SALMON, considered among the most delicious of all our fish, is sold fresh, but is not thought to be good after it has left the water twelve hours. It is mostly dealt in by the trade as canned goods, being the most extensively packed of all fish. There are innumerable brands of salmon, many of the old and noted ones commanding high prices, but some of the less known brands packed by younger houses are sold cheaper and often are equal in quality to those sold at a higher figure. Salmon are also dried and smoked, that, in former years, being the only shape in which it entered our interior markets ; it is also canned in spices.
Of many of the habits of the salmon we are still ignorant, but we know they spawn in fresh water and then go down into the salt. Professor Jourdan says that in April, when the Columbia is high, they appear to be attracted from the ocean, probably by the cooler water of the river. They turn into the river, and as soon as they feel the influence of the current they go right up. Near the mouth of the river, and where the water is the least dis colored, they can only be taken by the seine. They take the hook in salt water or in perfectly clear fresh water. Up the Columbia the salmon journey, and are found away up in Montana, and fol lowing the Snake and its tributaries, they penetrate into British Columbia. The salmon will come up stream as long as water can be found deep enough in which to swim. At the head waters of the river they often present a pitiable sight. They are frequently found with their heads smashed from contact with the rocks, their eyes knocked out, their fins scraggy, and otherwise bruised and injured. IIere, after spawning, as they can go no further, unable
to obtain food, they die in large numbers, and very few of them which penetrate thus far ever reach the ocean again. The last month or so that they are running up the Columbia they are unfit to eat, being poor in flesh, often covered with blotches and sores, and generally in a poor condition. There are about 1,500,000 salmon taken annually in the Columbia River, amounting to about 30,000,000 pounds in weight. It has been feared by some of the large canners on the Columbia that the supply might be diminished from the largP number annually taken, but probably enough escape the nets and spawn to keep up the supply. The principal salmon used for canning on the Columbia is the Chinook or spring salmon.
The salmon canned on the Pacific Coast weigh from ten to thirty pounds, and are packed in canneries at the river's edge. After cleaning and washing them, they are cut by machinery into strips just as wide as the depths of the cans. These strips are put in the cans in just proportion of meat from the back and from the belly of the fish, and the whole is then processed in the most care ful manner in the cans, the reputation which the Pacific salmon enjoys all over the world being largely due to the precautions which are taken to have every can perfectly air-tight, thoroughly filled and cooked, and free from imperfections.