Vol. XVI

N the fifteenth of April, at high noon, the salmon fishing season opened on the Columbia River. At that hour nearly two thousand gillnets dipped

into the water. Four thousand men tended to the setting, looked to their position on the estuary and settled themselves down to wait for the fish.

For a week before, the City of Astoria had worn an air of unusual activity. Upturned boats covered the wharves. There was packing, hammering and painting. Of course there were the nets to see to, as they represent the greatest value to the fishermen. A net is worth from three hundred to four hundred dollars, and is made of twine from the finest of Irish flax. They are spread on the racks along the wharves, carefully examined, repaired and put in order. Cooking utensils that for seasons, perhaps, have proved the good companions of men away at the fishing are inspected and tinkered and stowed away in the boats.

Down in the districts of fishermen's cottages and boarding houses, men proudly exhibit new boots and oilskins, compare them with old ones and argue the merits of different brands. Over the window sills and porch rails have been

No. 2

hung jerseys and woolens of all colors and descriptions.

This part of the town is unmistakably Scandinavian. It has a quaint, Old World aspect. The houses are picturesque wooden things, perched high on piles, and their porches are covered with the paraphernalia of fishing. The women who stand in the doorways and the children who play on the wooden streets have blue eyes and flaxen locks. The men are tall, big boned and deep chested with steel-blue eyes and shaggy yellow hair. No matter where you meet him, your Scandinavian carries the air of the sea with him. Two months ago you might have seen him in the lumber camps, wielding an axe or riding a log, and you would have mentally classed him as a mariner. Not that he wielded the axe clumsily or rode the log awkwardly, for his foreman would tell you he made an excellent logger, but because you could not have missed the reflection of the sea in his eyes, the swing of the ship in his stride. The blood of Viking forefathers has left its stamp upon him.

For a week the men have been gathering in the town, leaving the different occupations in which they have been engaged for the past eight months to take up this fishing trip with its greater revenue. The salmon season is of three months' duration,

but this short period proves attractive enough to draw men from many trades. Deep-sea sailors have left their ships, in some cases weeks ago, to wait the fishing time. Farmers, carpenters and even small storekeepers have looked forward to it. But the greatest number of salmon fishers come from the lumber camps, which offer the field of labor most suitable to their great physical strength and their love of

the open.

The opening day of the season dawns grey and miserable, but in the boats under the long wharves there is a cheery bustle and a clamor of tongues that rises above the lapping of the leaden swells. From the boarding-houses, the cottages, the saloons and dance halls, the fishers came in groups and singly; Scandinavians, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes and Finns. There is a sprinkling of Poles, Slavs and Latins, but the Scandinavian predominates. Some carry large pails that answer for larders. These they stow under the tarpaulins with care. Here a man is cooking breakfast over a small

portable stove, and the smell of the bacon and coffee is savory and inviting. His mate busies himself meanwhile with putting the boat in order. Far out in the stream a full rigged ship, the St. Nicholas, is weighing anchor and an energetic consequential little tug is fussing about. alongside. For cargo she carries fishermen and their boats, Chinese cannery workers and machinery, as well as three months' supplies for two hundred men. Soon she will be out into the wind and on her course to the salmon fishing grounds of Alaska. The stretch between is already dotted with white sails-the vanguard of the Columbia fleet.

The boats leave in twos and threes, pull out into the stream and drift down with the tide. There are few people on the wharves but the fishermen themselves. And at the end of the pier on which we stand is one lone bare-headed woman with a muffled-up baby in her arms.

Considering the importance of the occasion it seems remarkable to us that there are no well-wishers, no crowd of friends to bid them "God speed" or "good luck." For many of the men will not return to shore again until the end of the season, preferring to stay out and make the most. of the precious time. But the "good byes" have evidently been said at home, for the fishermen slip into their boats, arrange their paraphernalia and pull away without further concern.

For a third of a year the gunwales of a salmon boat form the confines within which are carried on the operations of a community of two. For four months the captain and his crew of one pursue their business of fishing and do their trading and banking within an area of sixty square feet, and in this small space they take their food, their recreation and their rest. They carry a two-day food supply and are visited daily by a tug from the cannery, when their catch is taken aboard, weighed and entered to their credit on the books. Fresh supplies are issued and charged to them. Of course many of the men do their trading with the fishing stations which are situated at intervals along the shore, but in any case there is no time. wasted in the transactions.

The daily catch for each boat averages twenty fish, weighing 300 pounds, for which the canneries pay a price varying