos Islands, a mere black looking spot on an interminable surface of blue. This group of volcanic islands, so strangely isolated, might have been a monster fish, a phantom ship, or even the great sea-serpent, for anything that could be definitely made out, even aided by a ship’s telescope.

We caught great numbers of dolphins (Coryphæna hippuris), which are far more lovely to the eye than agreeable to the palate, in my estimation. This fish, usually from four to five feet in length, is built for rapid passage through the water: the tail, forked like horns, together with the long dorsal fin, reaching from head to tail, enables it to turn with an ease and celerity during even its swiftest transit through the sea. All who have written (in prose or poetry) about the dolphin have attempted a description of its marvellous colouring: to convey, by word-painting, the slightest idea of the changing, flashing, glowing radiance that plays around and upon this fish, when fresh from the ocean, is as impossible as to describe the colours of the Aurora, or the phosphorescence of the tropical seas; it must be witnessed to be realised in all its magnificence. Flying-fish are its favourite food, and these the dolphins course as greyhounds course hares; what is called ‘flying’ being merely an extended leap, aided by the immensely-elongated pectoral fins, made in sheer desperation to escape the voracious sea-hounds so hotly pursuing them.

In reference to these same flying-fish, the species washed on board the ‘Parana’ by the waves of the turbulent Atlantic, and that found their way into the stomach of a dolphin of terrestrial habits, was Exocetus exiliens. I could see nothing of its movements, as the sea simply washed it into the sponsons, or left it floundering on the deck. Its general appearance was exactly like a newly-caught herring: the scales, thin and rounded, easily detached, and adhered to the hand; the back a light steel-blue, with greenish reflections, shading into silvery whiteness on the sides; the pectoral fins reached quite to the tail, and were shaped like the wings of a swift; the dorsal and anal fins are opposite each other, and placed near the tail, which is deeply but unevenly forked—the lower limb being much the longer; the ventral fins, which are posterior to the middle of the body, are unusually long and strongly rayed.

But in the uncomfortably calm Pacific, where I watched the flying-fish every day, and often all day long, I had ample opportunity to observe its so-called ‘flying.’ The species that tenant the two oceans are very nearly allied, Exocetus volitans being the one common to the Pacific; but it is of habits I wish to treat, not of minute specific distinctions—that can be settled in the studio. It seems to me that the distance traversed when the fish leaps from the sea, and the length of time it remains out of the water, are much overestimated in books on Natural History. Ten or twelve seconds may be taken as the average time of its flight, and eighty yards the maximum distance traversed when the water is perfectly tranquil; if aided by a breeze of wind, or propelled from the crest of a breaker, the distance accomplished would necessarily be greater; but the fins have no power to raise the fish a single inch above the level of its leap, and simply aid in its support, as the extended skin of the flying-squirrel bears it up in its spring from bough to bough. I have never seen the fins vibrated or flapped, as all wings invariably are, but, stiff and rigid, are extended and still, until the fish plunges into the sea. Numbers, beyond all computation, were constantly seen by us in the air together, when chased by predatory fish. The flying-fish, as a rule, is about twelve inches in length.

We caught several sharks, and an immense hammerhead (Zygaena vulgaris), that we could not catch, followed us for a very long time. As I looked at him sailing along under the stern of the ship, I was at a loss to imagine for what purpose such a head was given to it; exactly like an immense caulking-hammer, with an eye in each end; in every other detail of shape, and in habits of voracity too, as far as I know, it resembles the ordinary sharks. That it is so constructed to serve some special purpose in its economy there can be no doubt, but what that may be, remains to be discovered. We fished for albatross with marked success, to be devoured by both men and officers, stuffed as a goose; the rag from off the bung of a cask of whale-oil, rubbed with an onion and chewed, would be mildly flavoured as compared to the flesh of this sea-bird. Petrels were ever with us, like flights of martins round the habitations of man; always on the wing, never resting, or roosting either, as far as I could see; watch them in their easy graceful flight, till the last lingering ray of light sank away beneath the watery horizon; and, as night wrapped them in her sable mantle, they were still on the wing. Be on deck as the first blush of early dawn crept drowsily over the sleeping sea, and with the rosy light came the petrels, still flying, as they had vanished in the darkness. We tried to catch them by loosing long threads over the stern, and tangling them, like human spiders; we did trap one, but the sailors were mutinous at such unheard-of barbarity; injuring the chickens of ‘Mother Carey’ was an offence not to be tolerated, even in a zealous naturalist; so, at the captain’s request, the cotton webs were abandoned. The one taken was the black stormy petrel, Thalassidroma melania (C. Buonaparte): upper plumage entirely black (as are the wing-coverts), below ferruginous; tail deeply forked, and very short.

It is a well-marked species, and readily distinguished from all its kindred by the absence of white on the rump and wing-coverts. We caught a huge turtle with a hook and line: a number of lines were hanging from the bow, the ship almost still, when there was a tremendous hue-and-cry that a turtle was hooked. To hold him with the line would have been an utter impossibility—he could have smashed it like pack-thread. The barbed trident called ‘a grains’ was brought into immediate requisition, and from the ‘dolphin-striker’ an experienced hand sent it crashing through the turtle’s armour-plates; a boat was lowered, tackle rigged, and the ponderous reptile safely deposited on the deck. The species I was unable to determine, for I had barely time to seize the sucking-fish (Remora) that were clinging to its shell in clusters, and observe the curious beings, parasitic and others, that evidently used the turtle as a living raft, on which to cruise about, ere the remorseless cook, armed with knife, axe, and saw, hewed and hacked the monster, I could have devoted days to examine, into junks for the pot. The harvest gleaned from his shell I shall speak of in the chapter on Fishes.

All our fresh provisions had long been expended, and water reduced to a very small supply per diem, when on the 11th of July, the seventieth day at sea, ‘land on the starboard bow’ was an announcement welcome to all. Being near dark, it was deemed advisable to stand off until morning, and enter the Straits of Juan de Fuca with a good light. It appeared a longer night than I ever remember, so impatient was I once more to see and tread on terra firma; what in the mist and distance seemed but a dark undefined shadow, was in reality the lighthouse, standing grey and lonely on the wild wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery. The wind was dead aft, and blowing freshly, as we dashed up the straits, faster far than we had ever gone during the long tedious voyage.

Nowhere is this curious inlet more than twelve miles in width: on the right, seen over an ocean of dark-green forest, sloping to the shore, were the snowy summits of the Olympian range of mountains; on the left the more rounded and lower metamorphic hills, quite as densely timbered, but broken along the coast-line into open glades and grassy slopes, like well-kept lawns, reaching to the water-line. About sixty miles from the entrance we round the dreaded ‘race rocks,’ and with scarce time for even a hasty look at the new land, glide round a rocky point, on which is a house, and people anxiously watching our movements. The sails are clewed up; orders are rapidly given, and as quickly executed. A heavy plunging splash and the rattle of the massive cable, as it crashes through the hawse-holes, proclaim our anchorage in Esquimalt Harbour, and safe arrival at Vancouver Island.

CHAPTER II.

VICTORIA—THE SALMON: ITS HAUNTS AND HABITS.

We were landed, soon after our arrival, on a rocky point of land with a snug sheltered bay on each side; an easy slope led up to the frame of a house, destined to be our headquarters; a pretty spot, very Englishlike in its general features, but in the rough clothing of uncultivated nature. Tents were pitched, the baggage carried safely up and stowed away, and the first camp of the Boundary Commission established in this new land of promise.

Our first walk to Victoria, now the thriving capital of Vancouver Island, was made on the evening of our landing. The gold-fever was just beginning to rage fast and furiously, and all classes, from every country, were pouring in—a very torrent of gold-hunters. Not that gold-hunter means only he that digs and washes the yellow ore from out Nature’s treasury, but includes a herd of parasites, that sap the gains of the honest digger; tempting him to gamble, drink poison (miscalled whisky), and purchase trashy trumpery, made, like Pindar’s razors, only to sell; and thus fool away his wealth; ‘earned like a horse, squandered like an ass!’ Both species were well represented, in what could not, in any sense of the word, as yet be called a town.

The old trading-post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the governor’s house, and a few scattered residences of the chief traders and other employés of the Company, alone represented the permanent dwellings. But in all directions were canvas tents, from the white strip stretched over a ridge-pole, and pegged to the ground (affording just room enough for two to crawl in and sleep), to the great canvas store, a blaze of light, redolent of cigars, smashes, cobblers, and cocktails. The rattle of the dice-box, the droning invitation of the keepers of the monte-tables, the discordant sounds of badly-played instruments, angry words, oaths too terrible to name, roystering songs with noisy refrains, were all signs significant of the golden talisman that met me on every side, as I elbowed my way amidst the unkempt throng, that were awaiting means of conveyance to take them to the auriferous bars of the far-famed Fraser river. Along the side of the harbour, wherever advantageous water-sites were obtainable, the noise of busy industry sounded pleasantly in contrast to the mingled hubbub I had just left. Higher up the slope, substantial stores were being rapidly built. Out of these germs grew the present town the capital of the island, that we shall often have to visit in the course of this narrative.

With the island, and its history as a colony, I have but little to do. Other and more able writers have said all that need or can be told about its commerce, agriculture, politics, and progress. The prairie, forest, lake, river, sea, estuary, and rocky inlet are my domains; to their tenants I have to introduce you, guide you to their homes and haunts, and bring you face to face, in imagination, with the zoological colony of the Far North-west.

First, of the island. Vancouver Island is situated between the parallels of 48° 20″ and 51° N. lat., and in from 123° to 128° W. long.—its shape, oblong; length, 300 miles; its breadth, varying at different points, may be taken at an average of from 35 to 50 miles. The island may be characterised as an isolated ridge of mountains, which attain, at their greatest elevation, an altitude of about 6,000 feet. There are no navigable rivers, but numerous mountain-streams, that, as a rule, have a rapid descent, and empty into inlets or arms of the sea, everywhere intersecting the coast-line, east and west of the watershed. Lakes, large and small, are common, from the summit of the hills to the flat gravel lands near the coast; dense pine-forests clothe these hills to their very tops. On the open lands, misnamed prairies, the scrub-oak (Quercus garryana) grows so gnarled and contorted that stock, branch, twig, and even the very leaves look as if they suffered from perpetual cramp. Alder, willow, black birch, and cottonwood fill the hollows.

The climate of the island is milder and more equable than it is on the adjoining continent, and closely approximates to that of Great Britain.

The shortest road to an Englishman’s heart, says the adage, is down his throat; and being a road a good deal travelled, is it to be wondered at if fish (especially such as are welcome travellers down this same ‘red lane’) should have been the first objects of practical Natural History to which the naturalist, fresh from the ‘old country’ and seventy-two days’ imprisonment on board-ship, turned his attention? The first fish I saw and tasted was salmon; and to the Salmon and its haunts I at once introduce you.

SALMO QUINNAT.

Richardson, F. B. A., ‘Fishes,’ p. 219; Common Salmon, Lewis and Clark. Indian Names: at Chinook Point, mouth of the Columbia, Quinnat; at the Kettle Falls, See-met-leek; by the Nesquallys, Satsup.

Specific Characters.—Head, just one-fourth of the entire length, measured from the tip of the nose to where the scales terminate at the tail; the operculum very much rounded, and usually with several spiny projections on the outer margin; preoperculum rounded much the same, but wanting the serrated margin; branchial rays, fourteen. Cleft of the mouth posterior to the eye, which is a dark copper-colour in the freshly-caught fish. The teeth are large and strong in both jaws, but they vary in number according to the age, sex, and condition of the salmon; about ten in each limb of the jaws may be taken as the usual average in an adult fish. Those on the tongue are smaller, and placed in two rows, six in each row. The vomerine and palatine teeth are again much smaller and weaker than any of the others, corresponding to such as stud the gullet.

Fresh from the water, the colours in a healthy fish are particularly marked and bright, but change rapidly after death. The back, through its entire length, is a light steel-blue; shading off on the sides to a lighter tint, that merges by imperceptible gradations through grey to silvery-white on the belly; blushed over with pink, that disappears soon after death. Back, above the well-defined lateral line, thickly spotted with black, the spots being like stars with rays of irregular length; but I have very often seen the spots extending beyond the lateral line, and even on the white of the belly. Opercula, all the fins and the tail more or less spotted, and of a pinkish hue, the anal and pectoral fins tipped with black. The general appearance of this salmon is that of being very thick for its length, the dorsal outline slightly arched, forming almost a notch with the tail.

Soon after our commencing work, I was encamped for many months on the banks of the Chilukweyuk river, a tributary to the Fraser, having a short but rapid course through a rocky valley.

In June and July salmon ascend this stream in incredible numbers, filing off as they work upcurrent into every rivulet, filling even pools left on the prairies and flats by the receding floods.

About a mile from my camp was a large patch of pebbly ground, dry even at the highest floods, through which a shallow stream found its way into the larger river. Though barely of sufficient depth to cover an ordinary-sized salmon, yet I have seen that stream so filled, that fish pushed one another out of the water high-and-dry upon the pebbles. Each, with its head up-stream, struggled, fought, and scuffled for precedence. With one’s hands only, or, more easily, by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of salmon could have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.

It seems to me that thousands of the salmon ascending these small mountain-streams never can spawn from sheer want of room, or, if they do, it must be under most unfavourable circumstances. At the end of the pebble-stream was a waterfall, beyond which no fish could by any possibility pass. Having arrived at this barrier to all farther progress, there they obstinately remained. Weeks were spent in watching them, but I never, in a single instance, saw one turn back and endeavour to seek a more congenial watercourse; but, crowded from behind by fresh arrivals, they died by the score, and, drifting slowly along, in time reached the larger stream. It was a strange and novel sight to see three moving lines of fish—the dead and dying in the eddies and slack-water along the banks, the living, breasting the current in the centre, blindly pressing on to perish like their kindred.

Even in streams where a successful deposition of the ova has been accomplished, there never appears, as far as my observations have gone, any disposition in the parent-fish to return to the sea. Their instinct still prompts them to keep swimming up-stream, until you often find them with their noses worn quite off, their heads bruised and battered, fins and tail ragged and torn, bodies emaciated, thin, and flabby; the bright silvery tints dull and leaden in hue, a livid red streak extending along each side from head to tail, in which large ulcerous sores have eaten into the very vitals.

The Indians say all the salmon that come up to spawn die; but if all do not die, I have no hesitation in saying that very few spring-salmon ever reach the saltwater after ascending the rivers to spawn. Why there should be this marvellous waste of salmon in the rivers of the North-west I am somewhat puzzled to imagine. The distance the fish have to travel from the sea up-stream, or the obstacles they may have to overcome, have clearly nothing to do with their dying. In the Chilukweyuk river the distance from the sea is not over 200 miles, and that clear from any kind of hindrance; and yet they die in thousands. In the Columbia they ascend a thousand miles to the Kettle Falls, and they have been caught many hundred miles above that; still they die just the same as in the shorter streams. Up the Snake river they push their way to the great Shoshonee Falls, over a thousand miles against a rocky stream, but perish there just as they do in the Sumass and Chilukweyuk rivers, which are close to the sea.

Unlike the salmon in our own streams, the spring-salmon in North-western waters spawn in midsummer, when the water is at its lowest temperature and greatest flood-height, from the melting snow. As there is no impediment or hindrance to prevent them returning to the sea, why do they die in N.W. waters? In my opinion, from sheer starvation. Careful observations, made at various Indian fishing-stations and extending over a long space of time, have quite convinced me that salmon (I more particularly allude to the spring-fish) never feed after leaving saltwater. My reasons for thus thinking are, first, no salmon (as far as I know) has ever been tempted to take a bait of any kind in the fresh water above the tideway. The Indians all say that salmon never eat when in the rivers; and I could never discover that they had any recorded instance, or even tradition, of a salmon being taken with bait.

I tried every lure I could think of, to tempt these lordly salmon. The most killing salmon-flies of Scotch, Irish, and English ties, thrown in the most approved fashion, were trailed close to their noses; such flies as would have coaxed any old experienced salmon in the civilised world of waters to forget his caution. Hooks, cunningly baited with live fish, aquatic larvæ, and winged insects, were scorned, and not even honoured with a sniff. Others of the Commission also tried their powers of fascination, but with equally unsuccessful results.

I have opened a very large number of salmon at various Indian fishing-stations, on their first arrival, and during every stage of their wasting vitality, and after death had ended their sufferings; and not in a solitary instance did I ever discover the trace of food in the stomach or intestinal canal. But in every case where a salmon was taken in the tideway or saltwater, I invariably found the remains of small fish and marine animals in its stomach; and in the estuaries and long inland canals that so strangely intersect the coast-line of British Columbia, salmon are readily and easily caught with hook and line; clearly showing to my mind, that whilst in salt and brackish water the North-western spring-salmon feed and fatten, but, after quitting their ocean-haunts for the cold fresh-water, they starve, waste, and die, as a lamp goes out from sheer want of oil. Surely, where hundreds of salmon are split in a day, as at the Kettle Falls, it is fair to assume that if they took any food, by chance a fish would be caught immediately after its meal, with enough evidence in the stomach to prove the fact of having broken its fast; but such proof is never discoverable. Digestion would scarcely be more rapid in the rivers than it is in the ocean and estuary, where we know they eat. Open a salmon and examine its stomach at any time, caught either in nets or with hook and line, and food in various stages of digestion will be invariably found.

Another proof that they undergo a rigid and persistent lent is found in the rapid wasting of all the tissues that goes on during their sojourn in fresh-water. Allowing for the consumption of material requisite for the purposes of reproduction, and the wear-and-tear consequent on making their way up stiff currents, leaping falls, and laboriously toiling up rocky canions—still I contend, if only a partial equivalent was resupplied in the shape of food, waste would not go on to the actual death of the muscles, that slough away in large pieces, as the exhausted fish makes feeble efforts to struggle on; dying at last a loathsome mass of rotting animal matter.

Sores, in both male and female fish, often arise from injuries inflicted by the teeth of a jealous adversary; but these wounds are utterly different from the sloughing ulcer, arising, as I believe, from sheer lack of vital force. These salmon veritably consume themselves, and perish, when life’s stove burns out, for want of fuel to keep it alight.

In August the Chilukweyuk river became perfectly unendurable from the quantities of dead fish floating down. I had with me a splendid retriever, that, to my disgust and annoyance, used to amuse himself, during my absence from the tent, by swimming in after the floating salmon, bringing them ashore, and safely storing them in my canvas dwelling; and on my return I used to discover a heap of fish, the stench from which was beyond human endurance. If fastened out from the tent, he piled them up at the door: all the lessons bestowed on him failed to convince him of his folly; he stuck to his disagreeable habit with a perseverance worthy of a better cause.

Arriving a little later than the preceding, is a smaller fish, which I believe to be the Salmo paucidens (Weak-Toothed Salmon) of Sir J. Richardson, F. B. A., p. 223; the red charr of Lewis and Clark, but the red they allude to is a colour every one of the different species acquire after being a short time in the rivers.

This fish seldom attains a weight over from three to five pounds, and is called by the Indians, at the salmon-leap at Colville on the Columbia, stzoin; it is a very handsome fish, back nearly straight, a light sea-greenish colour; sides and belly silvery-white, tail very forked, fins and tail devoid of any spots; the teeth are wide apart, and not strongly implanted. I was disposed at first to think they were the young of some other species; but the Indians are positive they are not, and they spawn much as the others do. In a small stream or tributary to the Chilukweyuk river, a mountain-torrent on the west side of the Cascades flowing into the Fraser, on the banks of which I was for a long time encamped, and up which the salmon come in great numbers, I amused myself watching this species of salmon (Salmo paucidens) deposit their spawn. It was in August, the water clear as crystal, the bottom a fine brown gravel. A trench, that looked about three or four inches deep and three feet long, was muzzled out by the noses of the females. A female fish poised herself over the trench, head up-stream, and by a rapid vibration of her fins kept herself nearly still; this lasted about a minute and a half or two minutes, during which time a quantity of ova were deposited. She then darted off like an arrow; four males at once took her place over the spawn-bed, and remained, just as the female had done, about two minutes. On their leaving two females came, and were followed by the males, as before. The water was about four feet deep. I am quite sure, from often watching these streams, that one spawning-bed is used by a great many males and females: it was both curious and interesting to watch the extreme regularity with which the sexes succeeded each other.

The question as to what becomes of the young salmon after leaving the egg, is a query more easily asked than answered. There are no snug breeding-ponds, no cosy little aquariums or water-nurseries, where the baby-salmon may be watched and carefully tended until, honoured with a badge, it is sent away to travel through pelagic meadows, deep-sea forests, and ocean gardens, where, growing rapidly, bigger if not wiser, it returns to tell how long it has been away, and how rapidly it has grown. Assistance such as this falls not to the lot of the hunter-naturalist, who with prying eye peers, searches, and grubs about on the banks and into the depths of the lakes and mountain-torrents, in this far-western wilderness. Had he the eyes of Argus, he could only register a few hasty observations, and generalise on their value: he has no opportunities for investigations, such as they have, who at home can watch the egg in their very parlours, gradually shaping itself into the quaint little salmon; see it come from out the egg-case with its haversack of provender, wonderfully provided to supply its wants, until able to live by its own teeth and industry; track its growth and habits through its youthful days; then, marking it with a leaden medal, send it off to sea, to welcome it back after its wanderings a full-grown salmon.

It may be that Creative wisdom has implanted the same instinct in the North-western salmon, prompting it to obey similar laws, and follow the same routine as to the exodus seaward, and return to fresh-water, as directs it in our native streams: my own impression is, that the fish spawned in midsummer or autumn remain up in the lakes and deep still river-pools until the following summer freshets, when they take their departure for the sea as the fresh-run salmon come. I think so, because in the Sumass and Chilukweyuk lakes, already spoken of; along the banks of the Fraser river, and in the Osoyoos lakes and tributaries to the Columbia river, I have in September and October observed large shoals of what I believed to be young salmon, that disappear when the snow begins to melt during June and July in the following summer. I suspect the first flood carries them down and out to sea; but, after all, this is but surmise, and of little practical value.

I never caught salmon-fry whilst fishing for trout, as we could so easily do in our streams; and it is just possible that the rapid rise (unlike anything we know of in our streams) that takes place in every river, brook, and rivulet during midsummer, when the snow melts on the hills, reducing the temperature of the water down to freezing-point, may send the young salmon-fry into the saltwater at a very early period of its life. “At three days old he is nearly two grains in weight; at 16 months old he has increased to two ounces, or 480 times its first weight; at 20 months old, after the smolt has been a few months in the sea, it becomes a grilse of 8½ lbs., having increased 68 times in three or four months; at 2⅔ years old it becomes a salmon of from 12 to 15 lbs. weight, after which its increased rate of growth has not been ascertained; but by the time it becomes 30 lbs. in weight, it has increased 115,200 times the weight it was at first.”[2] These smolts that I have seen in shoals were about half an ounce in weight, the produce of the summer’s spawning. As I have stated, they disappear when the floods set in; and nothing more is seen of them until they return salmon of various sizes, from 2 lbs. to 75 lbs., or, as I believe, the Quinnat and Stzoin.

The next salmon in importance, as affording food to the Indians, is called by them at the Kettle Falls cha-cha-lool, and arrives with the quinnat. This is unquestionably a fully-matured fish, and a distinct species, answering in many particulars to the Salmo Gairdneri of Sir J. Richardson, F. B. A., ‘Fishes,’ p. 221; it will be as well to retain that name. It may be readily distinguished from the quinnat by its rounded blunt-looking nose, shorter and much thicker head, straighter back, and more slender figure—the tail not nearly as much forked. The entire colour of the back is much lighter, and thickly freckled, as are the fins and tail, with oval black spots. The average weight of the cha-cha-lool is from 8 to 11 lbs. This salmon is common in the Fraser, Chilukweyuk, and Sumass rivers, and in every stream along the mainland and island coasts up which salmon ascend. When they first arrive the flesh is most delicious—fat, pink, and firm withal, and to my palate finer than that of the mammoth quinnat. The Indians also prize these salmon, and pack them when dried in bales apart from the others.

Salmo Gairdneri and S. quinnat are the spring salmon, but the autumn has also its supply of ‘swimming silver,’ quite equal to that of spring in point of numbers, but inferior in quality. Up the Columbia in October to the Kettle Falls, and somewhat earlier in the Fraser and rivers north of it, comes an ugly, unprepossessing, hook-nosed, dingy-looking salmon, called by the Colville Indians Keasoo, by the Chinooks Ekewan, by the Clallams Kutch-kutch—the Hooked Snout of the fur-traders, Salmo lycaodon of Pallas, Zoog. Russ. Asiat.

When fresh-run, this fish in colour is of a silvery-grey lustre; back, overshot with a greenish hue; belly, silvery-white; no spots on either the back or sides. The hooked nose, said to be peculiar to the male fish after spawning, is a well-marked, constant, and specific character in every fresh-run fish, the females having at all times symmetrical jaws. I found, from carefully observing great numbers of these fresh-run males, that the hooked state of the snout differs very materially in fish arriving at the same period; and I am quite convinced that large numbers of these salmon do get back again to the saltwater after spawning, and that the strange change that takes place in the hooking over of the snout and growth of the teeth, during their sojourn in the rivers, remains a permanent mark; and the vast difference observable in the males, at the time of arrival, is simply attributable to the fact, that those having the large fanglike teeth and tremendously crooked snout are such as have been up the rivers perhaps the year before, or, it may be, long prior to that period.

In every stream and rill, where they can by any possibility work a passage, you find these salmon; they remain until January and February in the succeeding year, becoming fearfully emaciated and worn, from a long and tedious abstinence; for I believe these salmon feed sparely, if at all, after leaving the sea. The fish in January is of a pale dirty-yellow colour; the sides, showing a bright purplish stripe (sure sign of waning vitality), are flattened and compressed; the back is straight until near its posterior third, when it dips down suddenly, and rises again at the tail just as if you had cut a notch out. The belly, instead of being silvery-white, is rusty yellow, and hangs pendulous and flabby; the eye is dull and sunken.

But the most curious change is in the head of the male fish: the nose becomes enormously elongated, and hooks down like a gaff-hook over the under-jaw, and the under-jaw bends up at the point into a kind of spike that fits into a regular sheath or hole in the upper jaw, just where it begins bending into the hook-like point; the teeth become regular fangs, sticking out round the jaws at irregular distances, and having a yellow bonelike appearance. I have often seen the teeth more than half an inch in length. It is quite clear that these teeth grow during the time the fish remain in fresh-water; no shrinking of the gums could account for such a length of tooth; and their use, I believe, is for fighting.

My own observations lead me to assume that at least there are eight or ten males to every female; and as one spawning-bed is used by many females, terrible battles ensue between the males as to which shall impregnate the ova; and it would appear, reasoning from analogy, that the same law holds good with fish as with gregarious mammals and birds—the stronger and more able male always begets the offspring. I hardly think the ova of a female fresh-run salmon, impregnated by the milt of an old and spent male fish, would produce as strong and healthy an offspring as the male fat, fresh, vigorous, and healthy. I cannot help thinking there must have been some purpose—as antlers are given to the deer tribes, spurs to the males of gregarious birds, and like examples—in giving such formidable weapons to these salmon during their breeding-time; and why not the reason above stated?

Quoting from Dr. Scouler: ‘Observatory Inlet (which I should imagine to be just such an inlet as Puget’s Sound) was frequented at the time by such myriads of the salmon, that a stone could not have reached the bottom without touching several individuals—their abundance surpassing imagination to conceive.’ He goes on to say, that in a little brook they killed sixty with their boarding-pikes. Then, he says, the hump before the dorsal fin consists of fat, and appears to be peculiar to the males, who acquire it after spawning-time, when their snouts become elongated and arched.

The Fall-salmon (Salmo lycaodon) differ most extraordinarily at different periods of their growth—so much so, that I quite believed the adult, middle-aged, and young were three distinct and well-marked species; but Dr. A. Günther has very kindly investigated the matter, and knocked my three species into one.

Indians take the young of this salmon in large numbers in the bays, harbours, and fiord-like inlets surrounding the island, and along the British Columbian and Oregon coasts; also in the Sumass, Chilukweyuk, and Sweltza rivers, and indeed in all inland lakes that are accessible to fish from the sea. These handsome, troutlike young salmon are easily caught with bait of any kind; they rise readily to a gaudy fly, and seize even a piece of their brethren if carefully tied round a hook; from six ounces to a pound is about the average size. When they go to sea again from the lakes I had no opportunity of proving, but I imagine they go down with the floods, as the spring salmon come up.

The second form in which I mistook it for a distinct species is that of the Humpbacked Salmon (Salmo proteus, Pallas; Salmo gibber, Suckley; ‘gerbuscha,’ Kamtschatka; ‘hud-do’ of the Nesqually Indians; ‘hun-num’ of the Fraser river Indians). In its general outline it differs altogether from the Hook-nosed Salmon. The back is much more arched; nose curved, but not nearly as much as in the mature Salmo lycaodon, and the under-jaw turns up and terminates in a protuberance or knob; teeth much more numerous, sharper, and smaller; tail deeply notched, and thickly spotted with dark oval-shaped marks. The most conspicuous feature is a large hump of adipose material situated on the shoulders, a little anterior to the dorsal fin, and only found in the male fish. It has generally been stated that this hump grows upon the male fish after entering the fresh-water: this is a mistake, for I have seen them again and again taken in the sea, before going up into the rivers, with this hump well developed. On cutting it open, it appears to be a sort of cellular membrane, filled with an oily, semifluid kind of material. The use of this deposit, there can be no doubt, is to supply the male with this material in some mysterious way during the spawning-time, for, after that period has passed, the hump entirely disappears. They arrive about the same time as the older fish, but only in very large runs every second year—have the same range, and die in thousands.

At Fort Hope, on the Fraser river, in the month of September, I was going trout-fishing in a beautiful stream, the Qua-que-alla, that comes thundering and dancing down the Cascade Mountains, cold and clear as crystal; these salmon were then toiling up in thousands, and were so thick in the ford that I had great trouble to ride my horse through; the salmon were in such numbers about his legs as to impede his progress, and frightened him so, that he plunged viciously and very nearly had me off. They are never at any time good eating; the flesh, in fresh-run fish, is white, soft, and tasteless. The Indians only eat them when they are unable to obtain anything else. These salmon work up to the very heads of the tributaries, and I have often seen them where the water was so shallow as to leave their backs uncovered.

The Salmo canis of Suckley (Dog-Salmon, Spotted Salmon, ‘Natural History of Washington Territory,’ p. 341), which he says arrives at Puget’s Sound in September and October, I believe to be only the old males of the Salmo lycaodon (Hook-nosed Salmon), that have had a turn in the rivers perhaps a year or two before, and have got safely back again to the sea, recruited their wasted energies, and returned again for another perilous cruise up the streams. The large fanglike teeth, from which they derive the name of dog-salmon, are the large teeth grown and developed, as I have previously described them, whilst spawning in the fresh water.

Salmon is of the most vital importance to the Indians; deprived or by any means cut off from obtaining it, starve to death they must; and were we at war with the Redskins, we need only cut them off from their salmon-fisheries to have them completely at our mercy. If salmon-fisheries—well managed, and conducted by persons who thoroughly understood salting, barreling, and curing salmon—were established on some of the tributaries to the Fraser and Columbia rivers, I am quite convinced they would pay handsomely. Some few attempts have been made by speculators, but always failed for want of capital and proper management. The Hudson’s Bay Company, in some of their inland and northern posts, feed their employés on dried salmon during the winter. At Fort Langley, on the Fraser river, the Company generally salt in several hundred casks of salmon, and these principally go to the Sandwich Islands or to China. There was one large salmon-curing establishment at the mouth of the Puyallup river, but I have been told it did not pay; the fish, being badly put up and carelessly packed, often spoiled before reaching the markets for which they were destined. In Victoria, salmon is now a very important article both of food and commerce.

CHAPTER III.

FISH HARVESTING.

The systems adopted by the Indians for capturing salmon vary in accordance with the localities chosen for fishing. Besides the stages or baskets in use on the Columbia river, they construct weirs reaching from one side of a stream to the other, with skilfully-contrived openings, allowing fish to pass easily through them into large lateral stores made of closely-woven wicker, where they are kept prisoners until required.

They have rather a clever contrivance for catching salmon in the bays and harbours, using a sort of gill-net (a net about forty feet long and eight feet wide), with large meshes; the upper edge is buoyed by bits of dry cedar-wood, that act as floats, and the net kept tight by small pebbles slung at four-foot distances along the lower margin. This kind of net the Indians stretch across the mouth of a small bay or inlet, and sit in their canoes a short distance off, quietly watching it. These small bays, or saltwater aquariums, are the lurking-places and strongholds for shoals of anchovies and herrings. Often tempted to wander and make excursions beyond the gateway of their rocky home, they are at once spied by predatory piratical salmon; seeking safety in flight, they dash headlong for their hiding-place, hotly pursued by their dreaded foe, and shooting easily through the cordy snare, laugh to see Master Salmon ‘run his head into the net;’ bob-bob go the floats beneath the surface, up paddles redskin, hauls up his net, clutches the silvery pirate, and with a short heavy club gives him a blow on the head, drops him into the canoe, lets go his net, and waits for the next.

With this kind of net immense numbers of spring and fall salmon are taken. All their nets are made of cord, spun from native hemp, that grows abundantly along the banks of the Fraser and other streams. Squaws gather the plant about a week before the flowering-time; first soak, then beat it into fibre; this, arranged in regular lengths, is handed to the Indian, who, seated on the ground, twists the bundles of tiffled hemp into cord—a cord as regular and symmetrical as the handiwork of a practised ropemaker—-using neither tools nor machinery, but simply the hand and naked thigh.

The first salmon entering the Columbia are taken at Chinook Point, a short distance above Cape Disappointment, near the mouth of the river. These are known as ‘Chinook salmon,’ and are celebrated, not only in the immediate neighbourhood but in the markets of San Francisco, as the fattest and finest-flavoured salmon taken on the coast; they are large, ranging from 35lbs. to 70lbs. in weight.

In June the grand army arrives. We need not linger at the old fishery of the Chinook Indians, so prosperous fifty years ago. The Indians have disappeared; but the salmon army marches on, with little interruption, until they have arrived at the Cascades.

Here we must remain awhile, and see for ourselves how the red man harvests his salmon. Salmon is quite as essential to the Indians residing inland as grain to us, or bananas and plantains to the residents in the tropics: gleaning the regular supply of fish, the Indian literally harvests and garners it as we reap our grain-crops. It cannot be by mere chance that fish are prompted, by an unalterable instinct, to thread their way into the farthest recesses of the mountains—fish too that are fat and oily, and best adapted to supply heat and the elements of nutrition.

The winters are long and intensely cold, often 30° Fahr. below zero, the snow lying deep for at least six months. Birds migrate, most of the rodents and the bears hibernate, and such animals as remain to brave the biting cold, retire where it is very difficult and often impossible to hunt or trap them. In a small lodge, made of hides or rushes, as far from windproof as a sieve would be; wrapped in miserable mantles (simply skins sewn together, or ragged blankets, bought of the Hudson’s Bay Company), cowering and shivering over the smouldering logs, are a family of savages. The nipping blasts and icy cold forbid their venturing in pursuit of food; flesh they could not cure during the summer, for they have not salt, and sun-drying is insufficient to preserve it. A miserable death, starved alike by cold and hunger, must be the fate of this, and of all Indian families away from the seaboard, but for salmon: sun-dried, it preserves its heat and flesh-yielding qualities unimpaired; uncooked, they chew it all day long, and frequently grow fat during their quasi-hybernation. The waterways are thus made available for the transport of coals and provisions necessary to keep the life-stove burning, floated free of freight up to the very doors of the Indian’s wigwam. The way he harvests this store, and preserves it for winter use, we shall see as we follow the course of the salmon in their ascent of the Columbia river.

The Cascades, where the salmon first meet with a hindrance to their upward course, is a lovely spot. The vast river here breaks its way through the Cascade Mountains, a mountain-gap unequalled, I should say, in depth and extent, by any in the world. Some parts are massive walls of rock, and others wooded slopes like to a narrow valley. One can hardly imagine the possibility of so great a change in climate, and consequently vegetation, as there is betwixt this place and the Dalles, only a few miles farther up the river. I have left the Dalles when the ground was covered with snow, and within a distance of forty miles entered this gap, and found the climate to be that of summer. The sloping forests brightly green, shrubs of various sorts, tropical in appearance, immense ferns, the emerald moss clothing the rocks, over which dozens of waterfalls, unbroken for a thousand feet, tumble from the hills into the river —all together make up a scene of beauty and rich luxuriance, unlike any other part of the river.

From the Dalles to the Cascades the river has scarcely a perceptible current, either side being bounded by perpendicular walls of mountains. Tradition says, that once the river had a uniformly swift course the entire way, and that where the Cascades now are, the water passed at that time under a huge arch that reached from side to side. Afterwards an earthquake tumbled it down, the ruins of the arch still existing as a chain of islands across the head of the rapids; the river, having gradually carried away the fragments, forming now the long rapid. The river, thus suddenly thrown back, flooded the forests up to the Dalles, and to this day stumps of trees are to be seen sticking out of the water many hundred yards from the shore.

Below the Cascades, before reaching the flat district about Fort Vancouver, the scenery is bold and massive; immense hills densely wooded, bold promontories, and grassy glades are passed successively as the steamer dashes on her downward trip. At the Cascades there is now a railway, over which goods and passengers are conveyed to the steamers above the rapids, which are so swift that canoes plied by experienced Indians dare not venture to run them.

Wandering along by this foaming rush of water, one sees numberless scaffoldings erected amongst the boulders—rude clumsy contrivances, constructed of poles jammed between large stones, and lashed with ropes of bark to other poles, that cross each other to form stages. Indian lodges, pitched in the most picturesque and lovely spots imaginable, are dotted along from one end of the rapids to the other. Indians from long distances and of several tribes have come here to await the arrival of the salmon.

Leaning against the trees, or supported by the lodges, are numbers of small round nets (like we catch shrimps with in rocky pools), fastened to handles forty and fifty feet in length. Hollow places are cunningly enclosed, with low walls of boulders, on the riverside of each stage.

It is early in June; the salmon have arrived, and a busy scene it is. On every stage plying their nets are Indian fishers, guiltless of garments save a piece of cloth tied round the waist. Ascending the rapids, salmon seek the slack-waters at the edges of the current, and are fond of lingering in the wake of a rock or any convenient hollow; the rock-basins constructed by the sides of the stages are just the places for idling and resting. This the crafty fisher turns to good account, and skilfully catches the loiterer by plunging his net into the pool at its head, and letting the current sweep it down, thus hooping salmon after salmon, with a certainty astounding to a looker-on. Thirty salmon an hour is not an unusual take for two skilled Indians to land on a stage. As soon as one gets tired, another takes his place, so that the nets are never idle during the ‘run.’

The instant a fish reaches the stage, a heavy blow on the head stops its flapping; boys and girls are waiting to seize and carry it ashore, to be split and cured—a process I can better describe when at the salmon-falls. As there is at the Cascades simply hindrance to the salmon’s ascent, of course vast numbers escape the redskins’ nets.

Forty miles above this fishery is another obstruction, the Dalles; where the river forces its way through a mass of basaltic rocks in numerous channels, some of them appearing as if hewn by human hands. Another portage has to be made here, a neat little town having grown up in consequence of the transhipment. The journey from steamer to steamer is accomplished in stages, the heavy goods being hauled by mule and ox-teams. The road lies over a steep ridge of hills to the junction of the Des Chutes, or ‘Fall river,’ with the Columbia. Fishing at the Dalles is much the same as at the Cascades.

Great numbers of salmon turn off and ascend the Snake river, to be captured at the Great Shoshonee Falls by the Snake and Bannock Indians. We follow on the vanguard of the swimming army, passing numberless tributaries, up which detachments make their way, right and left, into the heart of the country—supplies for tribes living near the different streams—to the great falls of the Columbia, the ‘Kettle Falls,’[3] why so named is not very clear. These falls, except when the river is at its highest flood, form an impassable barrier to the salmon’s progress; the distance from the sea is about 700 miles, and the first arrivals are usually about the middle of June.

The winter-quarters of the Boundary Commission were about two miles above the falls, and close to the falls is a trading-post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Fort Colville. The gravelly plateau on which the trading-post stands, together with one or two houses belonging to old employés, was clearly once a lake-bottom. The water at some remote period filling the lake appears to have broken its way out through the rocks at the falls, and left this flat dry land. Patches of wheat and barley are grown, but the soil is far too poor to repay the labour of cultivation.

About three weeks preceding the arrival of the salmon, Indians begin to assemble from all directions. Cavalcades may be seen, day after day, winding their way down the plain; and as the savage when he travels takes with him all his worldly wealth—wives, children, dogs, horses, lodges, weapons, and skins—the turn-out is rather novel. The smaller children are packed with the baggage on the backs of horses, which are driven by the squaws, who always ride astride like the men. The elder girls and boys, three or four on a horse, ride with their mothers, whilst the men and stouter youths drive the bands of horses that run loose ahead of the procession. A pack of prick-eared curs, simply tamed prairie-wolves, are always in attendance.

A level piece of ground overlooking the falls (the descent from which to the rocks is by a zigzag path, down a nearly vertical cliff) is rapidly covered with lodges of all shapes and sizes. The squaws do the work appertaining to camping, and are literally ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ The men, who are all, when at the fishery, under one chief, whom they designate the ‘Salmon Chief,’ at once commence work—some in repairing the drying-sheds, which are placed on the rocks (as are also numbers of lodges) at the foot of the zigzag; others are busy making or mending immense wicker hampers, about thirty feet in circumference, and twelve feet in depth. Little groups are dragging down huge trees lopped clear of their branches—rolling, twisting, and tumbling them over the rocks, to be fixed at last by massive boulders, the ends hanging over the foaming water not unlike so many gibbets. These trees being secure and in their right places, the next work is to hang the wicker baskets to them, which is a risky and most difficult job: but many willing hands and long experience work wonders; with strong ropes of twisted bark, the baskets are at last securely suspended. By this time the river begins to flood rapidly, and soon washes over the rocks where the trees are fastened, and into the basket, which is soon in the midst of the waterfall, being so contrived as to be easily accessible from the rocks not overwashed by the flood.

Whilst awaiting the coming salmon, the scene is one great revel: horse-racing, gambling, love-making, dancing, and diversions of all sorts, occupy the singular assembly; for at these annual gatherings, when all jointly labour in catching and curing the winter supply of salmon, feuds and dislikes are for the time laid by, or, as they figuratively express it, ‘The hatchet is buried.’

The medicine-men (doctors and conjurors) of the different tribes busily work their charms and incantations to insure an abundant run of fish. One of the illustrations is drawn from a photograph of the falls. The Indians at first steadily refused to allow the photographer and his machine to come near the falls, declaring it a box of bad ‘medicine’ that would surely drive every salmon away; and not until an old Romish priest who was at the trading-post explained it to them, did they permit a photograph to be taken.

The watchers announce the welcome tidings of the salmon arrival, and the business begins. The baskets are hung in places where past experience has taught the Indians salmon generally leap, in their attempts to clear the falls. The first few that arrive are frequently speared from the rocks. They are in such vast numbers during the height of the ‘run,’ that one could not well throw a stone into the water at the base of the falls without hitting a fish: fifty and more may be seen in the air at a time, leaping over the wicker traps, but, failing to clear the ‘salmon-leap,’ fall back, and are caged. In each basket two naked Indians are stationed all day long; and as they are under a heavy fall of water, frequent relays are necessary. Salmon three or four at a time, in rapid succession, tumble into the basket. The Indians thrust their fingers under the gills, strike the fish on the head with a heavy club, and then fling them on the rocks. I have known three hundred salmon landed from one basket betwixt sunrise and sunset, varying in weight from twenty to seventy-five pounds.

From the heaps of fish piled on the rocks, boys and girls carry and drag them back to the squaws seated round the curing-houses; with sharp knives they rip the salmon open, twist off the head, and cleverly remove the backbone; then hanging them on poles, close under the roofs of sheds the sides of which are open, they dry them slowly, small fires being kept constantly smouldering on the floors. The smoke serves to keep away the flies, and perhaps also aids in the preservation of the fish. The only portions eaten by the Indians during the catching are the heads, backbones, roes, and livers, which are roasted, skewered on sticks.

When thoroughly dried the fish are packed in bales made of rush-mats, each bale weighing about fifty pounds, the bales being tightly lashed with bark-ropes. Packing in bales of equal weight facilitates an equitable division of the take. Horses are purposely brought to carry the fish back to winter-quarters, and two bales are easily packed on each horse. The fishing-season lasts for about two months: then the spoils are divided, and the place abandoned to its wonted quietude, until the following summer brings with it another harvest.

During the drying, silicious sand is blown over the fish, and of course adheres to it. Constantly chewing this ‘sanded salmon’ wears the teeth as if filed down, which I at first imagined them to be, until the true cause was discovered. I have an under-jaw in my possession whereon the teeth are quite level with the bony sockets of the jaw, worn away by the flinty sand.

I question if in the world there is another spot where salmon are in greater abundance, or taken with so little labour, as at the Kettle Falls, on the Columbia river. In all streams emptying into Puget’s Sound, in the Fraser river, and rivers north of it to the Arctic Ocean, salmon ascend in prodigious abundance. In the Fraser there are no obstructions as far as Fort Hope to the salmon ascent; hence fishing is carried on by each village or family for themselves, and not by the combined labour of many, as on the Columbia. Near the mouth of the river large iron gaff-hooks are generally used; with these ugly weapons salmon are hooked into the canoes. Higher up, at the mouths of the Sumass, Chilukweyuk, and other tributary streams, they use a very ingenious kind of net worked between two canoes, with which large numbers of salmon are taken. Stages, too, are hung over the eddies from the rocks, and round nets used as at the Cascades.

On the Nanaimo river the Indians have a very ingenious contrivance for taking salmon, by constructing a weir; but, instead of putting baskets, they pave a square place, about six feet wide and fourteen feet long, with white or light-coloured stones. This pavement is always on the lower side of the weir, leading to an opening. A stage is erected between two of these paved ways, where Indians, lying on their stomachs, can in an instant see if a salmon is traversing the white paved way. A long spear, barbed at the end, is held in readiness, and woe betide the adventurous fish that runs the gauntlet of this perilous passage!

But the most curious contrivance I saw was at Johnson’s Narrows. I have said salmon readily take a bait when in saltwater. The Indians when fishing use two spears, one about seventy feet in length; the other shorter, having a barbed end, is about twenty feet long. In a canoe thus equipped, favourable fishing-grounds are sought, the Indian having the long spear being also provided with a small hollow cone of wood, trimmed round its greater circumference with small feathers, much like a shuttlecock; this he places on the end of the longer spear, and presses it under water, until down the full length of the handle; a skilful jerk detaches this conelike affair from the spear-haft, when it wriggles up through the water like a struggling fish. The savage with the short spear intently watches this deceiver; a salmon runs at it, and it is speared like magic.

Next in importance amongst the Salmonidæ is the Oregon Brook Trout, Fario stellatus (Grd. Proc. Acad., Phil. Nat. Soc., viii. 219).

Specific Characters.—Head rather large, contained four-and-a-half times in the total length; maxillary reaching a vertical line drawn behind the orbit. Colour of the back bright olivegreen, sides pinkish-yellow, belly white, profusely speckled over with minute black spots.

This trout lives everywhere, and is to be met with in the lakes and rivers in Vancouver Island, in all streams flowing into Puget’s Sound, and away up the western sides of the Cascades. Crossing to the eastern side, and descending into the valley of the Columbia, again he puts in an appearance. Climb the western slope of the Rocky Mountains up to the summit, 7,000 feet above the sea-level, there too he lives—always hungry and voracious. These trout are very delicious, varying from eight ounces up to three pounds in weight.

My first exploit in fishing for trout may be worth relating:—I was sitting on the bank of a stream that rippled gaily on its rocky course, down the western slope of the Rocky Mountains; and which, here and there lengthening out into a long stickle, and curling round a jutting rock, lazily idled by the grassy bank; anon leaping a sudden fall, and widening into a glassy pool. Butterflies gambolled and flitted recklessly; dragonflies clad in brilliant armour waged cruel war on the lesser forms of winged life, chasing them everywhere. The busy hum of insects, the air fragrant with the forest perfumes, the murmur of the water, and the songs of feathered choristers made one feel happy, though far away from civilisation. My reverie was broken by a sudden splash; a speckled tyrant, lurking under the bank on which I sat, had pounced upon a large grey fly that, unconscious of danger, had touched the water with its gauzy wings. Very well, Master Trout, you may perhaps be as easily duped as your more cautious confrères; so setting to work, I overhauled my ‘possible sack,’ found a few coarse hooks, a bit of gut, and some thread.

Among other materials wherewith to make a fly, feathers were indispensable. Shouldering my gun, I strode off to look for a ‘white flesher,’ alias ruffed grouse; soon stirred one up, bagged him, hauled out his glossy bottle-green frill; selected some feathers which I thought would turn a decent hackle, picked out a couple of brighter ones for wings, some red wool from my blanket for dubbing, and with these materials I tied a fly. Not the slightest resemblance, fancied or real, did it bear to anything ever created, but still it was a fly, and, as I flattered myself, a great achievement. A line was made from some ends of cord; then cutting a young larch, I made my tackle fast to the end, and thus equipped sallied to the stream.

My first attempt in the swift scour was a lamentable failure. Warily I threw my newly-created monster well across the stream, and, according to the most approved method, let it slowly wash towards me, conveying to the rod and line a delicate and tempting tremble; not a rise, not a nibble; my hopes wavered, and I began to think these trout wiser than I had given them credit for. I tried the pool as a last chance; so, leaning over the rock, I let my tempter drop into the water; it made a splash like throwing in a stone; but imagine my delight, ye lovers of the gentle art, when a tremendous jerk told me I had one hooked and struggling to get free! Depending on the strength of my tackle, I flung him out on the bank; and admitting all that may be said against me as being barbarous and cruel, I confess to standing over the dying fish, and admiring his brilliant colour, handsome shape, fair proportion—and, last though not least, contemplated eating him! I pitied him not as, flapping and struggling on the grass, his life ebbed away, but thought only of the skill I had displayed in duping him, and the feast in store for me on returning to camp.

Having discovered a secret, I pressed eagerly on to turn it to the best advantage, and that day played havoc amongst the trouts. Some long willow-branches, cut with a crook at the end, served me in lieu of a basket. Passing the sticks under the gill-covers, and out at the mouth, I strung trout after trout until the sticks were filled; then tying the ends together, flung them across my shoulder and trudged along; a good plan when you have not a basket. I now turned my attention, and devoted all my ingenuity, to the manufacture of a more angler-like fly; and in this case the adage proved true, ‘that a poor original was better than a good imitation.’ My well-dressed fly was not one-half as much appreciated as the old one; there was a sham gentility about him that evidently led at once to suspicion, and it was only here and there I met with a fish weak enough to fall a victim to his polished exterior; I therefore abandoned the dandy, and returned again to the rough old red-shirted ‘trapper’ with which I first commenced.

There was a stream in which I had better sport than in any of the others, the Mooyee, on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains—a small stream, very rocky, clear as crystal, icy cold, and so densely wooded on each side that fishing in it, unless by wading, was impossible. I remember one pool as being particularly productive—a rock-basin, with a little rivulet dancing into it through a pebbly reach; the water so beautifully clear, that everything in the pool was visible, as though one looked into an aquarium. I could not help standing and feasting my eyes on the trout playing about in it. To say the pool was full of fish is no exaggeration; all, with their heads toward the little stream, were gently sculling their tails to steady themselves. I gazed upon a mass of fish, big and little, from four ounces to three pounds in weight.

Having sufficiently indulged in admiring this host of trout (the like of which I had never seen before), I began the war. Dropping my ‘sensation-fly’ into the little stream, I let it sink and drift into the pool. Twenty open mouths rushed at it ravenously, and trout after trout was rapidly landed on the shingle. I continued this scheme until a heap of magnificent fish were piled at my side, and the pool was rapidly thinning. One crafty old fellow, however, that looked about three pounds in weight, defied all my efforts to tempt him. I let the fly drift over him, under his nose, above his nose; but he scorned it, and, if he could, I felt he would have winked his eye derisively at me.

To have him I was determined: so sitting down, I scooped out the eye of a fish, and put it on the point of the flyhook, then let it drift down the stream and into the pool; steadily it neared his nose, and in breathless expectation I awaited the result. He was evidently uneasy, and knew not what to do. It floated past him, and I thought my bait had failed; when round he turned, and dashing viciously at it, seized (pardon the joke) the hook and eye, and I had him fast. Being far too heavy to risk jerking, I let him get over his furious fit, then towed him ashore hand over hand gathering up my line, I got close to him, and seizing him behind the gills, brought him upon the shingle; and a beauty he was!

I have tried various expedients—more as experiments than anything else—to find out what bait these trout really preferred. Grasshoppers they took readily, and I have often caught a trout when only one leg of the insect remained on the hook; the white meat from the tail of the river crayfish is also a very favourite diet. Earth-worms I could not try, because they do not exist in British Columbia. But all my trials and experiments failed signally in discovering anything that could at all compare with my ‘first fly.’

The trout spawn about October, or perhaps a little later, depositing their ova in gravel in the lesser streams.

Salmon Trout.—Salmo spectabilis (Red-spotted Salmon Trout), Grd. Proc. Acad., Nat. Soc. Phild., viii. 218.—Sp. Ch.: Head a trifle more than a fourth of the total length; maxillary extending to a vertical line drawn posterior to the orbit. Colour of the back dark-greenish, inclining to grey, a lighter shade of the same colour on the sides—beneath silvery-white; thickly marked above the lateral line with yellowish spots, interspersed with others that are bright red.

In habits and distribution the salmon-trout differs in every respect from the preceding. There can be no doubt that this fish is anadromous, and comes up into the rivers to spawn at particular periods of the year, like the salmon, and then returns to sea. In October the great run begins. Into all the rivers emptying into Puget’s Sound—the Dwamish, Nesqually, Puyallup, and several others, up the Fraser and its tributaries, into all the creeks and inlets about Vancouver Island, crowd in shoal after shoal. They vary in size; I have seldom seen them exceed three pounds in weight.

The advent of these trout is the signal for a general Indian fish-harvest. The banks of all the little streams are soon dotted with temporary lodges, and every one, from the naked little urchin to the stalwart chief, wages war upon these fish. All sorts of expedients are used to snare them. Boys, girls, and old squaws catch them with a hook and line, about eight or ten feet long, tied to the end of a short stick. The hook (made of bone or hard wood) is baited with salmon-roe. The Indians never use the roe fresh; dried in the sun it becomes extremely tough, and acquires a very rank oily smell. The fish take it greedily, and in this manner large numbers are captured.

Another bait equally fatal is made by cutting a small strip from the belly of a trout, and keeping the shiny part outermost—winding it tightly round the hook, from the barb, to about an inch up the line, securing it by twisting white horsehair closely round it. A small pebble is slung about a foot from the baited hook, and the line tied to the canoe-paddle close to the hand; paddling slowly along, this bait is trolled after the canoe. The intention is manifestly to imitate a small fish, as we troll with minnow or spoon-bait in our waters. All the larger fish are generally taken in this way. They rise readily to a gaudy fly, and afford admirable sport.

But the great haul of hauls is effected by a most ingeniously-contrived basket, in principle the same as our eel-baskets. It is made of split vine-maple, lashed together with strips of cedar-bark. These baskets vary in size; some of them are fifteen feet long, and six in circumference. The crafty savages place their wicker traps in the centre of the stream; a dam of latticework on each side reaches to the bank, so that no fish can get up-stream unless through the trap. Another plan, and a very good one where the water is shallow, is to build a little wall of boulders, rising about a foot above water, slanting the wall obliquely until the ends meet in the centre of the stream at an acute angle; at this point they place the basket. By this plan all the water is forced through the basket, increasing the depth and strength of the current. In happy ignorance of their danger, the fish ply steadily upcurrent, until they suddenly find themselves caged.

When a sufficient number of fish are in the basket, an empty one is carried out and set, the other brought ashore; its contents are turned out upon the grass. Squaws, old and young, knife in hand, squat round, looking eagerly on; and as the captives lie flapping on the sward, in the harpies rush, seize a trout, rip him up, remove the inside, and then skewer him open with two sticks. Poles, having a fork at the end, are placed firmly in the ground, about fifteen feet apart. Other sticks, barked and rubbed very smooth, are placed in these forked ends, on which the split trout are strung. Small fires are kept smouldering below the strung-up fish. When thoroughly dry, they are packed in small bales, and lashed with the bark of the cedar-tree.

Candle-fish.—The Candle-fish or Eulachon, Salmo (mallotus) Pacificus, Rich. F. B. A., p. 227; Thaleichthys Pacificus, Grd.—Sp. Ch.: Head somewhat pointed and conical; mouth large, its fissure extending back to the anterior margin of the orbit; opercule terminated by a rounded angle, lower jaw projecting a little beyond the upper one; tongue rough, teeth on the pharyngeals; lower jaw, palatines, and vomer devoid of teeth; eye rather small; adipose fin, placed opposite the hind portion of the anal; scales subelliptical. Dorsal region greenish-olive colour, generally silvery-white, sparsely spotted with dirty yellow; a dark spot, nearly black, over each orbit.

A human body is a kind of locomotive furnace, that has to be kept up to a given temperature by fuel, its food. Under a tropical sun, not much fuel is needed, and that of a sort that will not keep up a large fire. Man, therefore, wears clothes made from a vegetable fibre, and eats fruit and rice, the lowest in the scale of heat-making materials. Far north among the polar ice, where you cannot touch metal without its taking the skin off your fingers, the human locomotive is protected by thick coverings of fur: the native takes the jackets from his furry-footed companions, and covers his own skin with them. But the grand oil-springs—the locomotive’s necessary coal-mines in another form—are in the bodies of the great seals and whales. Oil and blubber burn rapidly, and give out a large amount of heat. With a fur-suit outside, and inside a feed of seal’s flesh washed down with seal’s oil, the steam of life is kept up very easily.

But all the fat of the sea is not in the bodies of those great blubbering whales and seals. There is a fish, small in size, not larger than a smelt, that is fat beyond all description, clad in glittering silver armour, and found on the coasts of British Columbia, Russian America, Queen Charlotte and Vancouver Islands, which is called by the natives Eulachon or Candle-fish. I have had both leisure and opportunity to make this fish’s intimate acquaintance; played the spy upon its habits, its coming and going, and have noted how it is caught and cured.

Picture my home—an Indian village, on the north shore of British Columbia. The village is prettily situated on a rocky point of land, chosen, as all Indian villages are, with an eye to prevention of surprise from concealed foes. Rearward it is guarded by a steep hill, and it commands from the front the entrance to one of those long canals, which, as I have previously stated, resemble the fiords of Norway, often running thirty or forty miles inland.

The dwellings consist of ten or fifteen rude sheds, about twenty yards long and twelve wide, built of rough cedar-planks; the roof a single slant covered with poles and rushes. Six or eight families live in each shed. Every family has its own fire on the ground, and the smoke, that must find its way out as best it can through cracks and holes (chimneys being objected to), hangs in a dense upper cloud, so that a man can only keep his head out of it by squatting on the ground: to stand up is to run a risk of suffocation. The children of all ages, in droves, naked and filthy, live under the smoke; as well as squaws, who squat round the smouldering logs; innumerable dogs, like starving wolves, prick-eared, sore-eyed, snappish brutes, unceasingly engaged in faction-fights and sudden duels, in which the whole pack immediately takes sides. Felt, but not heard, are legions of bloodthirsty fleas, that would try their best to suck blood from a boot, and by combined exertions would soon flay alive any man with a clean and tender skin.

The moon, near its full, creeps upward from behind the hills; stars one by one are lighted in the sky—not a cloud flecks the clear blue. The Indians are busy launching their canoes, preparing war against the candle-fish, which they catch when they come to the surface to sport in the moonlight. As the rising moon now clears the shadow of the hills, her rays slant down on the green sea, just rippled by the land-breeze. And now, like a vast sheet of pearly nacre, we may see the glittering shoals of the fish—the water seems alive with them. Out glides the dusky Indian fleet, the paddles stealthily plied by hands far too experienced to let a splash be heard. There is not a whisper, not a sound, but the measured rhythm of many paddlers, as the canoes are sent flying towards the fish.

To catch them, the Indians use a monster comb or rake, a piece of pinewood from six to eight feet long, made round for about two feet of its length, at the place of the hand-grip; the rest is flat, thick at the back, but thinning to a sharp edge, into which are driven teeth about four inches long, and an inch apart. These teeth are usually made of bone, but, when the Indian fishers can get sharp-pointed iron nails, they prefer them. One Indian sits in the stern of each canoe to paddle it along, keeping close to the shoal of fish another, having the rounded part of the rake firmly fixed in both hands, stands with his face to the bow of the canoe, the teeth pointing sternwards. He then sweeps it through the glittering mass of fish, using all his force, and brings it to the surface teeth upwards, usually with a fish impaled, sometimes with three or four upon one tooth. The rake being brought into the canoe, a sharp rap on the back of it knocks the fish off, and then another sweep yields a similar catch.

It is wonderful to see how rapidly an Indian will fill his canoe by this rude method of fishing. The dusky forms of the savages bend over the canoes, their brawny arms sweep their toothed sickles through the shoals, stroke follows stroke in swift succession, and steadily the canoes fill with their harvest of ‘living silver.’ When they have heaped as much as this frail craft will safely carry, they paddle ashore, drag the boats up on the shelving beach, overturn them as the quickest way of discharging cargo, relaunch, and go back to rake up another load. This labour goes on until the moon has set behind the mountain-peaks and the fish disappear, for it is their habit rarely to come to the surface except in the night. The sport over, we glide under the dark rocks, haul up the canoe, and lie before the log-fire to sleep long and soundly.

The next labour is that of the squaws, who have to do the curing, drying, and oil-making. Seated in a circle, they are busy stringing the fish. They do not gut or in any way clean them, but simply pass long smooth sticks through their eyes, skewering on each stick as many as it will hold, and then lashing a smaller piece transversely across the ends, to prevent the fish from slipping off the skewer. This done, next follows the drying, which is generally achieved in the thick smoke at the top of the sheds, the sticks of fish being there hung up side by side. They soon dry, and acquire a flavour of wood-smoke, which helps also to preserve them. No salt is used by Indians in any of their systems of curing fish.

When dry, the candle-fish are carefully packed in large frails made from cedar-bark or rushes, much like those one buys for a penny at Billingsgate; then they are stowed away on high stages made of poles, like a rough scaffolding. This precaution is essential, for the Indian children and dogs have an amiable weakness for eatables; and as lock-and-key are unknown to the redskins, they take this way of baffling the appetites of the incorrigible pilferers. The bales are kept until required for winter. However hungry or however short of food an Indian family may be during summer-time, it seldom will break in upon the winter ‘cache.’

I have never seen any fish half as fat and as good for Arctic winter-food as these little candle-fish. It is next to impossible to broil or fry them, for they melt completely into oil. Some idea of their marvellous fatness may be gleaned from the fact, that the natives use them as lamps for lighting their lodges. The fish, when dried, has a piece of rush-pith, or a strip from the inner bark of the cypress-tree (Thuja gigantea), drawn through it, a long round needle made of hard wood being used for the purpose; it is then lighted, and burns steadily until consumed. I have read comfortably by its light; the candlestick, literally a stick for the candle, consists of a bit of wood split at one end, with the fish inserted in the cleft.

These ready-made sea-candles—little dips wanting only a wick that can be added in a minute—are easily transformed by heat and pressure into liquid. When the Indian drinks instead of burning them, he gets a fuel in the shape of oil, that keeps up the combustion within him, and which is burnt and consumed in the lungs just as it was by the wick, but only gives heat. It is by no mere chance that myriads of small fish, in obedience to a wondrous instinct, annually visit the northern seas, containing within themselves all the elements necessary for supplying light, heat, and life to the poor savage, who, but for this, must perish in the bitter cold of the long dreary winter.

As soon as the Indians have stored away the full supply of food for the winter, all the fish subsequently taken are converted into oil. If we stroll down to the lodges near the beach, we shall see for ourselves how they manage it. The fish reserved for oil-making have been piled in heaps until partially decomposed; five or six fires are blazing away, and in each fire are a number of large round pebbles, to be made very hot. By each fire are four large square boxes, made from the trunk of the pine-tree. A squaw carefully piles in each box a layer of fish about three-deep, and covers them with cold water. She then puts five or six of the hot stones upon the layers of fish, and when the steam has cleared away, carefully lays small pieces of wood over the stones; then more fish, more water, more stones, more layers of wood, and so on, until the box is filled. The oil-maker now takes all the liquid from this box, and uses it over again instead of water in filling another box, and skims the oil off as it floats on the surface.

A vast quantity of oil is thus obtained; often as much as seven hundredweight will be made by one small tribe. The refuse fish are not yet done with, more oil being extractible from them. Built against the pine-tree is a small stage, made of poles, very like a monster gridiron. The refuse of the boxes, having been sewn up in porous mats, is placed on the stage, to be rolled and pressed by the arms and chests of Indian women; and the oil thus squeezed out is collected in a box placed underneath.

Not only has Nature, ever bountiful, sent an abundance of oil to the redskin, but she actually provides ready-made bottles to store it away in. The great seawrack, that grows to an immense size in these northern seas, and forms submarine forests, has a hollow stalk, expanded into a complete flask at the root-end. Cut into lengths of about three feet, these hollow stalks, with the bulb at the end, are collected and kept wet until required for use. As the oil is obtained, it is stored away in these natural quart-bottles, or rather larger bottles, for some of them hold three pints.

Some fifty years ago, vast shoals of eulachon used regularly to enter the Columbia; but the silent stroke of the Indian paddle has now given place to the splashing wheels of great steamers, and the Indian and the candle-fish have vanished together. From the same causes the eulachon has also disappeared from Puget’s Sound, and is now seldom caught south of latitude 50° N.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ROUND-FISH, HERRINGS, AND VIVIPAROUS FISH.

The Round-fish (Coregonus quadrilateralis).—Sp. Ch.: Colour, yellowish-brown, paler on the sides and belly than on the back; scales bright and glittering, each edged with a narrow border of dark-grey; cheeks, fins, and tail, a deeper tint of the same colour as that on the back; head one-sixth of the length (without the caudal); mouth very small, under-jaw shorter than the upper—no teeth perceptible.

This fish has a very wide geographical range, being found as far north (according to Sir J. Richardson) as the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers, east of the Rocky Mountains, and latitude 49° N. the western side; how much farther they range north of 49° I had no opportunity of judging.

This handsome and delicious fish, one of the Salmonidæ, is most valuable as an article of food to the Indians, west of the Rocky Mountains, the White-fish (Coregonus albus), or ‘Attihawmeg’ (which means ‘reindeer of the sea’), being of like importance to those residing east of the mountains. There the Indians frequently have to subsist entirely on white-fish, and, at many of the fur-trading stations, the traders get very little else to eat during nine months of the twelve.

‘In one small lake (Lake St. Ann’s), near Fort Edmonton, forty thousand white-fish were taken, of an average weight of three to four pounds, in the course of three weeks.’ (Palliser’s Exp.)

Two modes are adopted for preserving them—one that of sun-drying, the other by freezing, in which state they may be kept perfectly sweet and free from taint for the whole winter.

The Round-fish is seldom taken over two pounds in weight, and prior to spawning they are loaded with fat, which on the shoulders almost amounts to a hump, but becomes thin, watery, and insipid, after the all-important duty of providing for their offspring is accomplished. I am not quite sure when they return to the sea, as nothing is seen of them after the ice sets in, towards the end of November, until their arrival on the following year. The ova are deposited in much the same way as that of other Salmonidæ: a hollow made in the gravel contains the eggs and milt, which are covered over and abandoned—the young fish, on its emergence from the egg, taking care of itself as best it can.

One may journey a long way to witness a prettier or more picturesque sight than Round-fish harvesting on the Sumass prairie: the prairie bright and lovely; the grass fresh, green, and waving lazily; various wild flowers, peeping coyly out from their cosy hiding-places, seem making the most of the summer; a fresh, joyous hilarity everywhere, pervading even the Indians, whose lodges in great numbers lie scattered about. From the edges of the pine-forest, where the little streams came out from the dark shadow into the sunshine, up to the lake, the prairie was like a fair. Indians, old and young; chiefs, braves, squaws, children, and slaves; were alike busy in capturing the round-fish, that were swarming up the streams in thousands: so thick were they that baits and traps were thrown aside, and hands, baskets, little nets, and wooden bowls did the work; it was only requisite to stand in the stream and bale out the fish. Thousands were drying, thousands had been eaten, and as many more were wasting and decomposing on the bank. Supposing every fish escaping the Indians, otters, and the various enemies that it meets with in ascending the rivers, succeeded in depositing its ova, where or how they find room to spawn, or what becomes of the offspring, is more than I know.

Round-fish are cured by splitting and sun-drying, precisely in the same manner as salmon. I have had very good sport angling for round-fish, by using a rough gaudy fly. They rise readily, and struggle obstinately, when hooked, but soon give up; turning on their side, they permit themselves to be dragged upon the bank without attempting a flap of resistance.

Some of these fish remain permanently, or at any rate for some time, in fresh-water. I have often taken them in the Na-hoil-a-pit-ka river, to get into which they must have leaped the Kettle Falls during a high flood, being quite 800 miles from the sea; and as they are caught in the spring, I think it fair to conclude they do not invariably return to the sea after spawning.

Herrings.—The Vancouver Island Herring (Malletta cœrulia, Grd.).—Sp. Ch.: Head, about one-fifth of the total length of the body, slender, its shape in profile somewhat fusiform; back, bright steel-blue colour, shading away on the sides to brilliant silvery-white; fins, yellow-white, but uniform in colour; posterior extremity of maxillary bone extending to a vertical line drawn through the middle of the orbit; eye, subcircular, large; colour, copper-red in the freshly-caught fish; anterior margin of the dorsal fin, nearer the extremity of the snout than the insertion of the caudal. The average length is somewhat about ten inches. Indian name along the coast, Stole; Skadget Indian, Lo-see.

There are three distinct herring arrivals, one beginning in February and March; these fish are small, and somewhat lean. About the beginning of April the run commences; these are finer, full of spawn, and in high condition: in June and July, and extending through the summer, small shoals occasionally make their appearance, but never as fine as the April fish.

Toward the middle of April herring legions commence arriving from seaward in real earnest; brigade follows brigade in rapid succession, until every bay, harbour, inlet, estuary, and lagoon is literally alive with them. Close in their rear, as camp-followers hang on the skirts of an army, come shoals of dogfish, salmon, and fish-eating sea-birds.

I have often seen a shoal of herrings, when hotly pursued by the dogfish, dash into a little rock-bound nook, the water lashed into white spray by a thousand tails and fins, plied with all the power and energy the poor struggling fish could exert to escape the dreaded foe. A wall of rocks, right and left, ahead the shelving shingle—on they go, and hundreds lie high-and-dry, panting on the pebbles. It is just as well perhaps to die there, as to be torn, bitten, and eaten by the piratical cannibals that are waging fearful havoc on the imprisoned shoal. The dogfish wound ten times as many as they eat, and, having satiated and gorged their greedy stomachs, swim lazily away, leaving the dead, dying, and disabled to the tender mercies of the sea-birds watching the battle, ever ready to pounce upon the unprotected, and end its miseries.

Garnering the herring-crop is the Coast Indian’s best ‘sea-harvest;’ lodges spring up like mushrooms along the edges of the bays and harbours; large fleets of canoes dot the water in every direction, their swarthy crews continually loading them with glittering fish; paddling ashore, they hand the cargo to the female part of the community, and then start again for a similar freight.

Indians have various plans for catching herrings. Immense numbers are taken with small hand-nets, literally dipping them out of the water into the canoes; they also employ the ‘rake,’ already described as used for taking candle-fish. One savage, sitting in the stern of his canoe, paddles along, keeping in the herring shoal; another, having the rounded part of the rake firmly fixed in both hands, sweeps it through the crowded fish, from before aft, using all his force: generally speaking, every tooth has a herring impaled on it, sometimes three or four. It is astonishing how rapidly an Indian will fill his canoe with herrings, using this rude and primitive contrivance.

A wholesale system of capture is practised in Puget’s Sound, Point Discovery, and Port Townsend, where large mud-flats run out for long distances into the sea, which are left quite dry at low-tide. Across these flats Indians make long dams of latticework, having here and there openings like our salmon-traps, allowing herrings to pass easily in, but preventing their return. Shoal after shoal pass through these ‘gates,’ but are destined never to get back to their briny home. It is not at all uncommon to take from two to three tons of fish at one tide, by this simple but ingenious method.

When the tide is well out, and the flats clear of water, the Indians bring down immense quantities of fir-branches, and stick them in the mud, lay them on the ground, and, in all sorts of ways, distribute them over the flats, within the weir-dam. On these branches the herring-spawn gets entangled; when covered with spawn the branches are carried to the lodges, and the fish-eggs dried in the sun. Thus dried, and brushed into baskets, it is in appearance very much like coarse brown sand; it is then stored away, and when eaten mixed with fish-oil is esteemed by the Indians as the very perfection of feeding. This spawn is to Indians what caviare is to Russians; but as I do not like either, it may be I am not an authority on its merits as a table dainty.

All herrings taken in the weirs are not eaten; the Indians dry or otherwise preserve them, but the great use to which they appropriate them is to extract the oil. This is a grand process, and carried on entirely by squaws. It would be a great blessing, and save much annoyance, if you could only leave your nose at home, or at some distance away, during your visit to an Indian village in herring-time, or whilst oil-making. The entire atmosphere appears saturated with the odour of decomposing fish, rancid oil, Indians, and dogs—a perfume the potency of which you only realise by having a thorough good sniff. Then, if you ever forget it, or wish to indulge your olfactory organ again, your tastes and mine, gentle reader, must widely differ. The oil is extracted and stored away (as described in a previous chapter) in native bottles.

I have no hesitation in stating my conviction that herring-fisheries established east and west of Vancouver Island, or at different points along the mainland coast, in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, or amidst the islands in the Gulf of Georgia, would turn out most remunerative speculations. It is true that herring-fishing has been tried, but only on the most limited scale. To make it pay; for that, after all, is the primary consideration; capital must be employed, and skilled hands to manage the drying, curing, and packing. Salt can be obtained in any quantities; wood in abundance, to make casks, build houses, boats, or ships; herrings within millions, requiring neither risk nor skill to catch. The rapidly-growing colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia offer ready markets for home consumption; China, Japan, the Sandwich Islands, and the entire coast southward from San Francisco to Mexico, afford facilities for disposing of almost any quantity of preserved fish. Those who undertake herring-fishing in North-western waters on a large scale, judiciously applying capital, skilled labour, and good management, will reap an ample harvest, and become the real ‘Herring Kings’ of the far North-west.

Viviparous Fish.—We are so accustomed to associate the production of young fishes with eggs and milt, familiar to all as hard and soft roe in the cured herring, that it is difficult to believe in the existence of a fish bringing forth live young, just as do dogs, cats, rats, and mice—only with this difference, that, in the case of the fish, the young are perfect in every detail, when launched into the water, as the parent, and swim away self-dependent, to feed or be fed on, as good or ill-luck befals the little wanderer. The woodcut represents the female fish with the young in situ, together with others scattered round her, having fallen out when the walls of the abdomen were dissected open: the drawing was made from a female fish I brought from Vancouver Island, and now exhibiting in the Fish Room of the British Museum.

At San Francisco, as early as April, I saw large numbers of viviparous fish in the market for sale; but then, it is an open question whether these fish really arrive at an earlier period of the year in the Bay of San Francisco than at Vancouver Island. I think not. That they are taken earlier in the year is simply due to the fact, that the fishermen at San Francisco have better nets and fish in deeper water, than the Indians, and consequently take the fish earlier. The habit of the fish is clearly to come into shallow water when the period arrives for producing its live young; and from the fact that some of these fish are occasionally taken at all periods of the year, I am induced to believe that they do not in reality migrate, but only retire into deeper water along the coast, there to remain during the winter months, reappearing in the shallow bays and estuaries in June and July, or perhaps earlier, for reproductive purposes; here they remain until September, and then entirely disappear.

THE VIVIPAROUS-FISH AND ITS YOUNG.

They swim close to the surface in immense shoals, and numbers are very craftily taken by the Indians, who literally frighten the fish into their canoes. At low-tide, when a shoal of fish is in the bay, or up one of those large inlets that intersect the coast-line, the savages get the fish between the bank (or the rocks, as it may be) and the canoe, and then paddle with all their might and main among the terror-stricken fish, lashing the sea with their paddles, and uttering the most fiendish yells. Out leap the fish from the water, in their panic to escape this (to their affrighted senses) terrible monster; and if not ‘out of the fryingpan into the fire,’ it is out of the sea into the canoes—which in the long run I take to be pretty much the same thing.

It appears to be a singular trait in the character of viviparous fish, that of leaping high out of the water on the slightest alarm. I have often seen them jump into my boat when rowing through a shoal, which is certainly most accommodating. The Indians also spear them: they use a long slender haft with four barbed points, arranged in a circle, but bent so as to make them stand at a considerable distance from each other. With this spear they strike into a shoal of fish, and generally impale three or four; many are caught with hooks, but they bite shily, the only baits I have seen taken being salmon-roe nearly putrid, or bits of crab.

Just prior to my leaving Vancouver Island, numbers were netted by some Italian fishermen who had a seine. They found a ready sale for them in the market, but as a table-dainty they are scarcely worth eating; the flesh is insipid, watery, and flabby, and I am convinced that no system of cooking or culinary skill would ever convert it into a palatable fish.

The geographical range of viviparous fish, as far as I have any opportunity of judging, is from the Bay of San Francisco to Sitka. It may perhaps (and I have but little doubt that it does) extend much farther south along the Mexican coast; but this I can only surmise, never having seen them beyond the limits above stated. It frequents all the bays and harbours on the east and west sides of Vancouver Island, and is equally abundant in the Gulf of Georgia and the Straits of Juan de Fuca; making its appearance about the same period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, in the various inlets on the Oregon coast, from Cape Flattery to the Bay of San Francisco. It will be just as well perhaps, before I go into the subject of its specific characters and singular reproductive organs, I should mention how I first stumbled upon the fact of its being viviparous.

Soon after I arrived at Vancouver Island, I at once set to work to investigate, as far as it lay in my power, the habits and periods of migration of the different species of fish periodically visiting the North-west coast. The sole means then at my disposal to obtain fish for examination, or as specimens to send home, was to employ Indians or catch them myself; so it happened, some of these fish were first brought me by Indians. Cutting one down the side (the plan I usually adopt to skin a fish, keeping the opposite side untouched), to my intense surprise, out tumbled a lot of little fish! My wildest dreams had never led me to suppose a fish I then thought was a bream, or one of the perch family, could be viviparous. I at once most hastily arrived at the conclusion that the greedy gourmand had eaten them. Dropping my knife, I sat in a most bewildered state looking at the fish.

The first ray of light that shone in to illumine my mystification seemed to spring from the fact, that each little fish was the model, counterpart, and facsimile of the larger, and in shape, size, and colour were exactly alike: from the position too they occupied in the abdomen of the larger fish, I was led at once to see the error of my first assumption, that they had been swallowed. Carefully dissecting back the walls of the abdomen, I discovered a delicate membranous bag or sac having an attachment to the upper or dorsal region, and doubled upon itself into numerous folds or plaits, and between each of these folds was neatly packed away a little fish; the bag was of a bluish-white colour, and contained fourteen fish. I had no longer any doubt that the fish was viviparous, and that it was a true and normal case of ovarian gestation. So much for my first discovery; the details of my subsequent examinations I shall again have occasion to refer to.

It happened most curiously that a Mr. Jackson (I believe a government officer of the United States) was, about this same period, amusing himself by fishing at Salsalita, and caught two viviparous fish, a male and a female. On cutting open the female, to obtain a piece of the belly for bait, he, like myself, was astonished at seeing a whole bevy of tiny fish come scrambling out, and at first imagined, as I did, that they had been swallowed. He immediately wrote a letter to Professor Agassiz, sending the mutilated fish, having previously satisfied himself that they had not been devoured, and stating at length his singular discovery. The professor was astonished, and disbelieved the possibility of the fish being viviparous, imagining some error had crept into the statement sent him by Mr. Jackson; but other fish in a similar state were subsequently obtained by Mr. Carey, and forwarded to the learned professor. The fact was then most undeniably established, that this and many other species were strictly viviparous.

I have spoken of this at some length, because it is a curious coincidence that the same fact should have been discovered by two men a long distance apart, about the same date, and by both in the same way,—by sheer accident.

Now we come to a ticklish question: how are the young fish vitalised in the abdomen of the mother? In this case I shall adopt what I conceive to be the most straightforward course, which is candidly to give my own thoughts, and solicit from abler, older, and better physiologists their opinions or theories—for I sincerely think this is a question well worth careful investigation. I believe the ova, after impregnation, at first goes through the same transformations in the ovarium as it would do, supposing it to have been spawned and fecundated in the ordinary spawning-bed, but only up to a certain point; then, I think, the membrane enfolding the ova, that have by this time assumed a fishlike type, takes on the character and functions of a placental membrane, and the young fish are supplied by an umbilical cord, just as in the case of a fœtal mammal. But a third change takes place. There can be no doubt that the young fish I cut out, and that swam away, had breathed before they were freed from the mother; hence I am led to think that, a short time prior to the birth of the young, sea-water has access to this marsupial sac, washes over the infant fish, the gills assume their normal action, and the regular systemic circle is established. Maturity attained, the umbilical attachment snaps, and the little fish, perfect in every detail of its organisation, is launched into the deep, to brave its many perils, and shift for itself. The strong transverse muscles attached to the powerful sphincter (constituting the genital opening acting from the abdominal walls), I imagine, are in some way concerned in admitting the sea-water, and it appears to me a contrivance admirably adapted to effect such a purpose; but how impregnation takes place, I may at once honestly confess—I do not know.

The male is much like the female, but more slim, and the milt just like that of other fish. I can only conjecture that fecundation is accomplished through the medium of the sea-water, admitted by the curiously-contrived floodgate of the female, carrying in the milt-germs, and washing them over the ova.

The actual period of utero-gestation I am by no means sure about, but I am inclined to think they breed twice in the year. It is worthy of remark that the young mature fish are very large, when compared with the size of the mother. In a female fish eleven inches in length, the young were three inches long—the adult fish four-and-a-half inches high, the young an inch.

The only instance I can find recorded of a viviparous fish bearing any analogy to the Embiotocidæ is the viviparous blenny (Zoarces viviparus, Cuv.). Of course I exclude the sharks and rays. Of the viviparous blenny little or nothing appears to me to be known. On reference to Pennant’s ‘British Zoology,’ all he says is, that it was discovered by Schonevelde, and that Sir Robert Sibbald afterwards found it on the Scotch coast, and it was mentioned by Linnæus in his account of the Swedish Museum.

I quote the following paragraph verbatim from Pennant’s ‘British Zoology.’ Speaking of the blenny, he goes on to say: ‘It is viviparous, bringing forth two or three hundred young at a time. Its season of parturition is a little after the depth of winter; before midsummer it quits the bays and shores, and retires into the deep, where it is commonly taken. It comes into the mouth of the River Esk at Whitby, Yorkshire, where it is frequently taken from off the bridge.’

In Cuvier’s ‘Animal Kingdom’ (vol. i. ‘Fish’), all I can glean is that the blenny is viviparous. Yarrel, in his ‘British Fishes,’ speaks of a Mr. Low, who put a number of the small fishes (the young of the blenny) in a tumbler of sea-water, in which they increased in size, but eventually died from the want of fresh-water. Again, he quotes a Mr. Neil, who saw in the Edinburgh market, in 1807, several dozens of young fish escape alive from the female. ‘The arrangement of the perfectly-formed young in the fœtal sac of the gravid female is very remarkable.’

It is quite clear from the above quotations that there is an analogy, if not a close one, between the reproductive organs of the blenny and those of the viviparous fish from the North-west seas; for ‘the fœtal sac of the gravid female’ evidently means that there is a kind of placental sac, in which the young are contained; but it leaves us quite as much in the dark as ever as to how fœtal life is supported. As the ova deposited in the usual way (when fecundated) contains all that is requisite for the development of the embryo, it is just possible that the same process goes on in the womb of the female viviparous fish, and that the fœtal sac is only a wrapper, formed by the widened end of the ovary. But still I maintain that it fulfils a far more important duty.

I fear I have been rather prolix in the foregoing descriptions, but I must plead the novelty and importance of the subject as my excuse. The most beautiful of all the species of these fish is the sapphire perch (so called by the traders), very plentiful in Puget’s Sound. Eighteen exquisitely beautiful mazarine-blue lines or stripes mark its entire length from head to tail; and above and below this line are a number of spots of most dazzling blue, arranged in a crescent shape, about the eyes and gill-covers. Between these spots the colour changes, as it does in the dolphin, throwing off a kind of phosphorescent light of varying shades of gold, purple, and green—the back bright-blue but darker than the stripes; the belly white, marked by golden-yellow streaks.

But now for the most important feature in the history of these fish—that of bringing into the world their young alive, self-dependent, and self-supporting, as perfect in their minutest organisation as the parent-fish that gives them birth. The generative apparatus of the female fish when in a gravid state may be defined as a large bag or sac. Ramifying over its surface may be seen a most complicated and strangely beautiful vascular arrangement—a network of vessels, the use of which is clearly to convey the lifegiving fluid to the infant fish, and carry it back again, after having served its destined purpose, to be revivified for future use. The way this sac is, as it were, folded, and the different compartments made for the accommodation of the embryonic fish, is most singular, and very difficult to describe clearly.

The best illustration I can think of is an orange. You must imagine the orange divided into its regular number of little wedge-shaped pieces, and each piece to represent a fish; that the rind of the orange is a delicate membrane, having a globular shape, and easily compressed or folded. You now desire to fit the pieces together again in the original orange-shape, but you must begin on the outside of the globular membrane, pressing in with each section a fold of membrane (remember that each represents a fish); when each piece is in its place, you will still have the sac in its rounded form, but the rind or membrane has been folded in with the different pieces. If I have made myself understood, it will be seen that there must be a double fold of membrane between each portion of orange. This is exactly the way the fish are packed in this novel placental sac. If it were practicable to remove each fish from its space, and the sac retain its normal shape, there would be twelve or fourteen openings (depending upon the number of young fish), the wall of each division being a double fold of membrane—the double edges wrapping or, as it were, folding over the fish. Now make a hole in the end of this folded bag, and blow it full of air, and you get at once the globe-shaped membranous sac I have likened to an orange.

The fish are always arranged to economise space: when the head of a young fish points to the head of its mother, the next to it is reversed, and looks towards the tail. I am quite convinced that the young fish are packed away by doubling or folding the sac in the way I have endeavoured to describe. I have again and again dissected out this ovarian bag, filled with fish in various stages of development, and floating it in saltwater, have, with a fine-pointed needle, opened the edges of the double membranous divisions that enwrap the fish—(the amount of overlapping is of course greater when the fish is in its earlier stages of development). On separating the edges of the sac, out the little fishes pop. I have obtained them in all stages of their growth,—but sometimes (and this not once or twice, but often) have set free the young fish from its dead mother. Thus prematurely cut loose from its membranous prison, the infant captive, revelling in its newly-acquired liberty, swam about in the saltwater, active, brisk, and jolly, in every particular, as well able to take care and provide for itself as its parent. The female external genital opening is situated a little posterior to the anal opening; the orifice is at the apex, and in the centre of a fleshy conical protuberance, which is in fact, a powerful sphincter muscle, moored, as it were, in its place by two strong muscular ropes, acting from and attached to the walls of the abdomen.

Dr. Günther, in the British Museum Catalogue of Fishes, uses the generic title of Ditrema, which I have adopted. The first glance at the fish, as it lies on the table or on the beach, would lead you to pronounce it a Pomotis (belonging to the family Percidæ): the northern Pomotis (P. vulgaris) is a good example, and very common along the shores of Lake Huron, where I have often caught them. Or, on the other hand, you would be perhaps tempted to call it a Sparus; the gilthead (S. auratus) may be taken as a type suggesting the resemblance. This fish is taken in large numbers in the Mediterranean, and occasionally on the French and Spanish coasts. But a close investigation into the more marked generic and specific characters, apart from their reproducing organs, at once clearly shows they belong neither to the one family nor the other; they differ much more from the percoids than from the sparoids, but the cycloid scales remove them at once from the sparoids, in which the scales present a very uniform etenoid type.

The illustration represents a female Ditrema argenteum, Brit. Mus. Cat., ‘Fishes.’

Amphistichus argenteus, Agass., Am. Journ., 1854; Soc. Nat. Hist., 1861, p. 131; Pacif. R. R. Exp., ‘Fishes,’ p. 201.

Mytilophagus fasciatus (Gibbons).

Amphistichus similes (Grd.).

The middle dorsal spines are either nearly as long as, or somewhat longer, than the posterior; scales on the cheek, in five series, somewhat irregularly disposed. The height of the body is rather more than a fourth of the total length (without caudal); jaws equal anteriorly; the maxillary extends to below the centre of the orbit; lips thin, the fold of the lower interrupted in the middle. For description of species, vide Appendix, vol. ii.

CHAPTER V.

STICKLEBACKS AND THEIR NESTS—THE BULLHEAD—THE ROCK-COD—THE CHIRUS—FLATFISH.

The genus Cottoidæ, (fish having mailed cheeks) has a great many representatives, common on Vancouver Island and the British Columbian coasts. The least of the family, the stickleback, is so singularly different from most other fishes in its habits, as to merit the first consideration.

In the months of July and August it would be difficult to find a stream, large or small, swift or slow, lake, pool, or muddy estuary, east and west of the Cascade Mountains, that has not in it immense shoals of that most irritable and pugnacious little fish the stickleback, ever ready on the slightest provocation to engage in a battle. Let friend or foe but rub against his royal person, or come nearer his private subaqueous garden than he deems consistent with safety or good behaviour, in a moment the spines are erected like spear-points, the tiny eyes glow with fury, the colours decking his scaly armour intensify, and flash with a kind of phosphorescent brightness, until the diminutive gladiator looks the impersonation of rage and fury; but as we cultivate his acquaintance, and gain a better knowledge of his real character, we shall discover that his quarrelsome disposition is not so much attributable to a morose temper, and a love of fighting for fighting’s sake, as to a higher and more praiseworthy principle.

No amount of thinking would lead one to imagine that his pugnacity arises from intense parental affection: a love of offspring, scarcely having a parallel in the living world, prompting him to risk his life, and spend a great deal of his time in constantly-recurring paroxysms of fury and sanguinary conflicts, in which it often happens that one or more of the combatants gets ripped open or mortally stabbed with the formidable spines arming the back. Skill in stickleback battles appears to consist in rapidly diving under an adversary, then as suddenly rising, and driving the spines into his sides and stomach. The little furies swim round and round, their noses tightly jammed together; but the moment one gets his nose the least bit under that of his foe, then he plies his fins with all his might, and forcing himself beneath, does his best to drive in his spear, if the other be not quick enough to dart upwards and escape the thrust; thus squaring they fight round after round until the death or flight of one ends the combat.

I have often, when tired, lain down on the bank of a stream, beneath the friendly shade of some leafy tree, and gazing into its depths watched the sticklebacks either guarding their nests already built, or busy in their construction. The site is generally amongst the stems of aquatic plants, where the water always flows, but not too swiftly. He first begins by carrying small bits of green material, which he nips off the stalks, and tugs from out the bottom and sides of the banks; these he attaches by some glutinous material, that he clearly has the power of secreting, to the different stems destined as pillars for his building. During this operation he swims against the work already done, splashes about, and seems to test its durability and strength; rubs himself against the tiny kind of platform, scrapes the slimy mucus from his sides, to mix with and act as mortar for his vegetable bricks. Then he thrusts his nose into the sand at the bottom, and bringing a mouthful scatters it over the foundation; this is repeated until enough has been thrown on to weight the slender fabric down, and give it substance and stability. Then more twists, turns, and splashings, to test the firm adherence of all the materials that are intended to constitute the foundation of the house, that has yet to be erected on it. The nest or nursery, when completed, is a hollow, somewhat rounded, barrel-shaped structure, worked together much in the same way as the platform fastened to the water-plants; the whole firmly glued together by the viscous secretion scraped from off the body. The inside is made as smooth as possible, by a kind of plastering system; the little architect continually goes in, then turning round and round, works the mucus from his body on to the inner sides of the nest, where it hardens like a tough varnish. There are two apertures, smooth and symmetrical as the hole leading into a wren’s nest, and not unlike it.

All this laborious work is done entirely by the male fish, and when completed he goes a-wooing. Watch him as he swims towards a group of the fair sex, enjoying themselves amidst the water-plants, arrayed in his best and brightest livery, all smiles and amiability: steadily, and in the most approved style of stickleback love-making, this young and wealthy bachelor approaches the object of his affections, most likely tells her all about his house and its comforts, hints delicately at his readiness and ability to defend her children against every enemy, vows unfailing fidelity, and, in lover-fashion, promises as much in a few minutes as would take a lifetime to fulfil. Of course she listens to his suit: personal beauty, indomitable courage, backed by the substantial recommendations of a house ready-built, and fitted for immediate occupation, are gifts not to be lightly regarded.

Throwing herself on her side, the captive lady shows her appreciation, and by sundry queer contortions declares herself his true and devoted spouse. Then the twain return to the nest, into which the female at once betakes herself, and therein deposits her eggs, emerging when the operation is completed by the opposite hole. During the time she is in the nest (about six minutes) the male swims round and round, butts and rubs his nose against it, and altogether appears to be in a state of defiant excitement. On the female leaving he immediately enters, deposits the milt on the eggs, taking his departure through the backdoor. So far, his conduct is strictly proper, but, I am afraid, morality in stickleback society is of rather a lax order. No sooner has this lady, his first love, taken her departure, than he at once seeks another, introduces her as he did the first, and so on wife after wife, until the nest is filled with eggs, layer upon layer—milt being carefully deposited betwixt each stratum of ova. As it is necessary there should be two holes, by which ingress and egress can be readily accomplished, so it is equally essential in another point of view. To fertilise fish-eggs, running water is the first necessity; and as the holes are invariably placed in the direction of the current, a steady stream of water is thus directed over them.

For six weeks (and sometimes a few days more) the papa keeps untiring sentry over his treasure, and a hard time he has of it too: enemies of all sorts, even the females of his own species, having a weakness for new-laid eggs, hover round his brimming nest, and battles are of hourly occurrence; for he defies them all, even to predatory water-beetles, that, despite their horny armour, often get a fatal lance-wound from the furious fish. Then he has to turn the eggs, and expose the under ones to the running water: and even when the progeny make their appearance, his domestic duties are far from ended, for it is said (although I have never seen him do it), ‘When one of the young fish shows any disposition to wander from the nest, he darts after it, seizes it in his mouth, and brings it back again.’

There are three species that come into the fresh-waters of British Columbia, to nest and to hatch their young:—

Gasterosteus serratus, the Saw-finned Stickleback (Ayres, Proc. Cal. Acad. Nat. Sc. 1855 p. 47).—Sp. Ch.: Body entirely plated; peduncle of tail keeled; the three dorsal spines conspicuously serrated on their edges; anterior fin a little in advance of the base of the pectoral; insertion of ventrals in advance of the second dorsal spine—their own spines serrated on both edges; posterior margin of caudal somewhat hollowed. The colour of the freshly-caught fish is greyish-olive along the dorsal line; but on the sides, particularly in the male, it shades away into an iridescence, like that seen on mother-o’pearl, again changing to pure silvery-white on the abdomen.

Gasterosteus Pugettii, the Puget Sound Stickleback (Grd., Proc. Acad., Nat. Sc. Phil., viii. 1856).—Sp. Ch.: Body only in part plated, peduncle of tail not keeled; the three dorsal spines without serrations; the anterior one inserted immediately behind the base of the pectorals; ventrals inserted anterior to the second dorsal spine. The colour is very much like that of G. serratus, but more decidedly purplish on the sides the eyes bright red in both species, when fresh from the water.

Gasterosteus concinnus, the Tiny Stickleback (Rich., F. B. A., p. 57, vol. iii.).—Sp. Ch.: Head one-fourth of the total length, mouth small, and teeth but feebly developed; dorsal spines nine, seventh and eighth smaller than the preceding ones, the ninth longer than any of the others. The abdomen is protected by a bony cuirass, and the ventrals represented by two spines. All the spines are moveable, and destitute of serrations. Colour of the back a bright sea-green, sides purplish-pink, shading away to a silvery-white on the belly the entire body speckled with minute black spots.

This handsome little stickleback, though smaller in size than his brethren, is vastly more abundant. Sir J. Richardson speaks of it ‘as being common in the Saskatchawan, ranging as far north as the 65th parallel.’ So abundant are they in the lakes and pools about Cumberland House, east of the Rocky Mountains, that sledge-loads are dipped out with wooden bowls, and used for feeding the dogs. I have seen cartloads of these tiny fish in a single pool, left by the receding waters after the summer floods, on the Sumass prairie and banks of the Chilukweyuk river. As the water rapidly evaporated, the miserable captives huddled closer and closer together, starving with hunger and panting for air, but without the remotest chance of escape. The sticklebacks die and decompose, or yield banquets to the bears, weasels, birds, and beetles; the pool dries, and in a few weeks not a trace or record remains of the dead host of fishes. In the smaller streams, a bowl dipped into the water where the sticklebacks were thickest, could be readily filled with fish.

Sticklebacks are the most voracious little gourmands imaginable, devourers of everything, and cannibals into the bargain; tearing their wounded comrades into fragments, they greedily swallow them. I have often taken this species (G. concinnus) in Esquimalt Harbour, where they are very plentiful during the winter months. The natives of Kamtschatka make use of a stickleback (G. obolarius), which they obtain in great quantities, not only as food for the sledge-dogs, but for themselves also, by making them into a kind of soup. West of the Rocky Mountains I have never seen the Indians use them as an article of diet, not from any dislike to the fish, but simply because there are larger and better fishes quite as abundant, and as easily procurable. Whether there are any species in the North-west, strictly marine, building their nests in the sea and never entering fresh-water, I am unable to say.

The Fifteen-spine Stickleback (Gasterosteus spinachia) is along our own coasts strictly a tenant of the ocean, and makes a nest of seaweeds glued together with an adhesive mucus, in the same way as the nests of our little friends are cemented, that seek as their nursery the clear cold streams of British Columbia, Oregon, and Vancouver Island.

The Bullhead.—The stickleback has a near relative, with a name nearly as ugly as the owner, ‘Bullhead’ being certainly not suggestive of beauty! With such a name, we are the less disappointed to find the entire family of our friends ill-favoured, prickly, hard-skinned, and as uncomfortable to handle as to look at. Plates of scaly armour cover the head, from which sprout sharp spines, like a crop of horns; between these are tubercles that have the appearance of being rivets. The body looks like an appendage, tapering away to a mere nothing at the tail. There are many species frequenting the lakes and rivers of British Columbia, during the summer months, for the purpose of spawning. On their return to the sea, swarms of young bullheads, of various species, regularly follow the ebb and flow of the tide; and in rough weather every breaker, as it rushes up the shelving shingle, carries a freight of tiny fish, that are left struggling amid the pebbles in thousands, to be dragged back and floated out again by the succeeding wave, or to find a last home in the stomachs of the sea-birds.

The bullhead does not actually build a nest, like the stickleback, but makes an egg-house, on the bottom of some slowly-running stream. The male usually selects a hollow under a boulder, or a space betwixt two stones, and shoves out the lesser pebbles and gravel, to form a pit. This accomplished, several females are in turn induced to deposit their roe, having done which they are driven off by the male, who supplies the milt, then shovels the sand and pebbles, with his huge horny head, over the treasure, until it is completely covered: more females, more eggs and milt, more shovelling, until the affair is completed to the bullhead papa’s satisfaction. Now stand clear all thievish prowlers! Let anything of reasonable size venture near—then head down, and plying all his propellers to their utmost power, he charges at them, driving his horns in to the very hilt; free again, seizes hold with his mouth—thus biting and stabbing, until he kills or routs his foe. I am not able to say exactly how long the eggs are incubating, but, as nearly as I could observe them (in the Sumass and Chilukweyuk streams), in about eight weeks the young escape from the egg-house. The females were invariably driven away, with the same ferocity as other unwelcome guests, from the depositing the spawn to the exit of the infant fish: then old and young disappear into deeper water, and are seldom seen again.

During the winter, I constantly obtained the bullheads from out the seine-nets used in Esquimalt Harbour to procure fish for the supply of Victoria market. Rejected by the fishermen, the Indians greedily gathered up the despised fishes, broiled them over the lodge-fire empaled on a slender twig, then feasted right-royally on the grilled remains of the spiny martyrs.

The genus Centridermichthys is characterised as follows:—Head more or less depressed, rounded anteriorly; head and body covered with soft and scaleless skin, more or less studded with prickles or granulations; teeth in the jaws, on the vomer and palatine bones.

Centridermichthys asper (Coltus asper, Rich. F. B. A. ‘Fishes,’ p. 295), the Prickly-skinned Bullhead.—Sp. Ch.: Gill-openings separated beneath, by an isthmus; three opercular spines; crown with very small warts, back of the body with very minute spines; colour light yellowish brown, thickly dotted with spots nearly black. The length of the adult fish is seldom over three-and-a-half inches.

These tiny bullheads are common in all the streams east and west of the Cascades. They are not fond of going very far from the sea, but leave the larger rivers soon after entering them, seeking the clear rivulets and shallow lakes. In the streams flowing through the Sumass and Chilukweyuk prairies, in those flowing into Puget’s Sound, and north of it on the mainland to Fort Simpson, and in all the streams draining Vancouver Island, the prickly-skinned bullhead can be easily found in July and August. Similar in habits, and frequenting the same localities as the preceding, are several species described in the Appendix.

The Rock Cod.—Belonging to the same family is the rock cod, as it is usually styled by the fishermen who provide the Victoria and San Francisco markets; one of the best and daintiest table-fish caught in the seas round Vancouver Island. It often attains a considerable size, and being in tolerable abundance, constitutes an article of some commercial value.

As numbers are taken all through the year, and as I never saw them in fresh-water, it is fair to assume they are strictly marine. Their appearance is not prepossessing, giving one the idea of being all head, fins, and bones, as they lie gasping on the shingle; an error of the eye only, as you discover when testing the substance and quality of a large one, smoking hot from the fish-kettle. Three species are commonly offered for sale in the markets, one of which is also taken in Japanese seas. They vary in size; I have often seen a rock cod thirty inches in length. Biting greedily at any bait, they are constantly caught by the Indians when trolling for salmon.

The one usually seen in the Victoria markets is Sebastes inermis (Cuv. and Val., p. 346; Faun. Japon., ‘Poiss.,’ p. 47, pl. 21, figs. 3, 4), the Weak-spined Rock Cod.—Sp. Ch.: The height of the body equals the length of the head; the upper surface of the head flat, with some depressed spines behind the orbit. The fourth and fifth dorsal spines are the largest, longer than those of the anal, and nearly half the length of the head. Colour, uniform brownish.

The Chirus.—On the fish-stalls in Victoria and San Francisco markets the visitor may generally see, lying by the side of the dingy, spiny rock cod, a handsome, shapely fish, about eighteen inches in length. Its sides, though somewhat rough, rival in beauty many a tropical flower: clad in scales, adorned with colours not only conspicuous for their brilliancy, but grouped and blended in a manner one sees only represented in the plumage of a bird, the wing of a butterfly, or the petals of an orchid, this ‘ocean swell’ is known to the ichthyologist as the Chirus—the Terpugh (a file) of the Russians—the Idyajuk of the Aleutian Islanders—the Tath-le-gest of the Vancouver Islanders.

Quite as delicious to the palate as pleasant to the eye, the chirus is altogether a most estimable fish. Its habit is to frequent rocky places, particularly where long ledges of rocks are left bare at low-water, and sheltered at the same time from the surge of the sea in rough weather. Here the chirus loves to disport his gaily-dressed person, amidst the gardens of sea plants: for in these gardens dwell jellyfish, tender little crustaceans, soft-bodied chitons, crisp shrimps, and juicy annalides—all dainty viands, on which this gay lounger delights to regale himself.

At low-tide, when strolling over the slippery rocks that everywhere gird the eastern side of Vancouver Island, in the larger rock-pools I was certain to see lots of these fish imprisoned, having lingered imprudently at their feasts. This indulgence constantly costs the idler his life: gulls, herons, shags also prowl over the rocks, well knowing what admirable preserves these aquariums are. Once spied out, it is of no avail to hide amidst the seaweeds, or cower under the shelving ledges draped with coralines. The large pincer-like beak follows, nips him across the back; a skilful jerk gets the head first—then down a lane he goes from which no chirus ever returns.

We might as reasonably attempt to describe, the flushing changing colours of the Aurora Borealis as seen in high latitudes, or the phosphorescence of a tropical sea, or the wing of the diamond-beetle, as to hope by word-painting to give the faintest conception of the colourings that adorn the chirus: red, blue, orange, and green are so mingled, that the only thing I can think of as a comparison is a floating flower-bed, and even then the gardener’s art, in grouping, is but a bungle contrasted with Nature’s painting!

There are three species of chirus common along the island and mainland coasts. The one usually sold is Chirus hexagrammus (Cuv., Regne An., ‘Poiss.,’ pl. 83), the Six-lined Chirus.—Sp. Ch.: A skinny tentacle over each orbit; palatine teeth none; two muciferous channels, between the lateral line and dorsal fin; scales ciliated.

Flatfish.—In all the muddy estuaries and on the sandy flats about Puget’s Sound, at the mouths of the Columbia and Fraser rivers, several species of flatfish are found in great abundance. These fish have always formed an important article of food to all the sea-fishing Indians, and, since the influx of white settlers, are caught for the supply of the Victoria and San Francisco markets.

Only the larger species are taken with hook and line, the smaller flounders being usually speared by the Indians. And a pleasant sight it is, too, to watch a little fleet of canoes, each one slowly paddled by a dusky squaw gliding along the sandy shallows, the spearman in the bow ‘prodding’ for the fish hidden in the mud and sand. The flounder, thus disturbed, scuds along the bottom, and stirs up the sand like a trail, marking its line of progress. The sharp-eyed savage notes the spot where the dirt-line ends, paddles up to it, dashes in the spear, and, quick as thought, transfers the ‘flat’ fish from its fancied hiding-place to the bottom of the canoe. Immense numbers are taken in this manner at every tide. The following are the species usually sold in the markets:—

Pleuronectes bilineates (Platessa bilineata, Ayres, in Proc. Calif. Acad., 1855, p. 40), the Two-lined Flatfish.—Sp. Ch.: The height of the body is a little less than one-half of the entire length, the length of the head nearly one-fourth; snout somewhat projecting, not continuous in direction with the descending profile of the nape; eyes on the right side large, their diameter being two-sevenths of the length of the head, separated by a strong prominent ridge, which is partly covered with scales; lower jaw prominent; a single even row of strong blunt teeth in each jaw, less developed on the coloured side than on the blind; scales very conspicuous, those on the head and on the tail ciliated; lateral line with a strong curve above the pectoral: a second series of pores commences above the eye, and follows the dorsal profile to the vertical, from the opercular angle, where it terminates—it communicates with the true lateral line by a branch; the dorsal fin rises over about the anterior third of the orbit, and terminates at a distance from the caudal equal to the breadth of the eye; anal spine prominent; pectoral fin half as long as the head. Colour, light greyish-brown, with lighter blotches. More abundant at San Francisco than at Vancouver Island and north of the Fraser.

Pleuronectes digrammus (Günther, Brit. Mus. Catalogue, ‘Fishes,’), the Two-lined Flounder (Nov. Spec.).—Sp. Ch.: The height of the body rather less than one-third of the entire length, the length of the head two-ninths, and that of the caudal two-thirteenths; snout with the lower jaw prominent, equal in length to the diameter of the eye, which is nearly one-fifth of that of the head; maxillary as long as the eye; the upper jaw with a series of twenty-eight small truncated teeth on the blind side, those of the other side being few in number and very small; eyes separated by a very narrow, naked, bony ridge; scales small but conspicuous; lateral line, with a very slight curve above the pectoral; a second series of pores commences above the eye, and follows the dorsal profile to the twenty-sixth dorsal ray, where it terminates; dorsal and anal rays quite smooth—the dorsal commences above the anterior third of the orbit, and terminates at a distance from the caudal nearly equal to the depth of the free portion of the tail; anal spine prominent—the longest dorsal rays are somewhat behind the middle of the fin, rather shorter than the pectoral, and half as long as the head; uniform brownish; length, eight inches. I obtained this new species of flounder in Mackenzie’s Arm, a tidal inlet continuous with Victoria Harbour.

Pleuronichthys guttulatus (Gerard, in Proc. Acad., Nat. Sc. Philadel., 1856, p. 137, and U. S. Pacif. R. R. Expd., ‘Fishes,’ p. 152).—Sp. Ch.: The height of the body is somewhat more than one-half of the total length (with the caudal), the length of the head one-fourth, and that of the caudal one-fifth. The interorbital space is exceedingly narrow, and raised ridgelike; snout very blunt and short; mouth small, with the jaws even. The dorsal commences above the anterior part of the orbit, and terminates at a short distance from the caudal; its longest rays are on and behind the middle of the fin. Scales, very small, cycloid. The lateral line is slightly arched above the pectoral; a similar series of pores runs from the upper eye, along the base of the dorsal fin, to about the middle of the length. There is a connecting branch between both lines, across the occipital region. Colour greyish, densely dotted with black and white spots. Common at Vancouver Island and San Francisco. For further description of species, vide Appendix, vol. ii.

CHAPTER VI.

HALIBUT FISHING—DOGFISH—A TRIP TO FORT RUPERT—RANSOMING A SLAVE—A PROMENADE WITH A REDSKIN—BAGGING A CHIEF’S HEAD—QUEEN CHARLOTTE’S ISLANDERS AT NANAIMO.

Halibut.—The Halibut, a giant amongst flat-fishes, is taken by the Indians on the western side of Vancouver Island; a veritable ground-feeder, frequenting deep-sea sandbanks, and devouring anything and everything that comes within reach of his terrible mouth. The halibut, at Vancouver Island, attains to an immense size, 300 lbs. being no unfrequent weight.

The Indians are most skilful in securing this leviathan of the deep, as I had an opportunity of seeing, when visiting the northern end of the island. Picture to yourselves an Indian village, built on a plateau overlooking an open roadstead; a crowd of Indians on the shingly beach, watching the departure of a large canoe, manned by four savages, awaiting my arrival. This being a special occasion, they were more elaborately painted than usual. A brief description of one will serve to portray the other three. Tailors are entirely unknown in the land of the redskin; a small piece of blanket or fur, tied round the waist, constitutes the court, evening, and morning costume of both chief and subject.

My crew were kilted with pieces of scarlet blanket. Imagine, if you can, a dark swarthy copper-coloured figure leaning on a canoe-paddle, his jet-black hair hanging down nearly to the middle of his back, the front hair being clipped close in a straight line across the forehead. Neither beard, whisker, nor moustache ever adorns the face of the redskin, the hair being tweezered out by squaws in early life, and thus destroyed. A line of vermilion extends from the centre of the forehead to the tip of the nose, and from this ‘trunk line’ others radiate over and under the eyes and across the cheeks. Between these red lines white and blue streaks alternately fill the interstices. A similar pattern ornaments chest, arms, and back, the frescoing being artistically arranged to give apparent width to the chest; the legs and feet are naked. A ‘fire-bag,’ made from the skin of the medicine-otter, elaborately decorated with beads, scarlet cloth, bells, and brass buttons, slung round the neck by a broad belt of wampum, completed the costume of my coxswain.

The canoe was what is commonly called a ‘dug-out,’ that is, made from a solid log of wood. Coiled round the sharp bow of the canoe, like a huge snake, was a strong line about sixty fathoms in length, made from the inner bark of the cypress, neatly twisted. Lying along each side, extending far beyond both bow and stern, were two light spear-hafts, about sixty feet long; whilst stowed away in the bow were a dozen shorter spears, one end being barbed, the other constructed to fit on the longer spear, but so contrived that the spearman can readily detach it by a skilful jerk. Tied lightly to the centre of each of the smaller spears was a bladder made from sealskin, blown full of air, the line attaching it being about three fathoms in length.

I had hardly completed my investigation of the canoe, its crew, and contents, when, to my intense astonishment, the four Indians lifted me, as they would a bale of fur, or a barrel of pork, and without a word deposited me in the bottom of the canoe, where I was enjoined to sit, much in the same position enforced on a culprit in the parish stocks. I may mention, incidentally, that a canoe is not half as enjoyable as poets and novelists, who are prone to draw imaginary sketches, would lead the uninitiated to believe. It would be impossible to trust oneself in a more uncomfortable, dangerous, damp, disagreeable kind of boat—generally designated a ‘fairy barque,’ that ‘rides, dances, glides, threads its silvery course over seas and lakes, or, arrow-like, shoots foaming rapids.’ All a miserable delusion and a myth! Getting in (unless lifted, as I was, bodily, like baggage) is to any but an Indian a dangerous and difficult process; the least preponderance of weight to either side, and out you tumble into the water to a certainty. Again, lowering oneself into the bottom is quite as bad, if not worse, requiring extreme care to keep an even balance, and a flexibility of back and limb seldom possessed by any save tumblers and tightrope-dancers. Down safely, then, as I have said, you are compelled to sit in a most painful position, and the least attempt to alter it generally results in a sudden heeling-over of the canoe, when you find yourself sitting in a foot of cold water.