USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 12
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Captain Beardslee, U.S.N., while on this station, wrote : "One day I jumped in with Tom McCawley, one of the most experienced salmon seiners, and got him to show me how it was done. Our boat, rowed by four untiring Indians, had already a ton at least of fish just taken, but there was room for another, and McCawley wanted it. We rowed slowly around the various islands for an hour with no suc- cess ; the tide was high, the day too bright; none were jumping. We pulled into a quiet, pleasant, little cove and lunched ; the Indians preparing for us a good pot of coffee, of which they are very fond, when well sweetened. With plenty of it, hard bread and smoked salmon, they can work forever. As we lay on the grass with our pipes, an Indian called out "Fish! ' and pointed to a spot in the channel but a short way off. Soon another leaped, and in a moment we were in and off. I saw the fish jump, and, after a little time, another, or, as it seemed to me, the same one. I didn't think much of that school ; but when I said so, the Indians answered ' Tshugatahen' (plenty), and Tom said : ' When one jumps, there's a hundred under him that don't ; ' and that was news to me, for I expected to see the whole school at once, as one does porpoises. Pulling for the shore, fifty yards to the left of them, one end of the seine was landed and held by the crew of one of the boats (there were two), while the other rapidly pulled around the apparently deserted spot ; the hundred yards were soon placed, and ' Haul in !' was the order. I tended boat, our crew having also landed, and made fast to the outer row of corks, and was drawn in with them, peering anxiously into the diminishing circle. Soon I saw bright streaks darting rapidly to and fro, and then a dozen in the air glistening in the sunshine. The pool diminished, and a solid mass of plunging fish became visible ; not one leaped over the corks ; they dove as they approached the wall of net, rising in the center for convulsive leaps. In a few moments two tons of salmon, weighing five to twenty pounds each, were huddled together in a six-foot circle, and into this the Indians who were not holding net, dashed blow after blow of short, stout gaff hooks, jerking out with every dash a salmon-they simply 'fired at the flock,' and never missed.
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A jerk over the gunwales, and the noble fish lay heaped up, gasping and struggling. This was in July ; nearly all of the fish were good, and, according to McCawley, there were five varieties in the catch. A few which had begun to 'dog' were cast into the canoe of an old Indian who accompanied us, and who had gleaned quite a canoe load of such as are considered unsuitable for canning."
Heavily laden canoes bring the still struggling fish to the lift which hoists them to the cleaning table, where women dexterously sever the heads, cut off the fins and tails and draw the entrails, and then divide the bright red flesh into pieces of a proper size to fit the cans. Boys solder the tins, which are then put into boilers with their contents, and afterward resoldered, labeled and packed. Thus whole families are employed, the labor being divided among them according to their ability to perform. For their own use the Indians dry the salmon on the rocks in the sun, no salt being used. Their store-houses are often placed in the branches of trees, sometimes forty or fifty feet above the ground, it is said, with a view to keep them from the ravages of blow- flies and other pests. Many of these houses will hold sev- eral tons, and are used by a number of families in common; they are reached by notched poles, which are admirable sub- stitutes for ladders. Some persons assert that the custom of placing the boxes high is to keep them from dogs and wild animals, but the Indians assign only the one reason given. I have seen the same method employed elsewhere, by both Indians and white men. A spent salmon-a ' dog salmon, as it is termed-after spawning, is a sight to see ! I found one in shoal water some two feet long, as thin as a slab, feebly struggling as though he were trying to push himself ashore. I picked him up and landed him on the grass. A sicker fish never continued to wag its tail. His skin was yellow, picked out with green and blue spots (such as a good recoiler will leave on your arm after an all-day shoot). Spots from the size of a bit to that of a dollar, and one about an inch wide and six long on his side, were raw as if gnawed out by mice. One eye was gone, one gill cover eaten through, and every fin and his tail were but ragged bristles, all integument between the rays having disappeared. No wonder the legend arose that all Cali- fornia salmon die immediately after spawning. The Creoles and Indians catch daily great numbers of these sick fish with their gaffs, and they consider that they are better eat- ing when dried than the healthy fish.
The quantities of salmon found in Alaska are simply
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enormous. I have watched the movements of Eastern salmon in the most prolific rivers of Canada during their spawning season, but have nowhere found them in such compacted masses as they appear in Pacific waters. Only where dams or natural falls obstructed their free passage were they sufficiently crowded, in those Canadian rivers, to interfere at all with each other, or with the comfortable ascent to the upper streams ; they had always elbow-room for acrobatic leaps and somersaults. On the Pacific coast their numbers are incalculably greater-perhaps a hundred fold. During the period of their annual mid-summer "runs " they swim in schools ten feet deep or more, with ranks closed up solid. Only those of our Eastern fishermen who are familiar with the swarming of mossbunkers, herring and bluefish can have any conception of their multitudes.
Of course we are all accustomed to the current stories of their innumerable hosts out West, yet I will deliberately strain the credulity of the reader by over-reaching state- ments far more marvelous and declare that in Alaska the salmon jam the estuaries and inlets so that they can not move at all ! I have seen the outlet of Lake Loring, which is a rivulet two miles long and two rods wide, connecting the salt water with the fresh, so choked with living salmon that if a plank were laid across their protruding backs a man could walk across dry shod. It is so with other similar localities. On the southwestern coast the mountains rise from the ocean quite abruptly, so that there are but two rivers of any considerable length which cut their way through the granite ridges from the interior ; but the melting of the snows upon the peaks fills all the valleys and pockets bor- dering upon the coast, forming picturesque lakes whose outlets reach the ocean through short rugged channels worn deeply into the rocks. The tide there rises some eighteen feet, and when it is low the outflow of the lakes makes its romantic journey to the brine by a series of rapids and tempting pools, where brook trout of two varieties can be caught with a bait of salmon roe, or even with a fly, afford- ing good sport to the angler. But whenever the tide begins to make, the whole vicinity of the outlet at once swarms with impatient salmon, and as the channel gradually filis with the growing flood the schools press inward and upward from outside, until, finally, when the tide is full, the stream becomes a slack-water channel reaching from the salt water to the very border of the lakes, of which every cubic foot is choked with fish wedged tightly. No theater lobby on a benefit night, nor sheep van on a transportation line, was
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ever packed more solid. In such extremity the helpless salmon become an easy prey to animals and men. One can lift them out with his hands until he is tired. It is almost impossible to thrust a spear or boat-hook into the mass, and of course a fish must come out whenever it is withdrawn. Bears take their opportunity to scoop them out with their great paws, and when they have regaled themselves to satiety they retire to the adjacent thickets for a dessert of berries which grow there in great abundance and variety. Of course a great many salmon get into the lakes at every tide, but after each recession multitudes are stranded, of which the lustiest flop back into the ocean, while the maimed and hapless remain dead and stranded on the denuded rocks.
It is said that salmon were exceptionally numerous on the Alaska coast in the two years just past, but there seems to be no doubt that they are always more abundant there than in the more southern latitudes of British Columbia and Ore- gon ; and they swarm clear across the Behring Strait to the coast of Siberia and down to Japan, filling all the waters with their incalculable numbers. In the vicinity of such hosts the problem of bait disappears. Salmon enough can be bought there for a dime to furnish bait for five thousand pounds of halibut or cod, and if some enterprising Yankee will only turn his attention to the opportunity which the Alaskan waters offer, he can supply every Atlantic fisher- man with bait and freeze out the Kanucks so that they will never seize any more fishing vessels for violation of their obnoxious laws.
The halibut of Alaska are bound to be a source of large revenue, although at present the fishery is in its infancy. Great numbers are taken from the numerous banks along the coast ; they grow to an enormous size, sometimes reach- ing five hundred pounds in weight. Captain Morrissey, of San Francisco, in the year 1880, filled up the schooner General Miller in less than a month on the banks off Sitka, taking one hundred tons of halibut at the rate of 7,000 pounds per day. There can be no question but that this business will be some day followed up with profit, especially in view of the remarkable depletion of the Atlantic fish- eries, which, in 1885, were reduced to one-fourth their former proportions ; of which Prof. Goode, of the Smith- sonian Institution, has written as follows :
" At the beginning of the present century these fish were exceedingly abundant in Massachusetts Bay. From 1830 to 1850, and even later, they were extremely abundant on
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George's banks ; since 1850 they have partially disappeared from this region ; the fishermen have recently been following them to other banks, and, since 1874, out into deeper and deeper water, and the fisheries are now.carried on almost exclusively in the gullies between the off-shore banks and on the outer edges of the banks in water 100 to 350 fathoms in depth. The species has, in like manner, been driven from the shallow fishing grounds on the coast of Europe ; there is, however, little reason to doubt that they still are present in immense numbers within easy access off the British and Scandinavian coasts, and that a good fishery will yet grow up when the fishermen of those countries shall have become more enterprising. In the year 1879 there were forty vessels, of 3,168 tons, from Gloucester, Mass., employed exclusively in the fresh halibut fishery. The total catch of halibut on the New England coast for 1879 is estimated at 14,637,000 pounds.
" In 1885, the halibut fleet of Gloucester is reduced to one- fourth of its former size, and the total catch is estimated at from three to five million pounds. By this token it is evi- dent that ere long our chief supply will come from the waters of Greenland and Iceland, where several vessels already go each year to bring back cargoes of salt 'flitches.'" *
But why go to the British and Scandinavian coasts, or to the waters of Greenland and Iceland, when Alaska is so convenient, the cost of bait almost nothing, the transit across the continent so rapid, and refrigerators so complete ? If we have fresh Pacific salmon in our eastern markets, why not fresh halibut as well, that the species may remain " familiar ?" If salt fish are required, or halibut fins, salt can perhaps be manufactured on the coast from sea water by evaporation, as it now is at places on the California sea- board ; or the halibut can be sun-dried or smoked. Salmon are used for bait. The Indians are adepts at taking these great fish. They do not fish from the canoes, but set lines which are attached to floats-generally bladders-to which are fastened little flags on staffs. Among a group of them the fisherman watches, and when the hooked fish has exhausted itself towing the float, he is secured. It is very exhilarating to the novice to see the floats, when a fish is on, go diving and darting through the water at the rate of
* By 1907 the halibut industry of the Atlantic had been almost entirely transferred to the Alaska coast. Gloucester fishermen have establishments all along the Pacfic shore now, but the catch goes east to Boston, for the most part over the C. P. R.
-
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ten knots an hour. The hook is a native contrivance, which is far more efficient than any shop-rig, made usually of two pieces of tough wood, each about eleven inches long, beveled at the ends, so that when joined and seized with twine or sinew, they form a <, or angle, with an opening five inches wide; an iron spike passes through the lower jaw, inclining inwardly, the upper jaw of the hook serving as a guide to the jaw of the fish, which can not be withdrawn without catching on the point of the spike. A fish which once takes hold, seldom gets away.
In 1884 Captain Exon, of Portland, Oregon, equipped a vessel for deep sea-fishing, with the prosecution of which he was familiar, but had hardly demonstrated the value of this method, and the abundance of fish where sought, before he was unfortunately drowned. Other practical men are now investigating the subject with the purpose of prose- cuting the business to a profitable result if they find the conditions as favorable as they believe them to be. There are also a few San Francisco fishermen who visit the Alaska coast for cod, of which they salt some 2,000 tons annually.
Another newly introduced industry is the manufacture of fish oil for dressing leather and preparing jute for market. The first factory of the kind was established at Kilsinoo, last spring, by the Northwest Trading Company, and a ship- ment of 20,000 barrels was made in September last, of which 12,000 barrels went the long distance to New York ; but it will not be long before there will be many oil factories on the Alaska coast, for all the bays and estuaries swarm with oil-producing fish, and the product is limited only by the capacity of the works and the supply of casks. This company expects to manufacture 300,000 gallons this season-equal to a hundred car-loads. At Skidegate, on the British Columbian coast, there is a factory for extracting oil from the livers of dogfish, whose output this year is 50,000 gallons. This oil is admitted to be superior to any other kind as a lubricant. It is shipped chiefly to the United States, where it pays a duty of 25 per cent., though small quantities are consumed in the Province, or sent to Honolulu and China. In another year or so this industry will probably establish itself on the Alaska coast as well, and thereby save the duty.
The foregoing summary refers to the meager fishing industries of Alaska in the beginning but I will show, in the statements that follow, what enormous possibilities of lucra- tive employment and revenue lie in the immediate future. Certainly the waters of the Pacific are far more prolific of
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fish and other marine forms than the Atlantic, or even the Gulf of Mexico. For not only do we find the sea lion, the fur seal, the sea otter, and other exceptional forms of marine life in vast numbers, but we find the cod, the tom-cod, the halibut, the herring, the flounder, the salmon, the sea-trout of the same or closely related species, common to the Atlantic coast ; and we find them differing in size, many larger and frequently more abundant, but dissimilar in color and flavor-and, beside these, a great many varieties unknown to Atlantic waters, and of especial economic value. Principal among the latter are the sculpins, the scorpænids, sebastichthydæ, and the embiotocoid or vivi- parous fishes, which comprise a great number of species. At the same time it may be borne in mind that there are many Atlantic fishes, like the blackfish, cunner, striped bass, porgy, sheepshead, bluefish, etc., which have no analogues on the Pacific. The viviparous fish may be said to be some- what intermediate in external appearance, as they are in structure, between the labrids and the sparids, but they are readily recognizable and distinguished from all others by ichthyologists. In reproduction they develop a uterus-like envelope, which incloses the young fish to the number of from seven or eight to forty, and these are hatched out at maturity just like a litter of kittens or mice. The family is characteristic of the western coast, only two or three species being known to ocean beyond the limits of the Pacific coast of temperate North America, and these few only on the opposite coast of the Pacific in the northern temperate region, and possibly in the opposite hemisphere in the tem- perate seas of New Zealand and Australia. The numerous varieties of sebastichthys are locally known as " rock-cod," but they have not the remotest relation to the family Gadidæ. There are no less than twenty-eight of them on the Pacific coast, of which six are found in Alaskan waters. Several of them are highly colored and very beautiful- bright scarlet, banded yellow and black, pink-spotted, etc. Indeed, the fish of the Pacific are more highly colored as a rule than their congeners of the Atlantic, a characteristic equally true of most of the marine forms-animals, mollusks, crustaceans, plants, etc., as well as of the land flora and fauna, the fruits, vegetables, shrubs, trees, and flowers. One of the rockfish just referred to very closely resembles the Florida red snapper in color and general appearance, though the structural differences are quite apparent when specimens of each are examined side by side. As a class they are good edible fish. Most of them are caught in deep
THE BLACK COD.
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water on rocky ledges, a half mile or so from shore, often in thirty fathoms, with hard clams, crabs or fresh meat for bait, and it is very easy to determine whenever the fisher- man swings off from a ledge, for the fish stop biting, a fact which shows how important it is to ascertain and keep the exact location of their feeding grounds. Besides these there are many kinds of fishes not at all related to this family, or to each other, which are called rock-cod. One such, which is familiarly known in Alaska as the black-cod, rock-cod, and coal-fish, is likely to form a valuable addition to our list of economic fishes, and may well fill the place of substitute for some other kinds which may have become or may become scarce. No one has labored half so hard to secure the introduction of this estimable fish into our markets as the Hon. James G. Swan, who is the Hawaiian consul at Port Townsend, Washington Territory, and a veteran correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution ; and I regard it fortunate for the integrity of this chapter of my volume that I find available for republication here an admirable report of the habits, habitat, and quality of the black-cod from the Bulletin of the United States Fisheries Commission, and from which I cull the following extracts. [Scientifically the fish is known as Anoplopoma fimbria.] The report says :
"The Anoplopoma fimbria is known in California as the candle-fish, Spanish mackerel, grease-fish, etc .; among the Makah Indians of Cape Flattery, Wash., as 'beshow,' and by the white residents of the cape as 'black-cod.' On Queen Charlotte's Islands, British Columbia, it is called ' coal-fish ' by white settlers, and by the Haidah Indians, who reside on those Islands, it is called ' skil.' At Knight's In- let, British Columbia, it is called ' kwakewlth.' Each tribe or locality where it is taken has a local name for it, but it is gen- erally known as black cod. The scientific name, anoplopoma fimbria, has been adopted by Gill, Jordan and Gilbert, and most other writers, although a specimen taken off Mount Saint Elias, Alaska, was named by Pallas Gadus fimbria (Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1881, vol. 4, p. 254), thus showing that its resemblance to the cod was observed by that nat- uralist. The term 'cod ' is applied by fishermen and fish- dealers on the North Pacific coast to a variety of fish which are not related to the genus Gadus, and are not found in Atlantic waters. The Ophidon elongatus is called in San Francisco, buffalo cod, Green cod, blue cod, etc. At Cape Flattery the Makah Indians call it ' tooshkow.' The whites call it ' kultus' cod, or inferior to true cod. The different
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varieties of Sebastichthys are known in the Victoria and San Francisco markets as rock-cod, but do not resemble the rock-cod of New England in any manner, being more like the perch, having a remarkable development of sharp bony spines and prickles. The popular name of black-cod ap- plied to the Anoplopoma fimbria does not seem any more of a misnomer than to call the Ophidon elongatus blue or green cod. In general appearance the black-cod resembles a pol- lock, but when fully grown they have the rounded form of a true cod, but are not so marked. In color they are a dark olive brown or sepia on the back, with grayish sides and belly; the flesh is white and very fat, like mackerel, and they have been sold in San Francisco under the name of Spanish mackerel when of small size. Professor Jordan says: 'The young ones are taken off the wharves at Seattle, but are not much thought of as a food-fish. It attains its greatest perfection in very deep water, where it attains a size of 40 inches, and a weight of 15 pounds. Instances are not uncommon of black-cod being taken measuring 50 inches and weighing 30 pounds, but the average is much less than this last. But it is an admitted rule that the deeper the water the larger the fish.'
" Although I have the credit of first introducing this fish in a marketable shape to the public, yet it has been known to the officers and employés of the Hudson's Bay Company for many years, but was seldom seen on their tables ; the enormous quantities of salmon, eulachon, herring, cod, halibut and other fish, easily and plentifully taken, made it unnecessary to incur the trouble of fishing in the deep water for the black-cod. The first I saw of them was at"Neah Bay, Wash. Terr., at the entrance of Fuca Strait, in 1859. An old Indian caught a few when fishing for halibut. I procured one, which I broiled, and found it equal to a No. I mackerel. I have occasionally seen the 'beshow' every summer that I have been at Neah Bay since 1859, but I have never had an opportunity to get any quantity of them till in September, 1883, while at Skidegate, Queen Charlotte's Islands, which I visited under instructions from Professor Spencer F. Baird. I succeeded in procuring about 100 of them. The Haidah Indians take them in considerable quantities on the west coast of the group of islands, in the deep waters of the inlets and harbors, for the purpose of extracting the oil or grease, which is used as food by the natives, and is similar in appearance to the eulachon grease, which is of the color and consistency of soft lard. From Montèry to the Arctic ocean the Anoplopoma is found. It
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feeds on crustaceans, worms and small fish. Hitherto it has not been introduced among the whites as a food-fish, owing to the superstitious prejudice of some tribes against fishing for them to sell.
" A lot I took to Victoria dry-salted in boxes were the first ever seen in a merchantable condition in that city, and the four boxes I sent to the United States Fish Commission are the first ever exported from the Province of British Columbia, a fact to which special reference was made by the collector of customs of Victoria in his quarterly report to the Minister of Finances in Ottawa.
" As the Haidah Indians seem to be the only ones who make a business of taking the black-cod or 'skil,' I will confine myself to a description of a method adopted by them. The fish lines used in the capture of the black-cod are made of kelp, in a manner similar to that of the Makahs, of Cape Flattery, and other tribes on the northwest coast. This giant kelp the Nereocystis (Harvey) is of the order Laminariacæ, and is of much larger dimensions than the Fucacec, the fronds being measured by fathoms, not feet. Some of these plants, it is said, when fully grown, have a stem measuring 300 feet in length. These grow where the water is rapid, and have to extend to a great length before their buoyancy will permit them to reach the surface. For about two-thirds of this length from the root up, the stem is about the size of a halibut line. It then expands till at the extremity it assumes a pear-shaped hollow head, capa- ble of holding a quart, and from which extends a tuft of upward of fifty leaves, lanceolate in form, each of which is from 40 to 50 feet long. The slender stem is of prodigious strength, and is prepared by the natives for use as fol- lows : The stems being cut off a uniform length, generally 15 or 25 fathoms each, are placed in running fresh water till they become bleached and all the salt is extracted. They are then stretched and partially dried in the open air, then coiled up and hung in the smoke of a lodge for a short time. Then they are wet and stretched again and knotted to- gether. This process is continued at regular intervals till the kelp stems become tough and as strong as the best hemp
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