A Summer's Outing, and The Old Man's Story

by Carter H. Harrison

A RIVER BLACK WITH FISH.

We had remarkably visible evidences of the strange and irresistible instinct of the salmon to climb steep waters from the sea. For many miles the Fraser runs or rather rushes with great speed. Below every projecting rock there is an eddy more or less large. In these eddies salmon were congregated by the thousands, showing their black backs and fins an inch or two above the surface. These little swirling pools are generally many feet deep, and the finny voyagers must have been piled several deep one on the other. Over one crystal stream running into the river the road passes on a short bridge. In a pool in this creek, say twenty by fifty feet, the fish were so thickly packed that a man could almost have walked dry shod across the stream on salmon backs. In the ascent of the fish they fail often to overcome the rapid current and stop to rest in the eddies. I do not think I exaggerate in saying we saw hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, in a part of our run not exceeding thirty or forty miles. The fish looked small to us, for only a few inches of their backs could be seen. A fellow passenger, however, assured us that such as we saw ran from six to nine pounds. They were the sock-eye salmon, the fattest and best variety for canning. We saw no Indians fishing as there were three years ago. Their stock is already laid in and stored away in caches built upon high posts or up among the branches of spreading trees.

A hundred and eighty thousand fish averaging about eight pounds weight were caught in one day last week at New Westminster. A gentleman of the locality told us that now was but the beginning of the running season, and in three weeks there would be a hundred thousand where there was one now. A scientist was probably not mistaken when he asserted that the water of the world could produce more food for man, acre for acre, than the land. I fear the canneries are causing too many to be killed now.

An uninitiated person would have thought that great sport could be had just now on the Fraser with rod and line. In this, had he made the experiment, he would have been grievously mistaken. The salmon when on the run never rise to the fly or takes any food. They start from the ocean very fat and live on their fat until the spawning season is over, by which time they become so lean as to be scarcely edible. Indeed, the great bulk of them die of injuries suffered on their upward run or of starvation. Thousands are seen floating later in the season down the upper streams, bruised, torn and emaciated. The people out here have the impression that a salmon never feeds again after leaving the sea in its spawning journey, and that none of the vast millions which commence the voyage ever return. They spawn and die. This fish will spawn in a few weeks in the clear brooks and streams high up among the mountains. The eggs lie dormant until the warmth of next years' sun hatches them out. The small fry has then the clear water to commence its life in. It feeds, grows and runs down to the sea thereafter to do and die as its progenitors have been doing since the race began.

Nature's ways are very queer, and it seems to permit more inconceivable things to be done by its creatures beneath the water than upon the land. A fish disporting itself in a limpid stream or gently propelling itself deep down in the transparent sea, appears to be absolutely enjoying existence—to be reveling in his "dolce far niente," and yet it would seem that the whole finny family is spawned to bear the whips and spurs of most cruel fate. From the instant a little fellow emerges from the egg up to his fullest growth, he is always on the ragged edge of some bigger fish's maw. He climbs with intensest labor the rushing stream from the instinct of procreation, and then begins to die from slow inanition—the cruelest of deaths. Experiment has shown that the fish learns nothing by study—everything is from instinct; that he has no sense whatever. Lucky fish: for surely to him ignorance is bliss.

TWO HUNDRED MILES ON A COWCATCHER.

Three years ago I rode along a part of Thompson Canyon and down the whole of Fraser into Vancouver, some 200 miles, on the cowcatcher. It is the most delightful of all railroad running. We are ahead of the train. We seem not to be on wheels, but simply to be gliding along the iron way, propelled by an invisible impulse. There is no jar, no dust nor cinders. Over trestles a hundred feet high of frail and creaking timbers we rush without the least uneasiness or anxiety, for the machine and train being behind us and unseen we do not realize that hundreds of tons are being whirled over the frail bridge-work, and forget that there is anything heavier upon them than our own weight; onward we slide; a turn brings us face to face with a mighty precipice; we are rushing headlong against the rocky barrier when a sudden bend around a jutting point, reveals before us a hole in the rocky mass; into it we are shot—into the dark; a roar is heard behind us as if a thousand demons are after us in full chase; a glimmer of light steals along the iron ribbons before us, and then we burst into the broad day with a new and beautiful scene pictured for our delight; down below us rushes the river through deep fissures between the rocky walls; high above us lift mountains cutting the sky with bands of snow along the upper heights; past Indian hamlets, near which sits a squaw or two and lounges a lazy buck, while their children look at us as we fly along in indolent carelessness. Tunnel after tunnel, about thirty in all, swallow and then throw us forth. Once on the Thompson, the iron ribbons ahead rest one on the ground, the other on timbers projecting over a precipice. Over it we glide. Fifteen hundred feet below runs the silvery stream, so nearly under us that we think we could pitch a penny into it. But so lightly do we skim along that we feel no tremor. Ah! mine was a beautiful ride. It was three years ago, but as I looked at the same road as we passed along it a few days ago, the whole picture came back to me, and I feel sure the memory of it will live with me while I live.

Up the Thompson we came now, and saw some beautiful valley farms early at daybreak, with bright wheat fields, cozy homes, and sleek-looking stock. The mountains above were mighty uplifted long mounds, not rocky, broken nor peaked. Pines were scattered over them as if they were planted in upland parks—isolated trees, just enough to make parks bright, while over the ground was spread a carpet of velvet of a brownish drab. This effect was from the low bunch grass, now dried into hay. This grass is short, but sustains all winter through cattle in oily fat. The Thompson finally came up to a level with us, and was a clear and dignified river, making the meadows green. After a while it broadened into a great lake—the "Shuswap"—along whose pebbly shore, under great sloping mountains, we ran for over a third of a hundred miles. The Shuswap is an irregular sheet with long arms. No where is it much if any over a mile wide. High mountains lift from the water and mount upward in gentle slopes, well wooded. In a few places there are tiny plains at their feet. On these are the wig-wams of the Shuswap tribe of Indians.

Leaving this beautiful sheet we entered a range of mountains lofty and grand, with now and then a shoulder mantled with snow. Three years ago this range was all green with noble trees; now, as far as we could see, the fire fiend has done its work, leaving forests of tall trunks in gray, with a fresh undergrowth beginning to spring. Even yet, however, the Gold Mountains are a noble range.

It would seem we had seen enough of the grand. But wait. We reach a broad flowing river coming from the north. It is white with detritus ground from the eternal ribs of earth by the irresistible march of glaciers. It is our own Columbia, which has been paying her Majesty's American land a short visit before it sweeps with majesty towards the Pacific. We cross this and enter upon a wealth of mountain scenery, which belittles what we have passed through, though we thought it so fine. High to the right lifts a monarch capped with snow. High to our left is a huge pair of twins, the double head of a monster.