I was not compelled to eat with George and Mary, for Mr. Barker had
kindly invited me to breakfast with him, and when I reached his store,
at the breakfast hour in the morning, I found a neat inviting-looking
table in the room back of the store, loaded with broiled ham, baked
potatoes, good bread and butter, a pot of steaming coffee, etc.; all of
which we enjoyed intensely. Mr. Barker informed me there was a cluster
of hot springs ten miles up the river, at the foot of Harrison Lake, the
source of Harrison river, near which a large hotel had lately been
built. Upon inquiry as to a means of getting up there, I learned that he
had employed a couple of Indians to take some freight up that morning in
a canoe, and that I could probably secure a passage with them. As
Harrison Lake, or rather the mountains surrounding it, were the
hunting-grounds which Douglass Bill had selected, and as we would have
to pass these hot springs en route, I decided to go there and wait for
him. I therefore arranged with Barker to send him up to the springs,
when he should call for me at the store, and took passage in the freight
canoe.
The Harrison river is a large stream that cuts its way through high,
rugged mountains, and the water has a pronounced milky tinge imparted
by the glaciers from which its feeders come, away back in the Cascades.
It is a famous salmon stream, and thousands of these noble fishes, of
mammoth size, that had lately gone up the river and into the small
creeks to spawn, having died from disease, or having been killed in the
terrible rapids they had to encounter, were lying dead on every sand
bar, lodged against every stick of driftwood, or were slowly floating in
the current. Their carcasses lined the shore all along the lower portion
of the river, and the hogs, of which the Indians have large numbers,
were feasting on the putrid masses as voraciously as if they had been
ears of new, sweet corn. The stench emitted by these festering bodies
was nauseating in the extreme; and the water, ordinarily so pure and
palatable, was now totally unfit for use. I counted over one hundred of
these dead fishes on a single sand bar of less than half an acre in
extent. Cruising amid such surroundings was anything but pleasant, and I
was glad the current was slow here so that, though going up stream, we
were able to make good progress, and soon got away from this nauseating
sight.
About a mile above the village we rounded a bend in the river, where it
spread out to nearly a quarter of a mile in width, and on a sand bar in
the middle of the stream, sat a flock of geese. I picked up my rifle and
took a shot at them, but the ball cut a ditch in the water nearly fifty
yards this side, and went singing over their heads into the woods
beyond. They did not seem lo enjoy such music, and taking wing started
for some safer feeding-ground, carrying on a lively conversation in
goose Latin, probably about any fool who would try to kill geese at that
distance. I turned loose on them again, and in about a second after
pulling the trigger one of them seemed to explode, as if hit by a
dynamite bomb. For a few seconds the air was full of fragments of goose,
which rained down into the water like a shower of autumn leaves. My red
companions enjoyed the result of this shot hugely, and a canoe load of
Indians from up river, who were passing at the time, set up a regular
war whoop. We pulled over and got what was left of the goose, and found
that my express bullet had carried away all his stern rigging, his
rudder, one of his paddles, and a considerable portion of his hull. The
water was covered with fragments of sail, provisions of various kinds,
and sundry bits of cargo and hull. Charlie picked up so much of the
wreck as hung together, and said in his broken, laconic English:
[Illustration: DEAD SALMON ON HARRISON RIVER.]
"Dat no good goose gun. Shoot him too much away."
There were plenty of ducks, coots, grebes, and gulls on the river, and I
had fine sport with them whenever I cared to shoot.
A mile above where I killed the goose we entered a long reach of shoal
rapids, where all the brawn and skill of the Indians were required to
stem the powerful current and the immense volume of water. The rapids
are over a mile long, and it took us nearly two hours to reach their
head. As soon as we were well into them we came among large numbers of
live, healthy salmon. Many of them were running down the stream, some
up, while others seemed not to be going anywhere in particular, but
just loafing around, enjoying themselves. They were wild, but, owing to
the water being so rough and rapid, we frequently got within two or
three feet of them before they saw us, and the Indians killed two large
ones with their canoe poles. Occasionally we would corner a whole school
of them in some little pocket, where the water was so shallow that their
dorsal fins would stick out, and where there was no exit but by passing
close to the canoe. When alarmed they would cavort around like a herd of
wild mustangs in a corral, until they would churn the water into a foam;
then, emboldened by their peril, they would flash out past us with the
velocity of an arrow. They were doing a great deal of jumping;
frequently a large fish, two or three feet long, would start across the
stream, and make four or five long, high leaps out of the water, in
rapid succession, only remaining in the water long enough after each
jump to gain momentum for the next. I asked Charlie why they were doing
this, if they were sick, or if something was biting them.
[Illustration: WRECKED BY AN EXPRESS BULLET.]
"No," he said. "Play. All same drunk--raise hell!"
These salmon run up the rivers and creeks to deposit their spawn, and
seem possessed of an insane desire to get as far up into the small
brooks as they possibly can. They frequently pursue their mad course up
over boiling, foaming, roaring rapids, and abrupt, perpendicular falls,
where it would seem impossible for any living creature to go--regardless
of their own safety or comfort. They are often found in dense schools in
little creeks away up near their sources, where there is not water
enough to cover their bodies, and where they become an easy prey to man,
or to wild beasts. In such cases, Indians kill them with spears and
sharp sticks, or even catch and throw them out with their hands.
Or if their journeyings take them among farms or ranches, as is often
the case, the people throw them out on the banks with pitch-forks, and
after supplying their household necessities, they cart the noble fish
away and feed them to their hogs, or even use them to fertilize their
fields. I have seen salmon wedged into some of the small streams until
you could almost walk on them. The banks of many creeks, far up in the
foot-hills, are almost wholly composed of the bones of salmon. In
traveling through dense woods I have often heard, at some distance
ahead, a loud splashing and general commotion in water, as if of a dozen
small boys in bathing. This would, perhaps, be the first intimation I
had that I was near water, and, on approaching the source of the noise,
I have found it to have been made by a school of these lordly salmon,
wedged into one of the little streams, thrashing the creek into suds in
their efforts to get to its head.
After depositing their spawn the poor creatures, already half dead from
bruises and exhaustion incurred in their perilous voyage up stream,
begin to drift down. But how different, now, from the bright, silvery
creatures that once darted like rays of living light through the sea.
Unable to control their movements in the descent, even as well as in the
ascent, they drift at the cruel mercy of the stream. They are driven
against rough bowlders, submerged logs and snags, or through raging
rapids by the fury of the torrent, until hundreds, yes thousands, of
them are killed outright, and thousands more die from sheer exhaustion.
I have seen salmon with their noses broken and torn off; others with a
lower jaw torn away; some with sides, backs, or bellies bruised and
bleeding; others with their tails whipped and split into shreds, and
still others with their entrails torn out by snags. In this sad plight
they are beset at every turn in the river by their natural enemies.
Bears, cougars, minks, wild cats, fishers, eagles, hawks, and worst and
most destructive of all, men, await them everywhere, and it would be
strange, indeed, if one in each thousand that left the salt water should
live to return. The few that do so, are, of course, so weak that they
fall an easy prey to the seals, sharks, and other enemies, that wait
with open mouths to engulf them. So, all the leaping, rushing multitude
that entered the river a few months ago, have, ere this, gone to their
doom, but their seed is planted in the icy brook, far away in the
mountains, and their young will soon come forth to take the place of the
parents that have passed away. The instinct of reproduction must,
indeed, be an absorbing passion in poor dumb creatures, when they will
thus sacrifice life in the effort to deposit their ova where the
offspring may best be brought into being.
[Illustration: INDIAN SPEARING SALMON.]