Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-07-21

SdlmOu are thrown IN pie on the llOOf !.
and Wing Hop, the big Chinaman, takes
them one after another on the table, and
with great knife dextrously cuts off the
head, the tail and the fms; then with
a sudden thrust removes the intestines and
the eggs. The body goes into tank of
water, and the head goes down the
river to be made into salmon OIL
Next the body is brought on another
table, and Quong Sang, with machine
like a feed cutter, cuts it in
to pieces Just as long as one-pound can.
Then All Sam, with a butcher-knife cuts
these pieces into strips just as wide as the
can. Then Wan Lee, the China boy, brings
down from the loft where they are making
them, hundred cans, and into each can
puts spoonful of salt. 1t takes Just six
salmon to fill hundred cans. Then
twenty Cinnamon put the pieces of meat
into the cans, fitting in little strips to make
them exactly full. Then ten more solder
up the cans, and ten more put the cans in
boiling water till the meat is thoroughly
cooked, and five more punch little hole
in the head of each can to let out the air.
Then they solder them up again and little
girls paste on them bright-colored labels
showing merry little cupids riding the
happy salmon up to the cannery door,
with Mount Tacoma and Cape Disappoint-
ment in the background; and legend
underneath says that this is Booths" or
" Badollett's Best" or Hume's" or
"Clark's" or "Kinney's Superfne Salt
Water Salmon" Then the cans are placed
in cases, forty-eight in a case, and 100000
cases are put up every year. Great ships
come to Astoria and are loaded with them.
and they carry them away to London, and
San Francisco, and Liverpool, and New
York, and Sidney, and Valparaiso, and
Skowhegan, Maine; and the man at the
corner grocery sell them at twenty cents
can.
All this time our salmon is going up
the river, escaping one net as by mira
Gle, and soon having need of more miracles
to escape the rest; passing by Astoria on
fortunate day, which was Sunday, the
day on which no man may fish if he ex-
poets to sell what he catches, till finally
he came to where the nets We're few, and at
last to where they ceased altogether. But
there he found that scarcely any of his
companions were with him, for the nets cease
when there are no more salmon to be
caught in them. So he went on day and
night where the water was deepest, stop
ping not to feed or loiter on the way. till
at last he came to wild gorge, where the
great river became an angry torrent rush
ing wildly over huge staircase of rocks.
But our hero did not falter, and
summoning all his forces, he plunged into
the Cascades. The current caught him
and dashed him against the rocks. A
whole row Of silvery scales came off and
glistened in the water like sparks of fire,
and place on his side became black and
red, which, for a salmon, is the same as
being black and blue for other people. His
comrades tried to go up with him; and one
lost his eye, one his tail, and one had his
lower jaw pushed back into his head like
the joint of telescope. Again he tried
to surmourt the Cascades, and at last he
succeeded, and an Indian on the rocks
above was waiting TO receive him. But
the Indian with his spear was less skillful
than he was wont to be and our hero es-
capped, losing only part of one of his
fins, and with him came one other, and
henceforth these two pursued their journey
together.
Now a gradual change took place in
the looks of our salmon. In the sea he was
plump, round and silvery, with delicate
teeth and as handsome and symetrical a
mouth as any one need wish to kiss. Now
his silverY color disappeared, his skin
grew Shiny and the scales sank into it !;
his back grew black and his sides turned
red-not healthy red, but sort of hectic
flush. He grew poor, and his back, for
merly as straight as needs be, now devel-
oped an unpleasant hump at the eshoulders.
His eyes-like all enthusiasts who forsake
eating and sleeping for some loftier aim
became dark and sunken. His symmetrical
jaws grew longer and longer, and, meeting
each other, as the nose of an old man
meets his chin, each had to turn aside
to let the other pass. And his beautiful
teeth grew longer and longer, and pro-
jected from his mouth, giving him a saw
age and wolfish appearance, quite unlike his
real disposition. For all the desires and
ambitions of his nature had become CEN
tered into one. We do not know what this
one was, but we do know that it was
strong one, for it had led him on and on.
past the nets and horrors of Astoria, past
the dangerous Cascades, past the spears of
VIZ AiiNloaS3 NillOuSh bllC lCIilDlS
of The Dalles, where the mighty river
Is compressed between huge rocks
into a channel narrower than
village street; on past the meadows
of Umatilla and the wheat-felds of Walla
Walla on to where the great Snake river
and the Columbia join; on up the Snake
river and its eastern branch, till at last he
reached the foot of the Bitter Root noun
tains in the territory of Idaho, nearly a
thousand miles from the ocean, which he
had left in April. With him still was the
other salmon which had come with him
through the Cascades, handsomer and
smaller than he, and. like him. growing
poor and ragged and tired.
At last, one October afternoon. they
came together to little clear brook, with
a bottom of line gravel, over which the
water was but few inches deep. Our fish
painfully worked his way to it, for his tail
was all frayed out, his muscles were sore,
and his skin covered with unsightly
blotches. But his sunken eyes saw a rip
pie in the stream, and under it bed of
little pebbles and sand. So there in the
sand he scooped out with his tail smooth,
round place, and his companion came and
Hlleu IL Win orauge-cOioreu eggs. Then
our salmon came back again, and, softly
covering the eggs, the work OF their lives
was done, and, in the old salmon fashion,
they drifted tail foremost down the
stream.
Next morning, settler in the Bitter
Root region, passing by the brook near
his house, noticed that 'dog-salmon"
had run in there and seemed
mighty nigh tuckered out" So he
took hoe, and, wading into
the brook, raped the fish on the head
with it, and carrying it ashore threw it to
the hogs. But the hogs had surfeit of
salmon meat and they only ate the soft
parts, leaving the head untouched. And
wandering naturalist found it there, and
sent it to the United States Fish Commits
sioner to be identified, and thus it came to
me.
Ground Floor Prices.
How much are Strawberries ?' she
wearily asked of Woodward avenue
grocer.