he top of the dock, sometimes nearly housing the whole of it, stands
a shed well stored with barrels, sacks of salt, nets, and all the
necessary equipments of a first-class fish-canning establishment. A few
Indian lodges are scattered along the shore. The Indians, a hearty and
apparently an industrious and willing race, do most of the work about
here. A few boats and canoes are drawn up upon the beach. The atmosphere
is heavy with the odor of ancient fish. The water-line is strewn with
cast-off salmon heads and entrails. Indian dogs and big, fat flies
batten there prodigiously. Acres of salmon bellies are rosy in the sun.
The blood-red interiors of drying fish--rackfuls of them turned wrong
side out--are the only bit of color in all Alaska. Everybody and
everything is sombre and subdued.

Yet not all fishing stations are cheerless. The salmon fishery and
trading store located at Loring are picturesque. The land-lock nook is
as lovely as a Swiss lake; and, oh, the myriad echoes that waken in
chorus among these misty mountains! The waters of the Alaskan
archipelago are prolific. Vast shoals of salmon, cod, herring, halibut,
mullet, ulicon, etc., silver the surface of the sea, and one continually
hears the splash of leaping fish.

A traveller has written of his visit to the fishing-grounds on the Naass
river, where the tribes had gathered for what is called their "small
fishing"--the salmon catch is at another time. These small fish are
valuable for food and oil. They run up the river for six weeks only, and
with the utmost regularity. At the point he visited, the Naass was about
a mile and a half wide; yet so great was the quantity of fish that, with
three nails driven into a stick, an Indian would rake up a canoeful in a
short time. Five thousand Indians were congregated from British Columbia
and Alaska; their faces painted red and black; feathers upon their
heads, and imitations of wild beasts upon their dresses. Over the fish
was an immense cloud of sea-gulls--so many were there, and so thick
were they, that the fluttering of their wings was like a swift fall of
snow. Over the gulls were eagles soaring and watching their chance. The
halibut, the cod, the porpoise, and the finback whale had followed the
little ones out of the deep; and there was confusion worse confounded,
and chaos came again in the hours of wild excitement that followed the
advent of the small fry, for each and all in sea and air were bent upon
the d