Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/431

Rh can move here as cheap, if not cheaper, than he can from Tennessee or Kentucky to Missouri. All the property you start with you can bring 1 through, and it is worth thribble as much as when you started. There is no country in the world where the wants of man can be so easily supplied, upon such easy terms as this; and none where the beauties of nature are displayed upon a grander scale.

, Oregon Territory, 1844.

The fisheries of this country are immense. Foremost of all the fish of this, or any other country, is the salmon. Of the numbers of this fish taken annually in the Columbia River, and its tributaries, it would be impossible to state. They have been estimated at ten thousand barrels annually, which I think is not too large. The salmon is a beautiful fish, long, round, and plump, weighing generally about twenty pounds, very fat, and yet no food of any kind is ever found in the stomach. What they eat no one can tell. Sir Humphrey Davy supposed that the gastric juice of the salmon was so powerful as instantly to dissolve all substances entering the stomach. The salmon in this country is never caught with a hook; but they are sometimes taken by the Indians with small scoop nets, and generally with a sort of spear, of very peculiar construction, and which I will describe. They take a pole, made of some hard wood, say ten feet long and one inch in diameter, gradually sharpened to a point at one end. They then cut off a piece from the sharp prong of a buckhorn, about four inches long, and hollow out the large end of this piece so that it fits on the end of the pole. About the middle of the buckhorn they make a hole, through which they put a small cord or leather string, which they fasten to the pole about two feet from the lower end. When they spear a fish, the spear passes through the body, the buckhorn comes off the pole, and the pole pulls out of the hole made by the spear, but the buckhorn remains on the opposite side of the fish, and he is held fast by the string, from which it is impossible to escape. All the salmon caught here are taken by the Indians, and sold to the whites at about ten cents each, and frequently for less. One Indian will take about twenty per day upon an average. The salmon taken at different points vary greatly in kind and quality, and it is only at particular places that they can be taken. The fattest and best salmon are caught at the mouth of the Columbia; the next best are those taken in the Columbia, a few miles below Vancouver, at the cascades, and at the dalles. Those taken at the Wallamette Falls are smaller and inferior, and are said to be of a different kind. What is singular, this fish can not be taken in any considerable numbers, with large seines. This fish is too shy and too active to be thus taken. I believe no white man has yet succeeded in taking them with the gig. The salmon