arrangements with a third, and cast it into a bloody-dyed tank. The
headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a
rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a
thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly
red gobbets fit for the can. More Chinamen with yellow, crooked fingers,
jammed the stuff into the cans, which slid down some marvellous machine
forthwith, soldering their own tops as they passed. Each can was hastily
tested for flaws, and then sunk, with a hundred companions, into a vat
of boiling water, there to be half cooked for a few minutes. The cans
bulged slightly after the operation, and were therefore slidden along by
the trolleyful to men with needles and soldering irons, who vented them,
and soldered the aperture. Except for the label, the "finest Columbia
salmon" was ready for the market. I was impressed, not so much with the
speed of the manufacture, as the character of the factory. Inside, on a
floor ninety by forty, the most civilised and murderous of machinery.
Outside, three footsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense
solitude of the hills. Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that
place, but I counted two hundred and forty finished cans, made from the
catch of the previous night, ere I left the slippery, blood-stained,
scale-spangled, oily floors, and the offal-smeared Chinamen.

We reached Portland, California and I, crying for salmon, and the
real-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by "Portland" the
insurance man, met us in the street saying that fifteen miles away,
across country, we should come upon a place called Clackamas where we
might perchance find what we desired. And California, his coat-tails
flying in the wind, ran to a livery stable and chartered a wagon and
team forthwith. I could push the wagon about with one hand, so light was
its structure. The team was purely American--that is to say, almost
human in its intelligence and docility. Some one said that the roads
were not good on the way to Clackamas and warned us against smashing the
springs. "Portland," who had watched the preparations, finally reckoned
"he'd come along too," and under heavenly skies we three companions of a
day set forth; California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage,
and the bystanders overwhelming us with directions as to the sawmills we
were to pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts we were
to