Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/371



The author of the following, "poem" was not either a dull or an unobservant writer; and we insert his verses as a comical bit of natural history belonging peculiarly to Oregon.

What is yon object which attracts the eye

Of the observing traveler, who ascends

Columbia's waters, when the summer sky

In one soft tint, calm nature's clothing blends:

As glittering in the sunbeams down it floats

'Till some vile vulture on its carcase gloats?

'Tis a poor salmon, which a short time past,

With thousands of her finny sisters came,

By instinct taught, to seek and find at last,

The place that gave her birth, there to remain

'Till nature's offices had been discharged,

And fry from out the ova had emerged.

Her Winter spent amongst the sheltered bays

Of the salt sea, where numerous fish of prey,

With appetite keen, the number of her days

Would soon have put an end to, could but they

Have caught her; but as they could not, she,

Spring having come, resolved to quit the sea:

And moving with the shoal along the coast, at length

She reached the outlet of her native river,

There tarried for a little to recruit her strength,

So tried of late by cold and stormy weather;

Sporting in playful gambols o'er the banks and sands,

Chasing the tiny fish frequenting there in bands.