Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-11-19
BIG FISH STORIES
How the Salmen Are Caught
in Puget Sound.
A LIVELY : INDUSTRY
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH
TAKEN EVERY, YEAR.
Story Of San Juan Island-Facts About
the Great Forests of Wash
ington State.
A LIVELY : INDUSTRY

Copyright, 1904, by Frank G.. Carpenter)
| Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.
CHICAGO.
Would you like to hear big fish stories
| that are true stories?
If so, open your ears and listen to James
| s. McMilin, the Duke of San Juan.
| The Duke of San Juan!
| You may not have heard of him. Still
| he is the nabob Of the most important OF
! our Puget Sound islands an island which
| once came near involving us in war with
| Great Britain. San Juan Island lies just
under the boundary line between the United
| States and British Columbia. In our old
| treaties 1t was stated that the boundary
| was on the forty-ninth parallel to Puget
| Sound, and thence along the marine chan
| mel through that sound ont to the sea. The
| San Juan archipelago lies on the south
edge of the channel, but the British decided
| to construe the route further north and
make these islands a part of their terri
| tory.
Saved by a Hog.
1t was the c3cklng of geese that saved
Rome 1t was the roofing of hog that
saved these islands and the vast fishing
industry, of which they are the center, to
| the United States. The hog belonged to a
| British resident of San Juan Island. 1t
rooted out the potatoes of an American resi-
| dent and the American shot the hog. This
| brought up the question of the ownership
| of the island, which was involved in the
question of jurisdiction. The governor of
British Columbia proposed to send troops
! to bring the American offender to Victoria
| for trial, and the American governor of
our territory sent Captain James Pickett
| to prevent it. Pickett was the same man
who afterward made that famous charge
at tJettVSburg He took n
| troops to San Juan and warned the British
on the gunboat which was sent to settle
the matter, that if they landed he would
fire upon them and there would be an in
ternational war. They did not land. The
trouble continued, however, and General
Winfield Scott was sent out by the Presi-
dent to settle it. A temporary arrange
ment was made by which the British took
the northern half and the Americans the
southern half of the island, and later the
settlement having been referred to old
Kaiser Wilhelm, the grandfather of the
present kaiser, he decided that the direct
channel lay north of San Juan. This made
the island an American possession, and so
it is to this day.
San Juan Island Is the chief one of the
san Juan archipelago. 1t is only five miles
one way and fourteen miles the other, but
1t Is the northwest corner stone of the
United States, and especially valuable be-
cause the greater part of it is pure stone
1t is, in fact, a pure white marble, from
which is made the most of the best lime of
the Pacific slope. 1t has enormous fac
tories and furnaces for making lime, and
James S. McMillin, who has been nick
named the Duke of San Juan, is their own
er.
Big Fish Stories.
San Juan Island is also right on the tack
of the millions of salmon which come i'll
every year from the sea to spawn in the
freSh-water rivers; and it was as to fish
that 1 talked with the Duke of San Juan.
Said Mr.. McMillin:
The salmon brings Uncle Sam more
wealth than any other fish in his waters
S5,UOO,OO0 year, and in 1902 more than ~
million pounds of such fish were caught in
the Oregon rivers. Alaska salmon bring in
several million dollars, and altogether a
large proportion of our fifty million dollars
worth of fish products come from salmon.
You people of the east know nothing
about fish as they swarm in our western
waters. How would you like to sail for
half day through a school of fish from
one to three miles wide and so thick that
it blankets the face of the ocean? l have
done that again and again, not far from
San Juan.
what would you think of rivers so pack
ed with salmon that they fill the streams
from bank to bank-so thickly packed that
were they not so slippery and the water
not so deep-you could walk over them from
one bank to the other. I have seen that.
What would you think" continued the
duke, as he looked into my wide bullying
eyes, of great watts of salmon sixty feet
long forty feet wide and forty feet deep