are smoked for winter's use.

Every glacial stream in Alaska is, in its season, full 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.

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 hay, 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 percentage 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 garboslia, 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 extended oyer 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 II. 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 markings, that I had five species at the least, but Bean ruthlessly cut the number down to three, viz.:

Salvelina Malma, or Spectabilis, or Bairdil

Salmo Gardnieri, and

Salmo Purpuratus, or Clark's trout.

The first named, called commonly by us the salmon trout, was abundant in all of the streams, from about middle of June until middle of September, evidently timing their arrival and departure by the movements of the salmon, upon whose eggs they live. I have noted, on June 1st, "No salmon trout yet in any of the streams. Several fine, large ones captured by the Indians in nets set in sea." Ten days after, the streams were full of them, and in the earlier part of the interim many would run into the pools of the lower parts with the flooding tide, and out again on the ebb.

When they left us in September, it is probable that they migrated south, for in a letter to Forest and Stream, dated Portland, Oregon, September 28, a correspondent states that, in that month, "there begins to appear in the streams near the Columbia river, a trout," whose description tallies exactly with that of the spec-tabilis, except that the correspondent speaks of their affording fine sport with the fly; this the trout while in Alaska fails to do. At first, the spectabilis affect the rapids, but after a few days seek the deep pools, where they gather in great numbers, and bite ravenously on hooks covered with spawn and sunk to the bottom. Occasionally, when spawn was out, we used a bit of fresh venison; but at the best they cared little for it, and when the blood became soaked out, the bait was useless. Although fairly gamey when hooked, fishing for these trout was but a poor substitute, for one who had felt and remembered the thrills caused by sudden strikes of our Adirondack fish. I have often when pool-fishing, seen them leisurely approach the bait, and nibble at it as a dainty, full-fed kitten will at a bit of meat, and when one did get the hook, we found it out only by a slight resistance to the series of light twitches which it was necessary to give it. They have evidently been taught by experience that salmon roe is not apt to attempt escape. The usual size of the fish ranged from six to twelve inches—now and then one larger. The largest taken by any of us, near Sitka, fell victim to my "salmon spawn fly," and gave my little