THE HAUNT OF THE SALMON
The greatest industry in Alaska is unquestionably the salmon fishing.
More than two hundred and fifty kinds of edible fish abound in Alaskan
waters and this does not include trout and grayling in the streams
where only the latter are to be found. Most of the halibut eaten in the
United States comes from Alaska. These fish often weigh as high as two
hundred pounds. Large numbers of whales are caught and prepared for
market annually. The fish products of the country have already netted
more than two hundred million dollars.
Nothing in the history of all Nature is more wonderful (or more tragic)
than the story of the salmon. So wonderful is it that it is almost
beyond the power of the human brain to comprehend it. Until the advent
of the motion picture--one of the greatest educators of our day and
generation--few knew that the salmon returns to the very spot where it
was spawned to die. After thirty months at sea, during which time
nothing is known of them, they are drawn by some mysterious instinct
back to the very spot of their birth. Sometimes the return necessitates
a journey of fifteen hundred miles and during that journey nothing is
eaten. Fishermen, both white and native, have told me repeatedly that
they have never yet found anything in the stomach of a salmon. They
leave the ocean and enter the rivers early in the spring. As soon as
they enter fresh water they cease eating. Their stomachs shrink as
their appetites fail and they have therefore no desire to return to the
salt-water feeding-grounds. When they reach their destination they
reproduce, which is the object of the long journey. Shortly afterward
they die. Life, seemingly, is complete for them when they have reached
the waters which gave them birth and have transmitted life to others.
This done, they drop down the river with the current and are seen no
more. From three to four hundred eggs to each pound of the parent fish
is the average spawn. And yet----. The artificial propagation of the
salmon goes on ceaselessly. It is compared to the sowing of seed by the
farmer. The culture of the eggs in a hatchery and the distribution of
fingerlings lay the foundation for an increased harvest year by year.
To me the return of the salmon to the spawning grounds is the most
marvelous thing in the world. From its source in the snow-capped
mountains of the interior to the spot where it flows, bell-toned and
majestic, into the sea, the Yukon with its various tributaries is more
than twenty-five hundred miles long! And the water is muddy. The fish
wheels, useless in clear water, are in constant motion. How, then, does
the salmon determine the exact spot at which to leave the river and
enter the particular tributary from which, originally, it came? Only
once has it been in it before,--the time when as a fingerling of two or
three inches it made its first swift journey out to sea! What man, even
if he had all manner of landmarks to guide him, would undertake to
return to the spot he left in childhood if in order to do so he had to
leave the broad ocean and follow twenty-five hundred miles of water
which is first river, then tributary, then creek, then brook and
finally a lake? It is not worth while to try to reduce the thing to
intelligible terms. It is incomprehensible. No human intelligence can
explain the spawning migration of the salmon. Yet long-continued and
careful investigation and observation in every stream of the Pacific
coast have established these facts beyond question.
He who has never seen a "run" of salmon has something yet to live for!
I know of no other event which equals it. The heaviest runs are in May,
June, and July, the catch being largest in the latter month. The
largest fish are caught in May. The "royal family" of salmon is the
King. These are best in June. Often they weigh from fifty to eighty
pounds. The king salmon never rises to the fly. The canneries take them
by the wheel.
I shall never forget my first view of a fish wheel and a cannery. I
thought the wheel the nearest approach to an infernal machine that I
had ever seen--until I got into the cannery! The wheels are fashioned
of wire-gauze compartments and are built in places near high-water mark
where salmon are known to run in greatest numbers, usually at the head
of natural or artificial channels in the river bed. "Like a cradle
endless rocking" the wheel revolves, scooping up the unsuspecting and
beautiful creatures literally by thousands. It is the blackest and
bloodiest of murder. Nothing else! But----. In the "Outside" they
insist on eating salmon and the canneries can not supply the demand
without the wheel.
Kipling, in his _American Notes_, says that he saw a ton of salmon
taken on the Columbia River as one night's catch from the revolving
cups of a giant wheel. My own first sight of a fish wheel in operation
beats the story of this renowned writer all to pieces. The proprietor
announced that the catch of this night was _five tons_, an amount which
taxes the credulity of any man in his right mind. With a fascination
which no words can describe I watched those fish being unloaded. Huge
fifty-pounders, hardly dead, scores weighing from twenty to thirty
pounds and myriads of smaller ones! The warehouse, built on piles in
the bend of the river, was not far away, and as I was there for the
purpose of seeing the process from first to last, I went aboard the
barge onto which the salmon had been tossed. Presently we drew up
alongside the warehouse and unloaded the fish. Like a man hypnotized I
followed my guide up the scale-strewn, fishy incline which led into the
cannery.
None but natives worked in this particular cannery. The building shook
and shivered with every chug of the machinery. I watched them cross and
re-cross the slippery floor and I could think of nothing but the Devil
and a blood-bespattered Devil at that!
My experience up to this moment, however, was not a circumstance to
what happened next! When the boxes containing the fish were thrown down
under a jet of water they broke of their own accord and the salmon
burst into a stream of silver. A native jerked one up, a
twenty-pounder, deftly beheaded and detailed it in two swift strokes of
a knife. With equal deftness he relieved it of its internal
arrangements by a third stroke. Then he tossed it into a bloody-dyed
tank. The headless, tailless, _inside_less fish fairly leaped from his
hands--just as though it were once more taking the rapids. But not so.
The next man caught him up short. What the first man had left undone
the second one polished off to a fine degree. He proceeded to commit
additional murder of the most damnable sort. He thrust the fish under a
machine resembling a chaff-cutter which hewed and hacked it into
unseemly red pieces ready for the can and the poor mutilated remains
were ready for the third man.
With long, bony, crooked fingers he jammed the pieces into cans which,
sliding down a marvelous machine, forthwith proceeded to solder their
own tops as they passed! The fourth man tested the can for flaws and
then it was sunk (with hundreds of others) into a vat of boiling water
to be cooked for a few minutes. The cans bulged slightly after this
operation and were slidden along on trolleys to the fifth man who with
a needle and soldering iron vented them and then soldered the little
aperture. The process was finished--all except the label. This
attached, the "finest salmon on the market" was ready for shipment.
In Alaska we get used to almost everything in time, but I confess that
it took me some time to pull myself together after this experience.
Never had I been so conscious of the grim contrasts of life as when I
stepped outside that cannery! In that rude factory, the floor of which
was but forty by ninety feet, I had seen the most civilized and the
most murderous machinery! Outside, only a few feet away, before my eyes
lay the most beautiful of God's country,--the immense solitude of the
hills! I fairly fled down to the launch by which I was to journey back
down the river, trying to get as far away as possible from the
slippery, scale-spangled, oily floors and the blood-bespattered
Eskimos. But it was like a doctor's first surgical operation. I got
over it, and after several years' residence in the country became so
accustomed to the sights of a cannery that they now make little or no
impression. The canneries are Alaska's greatest asset.
To state how many cans of salmon go out yearly would be an impossible
task. All we know is that the value of the Alaskan salmon fisheries
can not be computed. It is true that Alaska derives much of her wealth
from the copper, gold and silver mines and her practically untouched
coal deposits. But her fisheries are the most important of her
industries. Mines have a way of giving out suddenly, for no apparent
reason. But the fish reproduce themselves each year. The fisheries of
Alaska can not fail.
Next to the fisheries the fur business is perhaps the most important
industry. Here again is a business opening for him who seeks it. As
very warm clothing is necessary, tanners ought to find the land full of
opportunities. The fur business is perhaps the _easiest_ way to
affluence which presents itself in Alaska. Native hunters and trappers
follow the old rule and hunt their prey from Nature's supply. But many
have already gone into the raising of fur-bearing animals as a
business, just as the farmer raises sheep for the wool.
Fox farming is the most popular and a great industry is being
developed. Many who began this business in Alaska have since
transported it to the States. In the west are some twelve or fifteen
such institutions and the eastern States also contain a few. The value
of the fox fur is known to all and, as has been said, from four to
seven hundred dollars is not an unusual price for the black and silver
fox skins.
Judge Martin F. Moran, of the Kobuk district, is experimenting in
angora goat-raising in which he thinks there is a great future. Judge
Moran lives twenty miles north of the Arctic Circle. Since the breaking
out of the war angora ranchers in the west have netted large fortunes
by supplying mohair, and conditions for raising the goats are less
favorable there than in Alaska. Judge Moran is planning (and has
perhaps already carried out his plan) to import a herd of angoras which
shall graze upon the rich reindeer moss which grows so abundantly in
the tundra of western and northern Alaska.
The sea-otter, the most valuable fur-bearing animal, may not now be
hunted, according to a law enacted by Congress, until November first,
1920. These were formerly numerous, but they are now threatened with
extinction and are to be found only on some of the Aleutian Islands. It
has been estimated that during the Russian occupation two hundred and
sixty thousand sea-otter skins were taken, valued at twenty-six million
dollars. Since the United States took over the country in 1867 about
ninety thousand have been marketed. Now, however, the output is only
about twenty skins a year. A good otter skin is very valuable, ranging
in price from eight hundred to eighteen hundred dollars.
The seal-fur industry, although developed by the Russians, reached its
height after the territory was acquired by the United States. From 1867
to 1902 seal skins to the value of thirty-five million dollars were
exported. The fur seal, although widely distributed throughout the
country, has but one breeding place,--the Pribilof Islands. Here most
of the skins are taken. The seals were slaughtered in the most ruthless
fashion and the government at last awoke to the knowledge that the seal
was in a fair way to follow the sea-otter unless protected. In 1870 the
capture of seals on these islands was prohibited by law. The United
States took charge of the islands and the fisheries. Natives may kill
annually only enough seals to provide themselves with food and
clothing. The destruction of the herds was thus halted by the
government and in 1912 the census revealed two hundred and fifteen
thousand, nine hundred and forty seals.
From the sale of fox furs and seal skins the government has derived
during the last twenty-five years a direct revenue almost covering the
total purchase price of Alaska. There are approximately twenty thousand
white people in the territory. In China there are four hundred
million. Yet in 1915 the United States trade with Alaska was five
million dollars in excess of the total United States trade with China!