became greatly modified by my experience. I thought, and I believe many do, that the instinct which prompts the salmon to run in from the sea, is to reach, by the shortest route, the place of birth; and that they make a straight wake from the ocean to the mouth of their native creeks; and that while impelled by this instinct, they refrain altogether from food. In all of this, I think that I was mistaken; and that the fish which begin to swarm in Sitka Harbor in May, and continue coming and going for nearly three months before any enter the stream, are simply visitors, which, on their way north, are driven in to seek shelter from the porpoises and other enemies.

That they feed at this time, I have plenty of evidence. We caught small ones, on hand-lines baited with venison. Numbers were taken trolling, using any ordinary spoon. I had with me pickerel, bass, and lake trout spoons, of brass and silvery surface. All were successful, the silvery ones the most so.

And I had many good strikes upon spectabilis or salmon trout, of six to eight inches, spun on a gang and trolled. The Indians in Chatham Strait catch a great many upon hooks baited with live herring; these are attached to short lines, which are fastened to duckshaped wooden buoys, and allowed to float away from the canoe. I have myself been present at the capture of a number in this manner.

The Greek Priest, and companies of the least poor of the Creoles, own seine boats, which go out daily; and

after every fair day's seining the sandy beach in front of Russian town presents a picturesque appearance, dotted as it is with heaps of from one to three tons of salmon, whose silvery sheen reflects the light of the bonfires, around which, knives in hand, squat all the old squaws and children, cleaning on shares. Nearly all of the fish taken by them are smoked for winter's use.

Every glacial stream in of salmon, alive and dead. One, which for want of a better, was given my name, and appears on the charts as Beardslee River, I will describe; for in it I saw, for the first time, that which had been described to me, but which I had doubted; a stream so crowded with fish that one could hardly wade it and not step on them; this and other as interesting sights fell to me that pleasant August day.

Alaska is, in its season, full

As we, in our little steamer, neared William Henry Bay, situated on the west side of Chatham Strait, and an indentation of Baranoff Island, we found ourselves in a pea-green sea, dotted here and there with the backs of garbosha salmon; the fish, which were of the few that had survived the crisis of reproduction, having drifted out of the bay, and with their huge humps projecting, were swimming aimlessly, and apparently blindly (for after anchoring, they would run against our boats, and directly into hands held out to catch them), in the brackish surface water; made so and given its peculiar color by the water of Beardslee River, which arising at the foot of a glacier, had been fed by rivulets from

others on its course to the sea, and through its lower specific gravity, rested upon the salt water. These sick salmon were so plentiful that I thought that a large per. centage had lived and escaped the danger, but upon landing at the mouth of the river, saw that I was mistaken. For several miles the river meanders through an alluvial flat, the moraine of receded glaciers. The moraine was covered with a thick growth of timothy and wild barley, some standing six feet in height; much more pressed flat by layers, three and four deep, of dead salmon, which had been left by the waters falling. Thousands of gulls and fish crows were feeding upon the eyes and entrails of these fish, and in the soft mud innumerable tracks of bears and other animals were interspersed with bodiless heads of salmon, showing that they, too, had attended the feast. I waded the river for over two miles, and the scene was always the same. That wade was one to be remembered. In advance of me generally, but checked at times by shoal water, there rushed a struggling and splashing mass of salmon, and when through the shoaling, or by turning a short corner, I got among them, progress was almost impossible; they were around me, under me, and once when, through stepping on one I fell, I fancy over me. All were headed up stream, and I presumed, ascending, until, while resting on a dry rock, I noticed that many, although headed up, were actually slowly drifting down stream.

In many pools that I passed, the gravel bottom was

hollowed out into great wallows, from which, as I approached, crowds of salmon would dart; and I could see that the bottom was thickly covered with eggs, and feasting on them were numbers of immense salmon trout.

I saw frequently the act of spawning; and I saw once, a greedy trout rush at a female salmon, seize the exuding ova, and tear it away, and I thought that perhaps in some such rushes, lay the explanation of the wounds which so frequently are found on the female salmon's belly after spawning.

At first, I thought there were two species of salmon in the creek; one unmistakably the hideous garbosha, the other a dark straight-backed fish; but upon examining quite a number of each variety which I had picked up, I found that all the hump-backed fish were males, and the others all females; that is, all that I examined; but as they were all spent fish, I could not be sure. I therefore shot quite a number of livelier ones, and found confirmation.

I saw one female that was just finishing spawning. She lay quiet, as though faint, for a couple of minutes, then began to topple slowly over on to her side, recovered herself, and then, as though suddenly startled from a deep sleep, darted forward, and thrust herself half of her length out of the water, upon a gravel bar, and continued to work her way until she was completely out of water, and there I left her to die.

A very large proportion of the fish were more or less bruised and discolored; and upon nearly all there ex

tended over the belly a fungoid growth resembling rough yellow blotting paper.

The size of the fish was quite uniform, ranging from two feet to thirty inches.

But that I had seen the living spent fish in the bay, I could have readily believed the truth of the impression of many, that the act of spawning terminates the life of the salmon of the Pacific coast.

One more point on the salmon, and I will leave them. Upon our first arrival, we all indulged very heartily upon them, and in two or three days, a new disease made its appearance among us. A number of us were seized with very severe gripes and cramps, and these lasted, in all cases, for several days, and in some for a much longer period, two of the men becoming so reduced that it was necessary to send them to hospital. The direct cause, our doctor ascertained, was the diet of salmon to which we had taken; and by regulating and reducing the consumption, the difficulties were checked.

In conclusion, I would say that I have made every effort that would naturally occur to a fisherman to take Alaska salmon with flies, of which I had good assortment, and never got a rise.

ALASKA TROUT.

I am indebted to Professor Tarleton H. Bean for a classification of the various trout, of which specimens had been duly bottled and labelled, during our stay in Alaska. I had fancied, from differences in the mark

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