nces and crowned heads--greater than them all.
Below the bank we heard California scuffling with his salmon, and
swearing Spanish oaths. Portland and I assisted at the capture, and the
fish dragged the spring-balance out by the roots. It was only
constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. We stretched the three fish
on the grass,--the eleven and a half, the twelve, and fifteen
pounder,--and we swore an oath that all who came after should merely be
weighed and put back again.

How shall I tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested?
Again and again did California and I prance down that reach to the
little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows.
Then Portland took my rod, and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon
was carried away by an unknown leviathan. Each fish, for the merits of
the three that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance
and flung back, Portland recording the weight in a pocket-book, for he
was a real-estate man. Each fish fought for all he was worth, and none
more savagely than the smallest--a game little six-pounder. At the end
of six hours we added up the list. Total: 16 fish, aggregate weight 142
lbs. The score in detail runs something like this--it is only
interesting to those concerned: 15, 11-1/2, 12, 10, 9-3/4, 8, and so
forth; as I have said, nothing under six pounds, and three ten-pounders.

Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods--it was glory enough for
all time--and returned weeping in each other's arms--weeping tears of
pure joy--to that simple bare-legged family in the packing-case house by
the waterside. The old farmer recollected days and nights of fierce
warfare with the Indians--"way back in the Fifties," when every ripple
of the Columbia River and her tributaries hid covert danger. God had
dowered him with a queer crooked gift of expression, and a fierce
anxiety for the welfare of his two little sons--tanned and reserved
children who attended school daily, and spoke good English in a strange
tongue. His wife was an austere woman who had once been kindly and
perhaps handsome. Many years of toil had taken the elasticity out of
step and voice. She looked for nothing better than everlasting work--the
chafing detail of housework, and then a grave somewhere up the hill
among the blackberries and the pines. But in her grim way she
sympathised with her eldest daughter, a small and silent maiden of
eighteen, who had thoughts very far f