A Crime Against the Coming Generation on the Pacific Coast. By A. L. Wilson THE unwise destruction of the food Tish of the Pacific Coast is on the eve of becoming a burning question. The Overland Monthly has several times. called attention to the matter, but arousing public opinion on questions of vital interest is unfortunately a very difficult task anywhere and particularly so here. Our people have become so surfeited with propaganda that they view with suspicion all published matter on serious subjects. When the public sees a printed warning that salmon are likely to become extinct, it is likely to infer that the price is about to be raised. So with any other kind of valuable food fish. But it is not propaganda to advise the reading public, that the Pacific Coast is in danger of losing its most valuable fish for canning, and some other fishes that are highly esteemed for the table. It is astonishing that the salmon run in Alaska has so long withstood the enormous destruction which occurs every year. One can imagine what myriads of salmon ran up the Pacific Coast rivers from the ocean, before the canneries began to thin their numbers. Heretofore, the salmon canners have asserted, that the Alaska salmon run could not be permanently reduced. The worst that could happen, the canners said, was that off-seasons might be recorded. The salmon might occasionally run into the rivers in smaller numbers, for some reason unknown to naturalists. Such statements are incorrect. Whether wilfully or unintentionally erroneous, can only be guessed. Salmon canners are not all naturalists and many of them may know comparatively little of the habits of the fish which has been to them such a valuable stockin-trade. As steps must be taken at once to prevent the extinction of salmon on the Pacific Coast, a few facts relative to the remarkable habits of the fish may be interesting. The ignorance regarding the salmon is strange, in view of the importance of the fish. Few places have such opportunities to study the habits of the salmon as California, for Monterey Bay is frequented by the fish all the year, and great numbers of them make their way from that place, to the headwaters of the Sacramento River, Eel River and other streams, where they spawn. It is this habit of ascending from the ocean to the rivers that gives the fishermen an opportunity to exterminate the salmon, unless restricted in some measure by the United States Government. The State governments, as usual in most important matters, are so influenced by various financial and industrial interests that their laws for the preservation of salmon are not properly enforced. It is obvious that if immense numbers of salmon containing eggs, are taken yearly by the canneries and independent fishermen, before the fish have had an opportunity to reach their spawning places in the rapids of the rivers, the species must soon become extinct. Every salmon makes an effort to ascend the river where it was hatched, and reproduce its kind. For that reason salmon's enemies know exactly where and when to waylay them and capture them by nets and stationary traps, so that each year sees a smaller number escape. The largest run of salmon from the ocean to the rivers takes place in early summer. The salmon of Monterey Bay begin to congregate for their trip to the spawning beds in June, at which time the Santa Cruz fishermen begin to catch large numbers with hook and line. In June the female salmon contain little if any spawn and whatever eggs are found, are very small. Gradually the salmon that intend to go up the Sacramento River, make their way to the mouth of San Francisco harbor. That short trip may consume 1 several weeks, and after the schools of salmon arrive outside of the Heads they lodge for a short time in the vicinity of Bolinas Bay. From the time that the salmon schools enter San Francisco harbor and head for the Sacramento River, they cease to feed. Although they may strike at an artificial lure and are sometimes caught with hook and line, they actually swallow no food after they enter fresh water until they return to the ocean. They live on their fat. The belief is general that after spawning in the headwaters of the Sacramento, all the salmon die, but that opinion is the result of very superficial observation. Many of the salmon taken in Monterey Bay in the summer are over 30 pounds, and it would be foolish to imagine that such large fish had never ascended a river and spawned. As a matter of fact, salmon return to their natal river to spawn when much less than ten pounds. The fish time their arrivel at the spawning beds until they are almost ready to deposit their eggs in the swift shallows, where they scoop out a nest in the gravel. One would think that the eggs would be swept away at once, but most of them lie in the eddy at the bottom of the nest till the young salmon are hatched out, and start on their long journey to the ocean. While the hatching is in process, the female salmon guards the nest night and day, eating nothing and becoming a wretched dark brown object, covered with sores and leeches and wholly unlike the beautiful fish which left the sea a month before. The ceaseless effort of the mother fish to remain so long over their nests, in the swift current, without nourishment, reduces the strength of many of them to such a degree that they are unable to make the long return trip to the ocean. As soon as the eggs are hatched, the mother salmon drops down the river to the nearest deep pool, and makes a brave battle for life. If too much exhausted for recovery, she swims in a circle closer and closer to the shore for several days perhaps and then either expires, naturally, or is snatched out the shallow water by some wild animal. If, on the other hand, the mother sal mon is strong enough to recuperate, though very weak, she continues for several days to swim toward the center of the deep pool and finally submerges, and is seen no more. In Europe, where most of the rivers are shorter and less turbulent than those on the Pacific Coast, the number of salmon that return to the sea after spawning is large. The European laws against the capture of fish are severe and rigorously enforced. Once that the returning salmon reach salt water, they recover their vigor rapidly and feed voraciously. Their mouths, which became like vulcanized rubber on their upward journey, grow soft, and their power to swallow and digest food returns. But for the efforts of State fish hatcheries in California, the salmon fishing in these waters would have ceased to be an industry long before this. Millions of salmon eggs are artificially hatched and the streams are restocked every year. The cost is defrayed out of the State fishing licenses and the gainers are the members of the fish trusts who fix the prices that the victimized public must pay. The proceeding is a fine example of Governmental shortsightedness. It costs the fish trusts nothing to feed the salmon. The fish that the State sportsmen paid to have hatched, come cut of the sea to the nets of the river fishermen, and the public which public which obtain the artificiallyhatched salmon at low prices, buys them at rates almost prohibitive. Net fishermen make not less than $500 a month in the salmon season and frequently make almost twice that amount. So avaricious are the fishing interests, however, that they oppose all reasonable limitations on the taking of salmon, and if permitted would follow the fish even to the spawning beds. The merciless war on the Pacific Coast salmon, makes it a certainty that in a short time the greatest of all food fishes will become so scarce as to be virtually extinct, like the California sturgeon, The wastefulness of this generation is preparing want in many lines for the next. I Morality the Smallest Asset of Some Eskimos. By Margaret Curtis TIS so rarely that a missionary gives up hope for the tribe he endeavors to civilize, that when one does the case is worthy of special consideration. Arthur Elde, for three years a government agent and teacher on Diomede Island, on Bering Strait, is inclined to see little or no hope for the tribe of Eskimos on whom he has concentrated his attention. Their customs, which he brings to light, are more astounding than the customs of the creatures in Grimm's fairy tales. Compared with them, the practices of the fabled Amazons and of other races of mythology are staid and matter-of-fact. But the Eskimo customs hardly meet with Mr. Elde's approval. And in proof of his contention, Mr. Elde describes certain customs which do not exactly conform to the ideals of the civilized world. Among these is the practice of oslerizing old men; in behalf of the Eskimo, it may be said that oslerization is voluntary; beyond that, it is hard to find any favorable point in the custom. When an old man finds that he is of no more use to the community, he goes to his son-in-law, and requests to be either hung, stabbed, or strangled. One can imagine an old man, having committed the sin of becoming economically useless, and faced with the opportunity of doing his final service to the community by departing from it. But, unpatriotically, he still does not desire to pass into the Beyond, and so unconventionally remains with the living, whereat the living indignantly condemn him, until finally the force of public opinion becomes so severe that of his own free will he makes a choice between being hung, stabbed or strangled. In the matter of morality, Mr. Elde shows the Eskimos to have standards differing in important details from those of the white man. Or perhaps it is exaggerating to say that they have any morality at all, at least in one sense of the term; for example, a common practice is the loaning of wives. A number of friends, in order to encourage mutually amicable relations, agree to own their wives in common; and both wives and children become community property. Mr. Elde has a story interestingly illustrative of Eskimo morality: "There is one modern usage of which they highly approve and which they practice freely. That is divorce. Whenever the people on the island wanted something done which their own medicine men either would not or could not do they came to me. One morning an old Eskimo woman came to me and asked me whether I would grant her a divorce. I told her I should if the facts in the case warranted it. She then told me that twenty-five years before she had been married to an Eskimo trader, who subsequently left her, crossed the strait and took a new wife unto himself in Siberia. Every now and then, however, the old renegade came back to the island and proceeded to make himself at home in the house of his first wife and acted as though nothing had ever happened between them. "It seemed to me that the request of the old woman was exceedingly moral. I called a meeting of the council of Eskimos and asked the woman and her wandering trader to appear. They both came. I told the council men the details of the case, and of the desire of the old lady for a divorce. They agreed she could have it, and were about to proceed according to their ceremonial fashion to give it to her, when she interrupted the proceedings in great wrath and anger. What she wanted, she said, was not a divorce for herself, but a divorce which would separate the man from his second wife and bring him back to her." Shanghai Last Cruise By James Hanson HANGHAI" BASSETT, beach-com Sber and renegade, slumped over the after-rail of the Whimpering Friar and watched, through half-closed lids, the green-garmented hills of Savaii and Upolu melt into the western rim of the world. He nursed, in his breast, a vehement desire for revenge and his mind was filled with gloomy thoughts of the night before, when, at Sheahan's Resort on the cliff, he had-between goblets of squareface-gin -forced his unwelcome attentions upon Micronesian Mary, the buxom leader of the siva-siva dancers. Bassett raised his hand and ruefully felt the lump on the side of his head, where her jealous lover had clouted him with the butt-end of a Krag-Jorgenson, then shook a hairy fist at the disappearing islands and cursed-cursed sea, rum, Polynesia, and its fickle women who, for lovers, had constabulary soldiers that wore Krag-Jorgenson rifles with hard-wood stocks. “Hell!" he ejaculated, as before his mental vision floated reminiscent scenes of idleness which he had been forced to abandon. And again: "Hell!" In the forecastle of the bark the singing of chanty and chanson ceased from the lips of sailor and rover-gave way to hoarse whispers and ominous looks, when it was learned that "Shanghai" had been shipped as mate. For it had been passed by word of mouth, from black to brown, from yellow to white, of his nefarious deeds which had gained for him the murky sobriquet of "Shanghai;" and the crews of every craft, from schooner to Latin-rigged banco, from captain to cabin boy, knew him in consequence. Nor was the youthful master of the Whimpering Friar an exception. Captain Wilfred had, after graduating from the school-ship Lochinvar, set to sea with a choice crew for a trading cruise to the South Pacific Islands. His first and second officers had died in the Solomons. They had been too trusting, consequently their heads adorned a sharpened pole in a Malaita devil-devil house. He was loath to give a mate's berth to such a man as Bassett's ilk; and had accepted his services only when it became obvious that he could secure no other. He resolved, however, to effect an immediate change in that department upon reaching San Francisco. Bassett returned forward and took charge of the deck. In a short space of time everything was made snug. Loose gear was stowed away; halyards and |