of year was about September.

In 1901 I had occasion to go from Spence's Bridge to Nicola Lake in
early September; the stage-route is along the banks of the river, which
at that time was very low. A run of humpbacks was going on; the pools
were black with them, and the shallows between the pools presented a
most remarkable appearance; the water was only a few inches deep, and
between the stones the humpbacks were slowly wriggling upwards in
countless thousands, only half covered by the water. When the coach was
high above the river they looked like an army of tadpoles blackening the
river bed, their colour being almost black with a reddish tinge at the
sides. The male fish alone has the curious hump well developed in the
breeding season; it is situated just behind the head and is about
3/4in. high, resembling the hump of a camel; the female has only a very
small one. At an Indian village which we passed two or three Indians
were standing in the water armed with long gaffs with which they hooked
the fish out and threw them to the squaws on the bank, who were
cleaning, splitting, and hanging them up on long fir poles to dry in the
sun. A rancher living near here informed me that he took the trouble to
count the number on one pole and thereby estimate their total catch. I
forget his figures, but believe it was several hundred thousand--a mere
flea-bite to the total number of fish in the river, which must have run
into millions. The fish were unable to get into Nicola Lake owing to a
dam, and on my return journey, two weeks later, there was not a living
fish to be seen, the pools being filled with dead bodies, and the awful
stench of the river rising to heaven.

It seemed to me a terrible waste that all these fish should die, but
such is the fact, and it must be fortunate that they do not feed on
their way or they would clean out a river like an army of locusts. What
becomes of the trout during these invasions presents a curious problem,
for the condition of the stinking river would seem sufficient to kill
them unless they can escape to some lake. Possibly the trout flee
upwards ahead of the serried ranks of the invaders with the view also of
feeding on their eggs when they reach the spawning grounds. I have seen
the bottoms of good trout pools black with salmon in certain rivers and
have been told it was useless to fish them, and this fact I also
verified; while other pools higher up and not yet invaded gave good
fishing