CHAPTER XVIII

MILLIONS OF SALMON

Mr. James gave to Jack a number of letters which had come to Victoria for him and then been forwarded to New Westminster. They were the usual home letters which he read with great delight, and, besides these, one from his uncle, Mr. Sturgis, which told him that he had been detained at the mine and would not be able to meet Jack at Tacoma for at least two weeks.

Mr. Sturgis advised his nephew to spend the time in British Columbia and to allow himself two or three days to get from Victoria to Tacoma, where they would meet. Hugh also had received a letter from Mr. Sturgis, the purport of which was the same, and the two began to discuss the question as to how the next ten days were to be spent.

When they had reached New Westminster Mr. James had urged them to take two or three days' trip with him up the Fraser River on the steamboat, partly to see the scenery, but chiefly to get to the end of the Canadian Pacific railroad which was then being built east and west. The western end started at the town of Yale. The distance by steamer was not great, though the swift current of the Fraser is so strong that progress up the stream is not very rapid. This invitation Hugh and Jack now determined to accept, but as the salmon fishing was just at its height, they wished to spend a day investigating that.

In those days it used to be said that every fourth year the run of salmon was very great. The next year the number of fish taken would be smaller, the next still smaller; then the number would increase again until the fourth year, when there would be a great run. As it happened, the year of Jack's visit was one of the years of plenty. A great run was looked for, but up to the middle of July no fish had been taken, though for a week previous the boats had been drifting for them. The fishermen, however, were not discouraged, for at the mouth of the river were constantly seen great numbers of small black-headed gulls, oolichan gulls, so called, which Jack recognized as Bonaparte gulls.

Long before they returned to New Westminster salmon had begun to be taken in considerable numbers, the first catch being made about the last of July. The run kept increasing slowly until before their return to New Westminster it had become impossible for the canneries to use all the fish caught, and a portion of the boats were taken off. Early in August the catch was from seventy-five thousand to eighty thousand fish per day, though only one half of the boats were employed. The canneries were all running at their fullest capacity and the enormous catch was the talk of the town.

The next morning soon after breakfast Mr. James called for his friends, and a little later they started out to visit one of the canneries in order to get some idea of the method by which one of the chief sources of wealth of the Province was handled.

On their way down to the wharf, Mr. James talked interestingly on the subject. "The fish," he explained, "are all caught in ordinary drift gill nets which are cast off from the boats in the usual manner, and are allowed to drift down the stream with the current, meeting the advancing salmon which are swarming up the river. The other day I got from Ewing's cannery the record of the catch of a few of the boats, on one or two average days. For example, on August ninth five boats took nine hundred and seventy fish; the same day six boats took one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven fish. On August tenth, six boats took one thousand four hundred and ninety-two fish, and on August eleventh six boats took one thousand five hundred and thirty-eight fish."

"Now, these fish," Mr. James went on, "are chiefly sock-eyes, and average from eight to ten pounds in weight, but among them are a good many 'Spring salmon' which the books call quinnat, and these run from fifty up to seventy and eighty and even a hundred pounds. These records I have just given you give an average of about two hundred and forty-four fish to the boat, or rather more than two thousand pounds. Now, of course, the boats cannot take up their nets and make long journeys to the wharves to unload their fish. That would be an unnecessary waste of time, and would not pay, so that at all hours of the day and night steamers patrol the river, collecting from the row boats that do the drifting the fish they have netted. When a steamer gets a load she comes and ties up at the wharf and there unloads her fish. You will see them presently now, for here is where we turn in."

Leaving the main street they turned down an alley and entered a loosely put up wooden building, from which came a strong odor of fish which showed it to be a cannery. Mr. James pushed through the building without stopping until they reached the wharf where they saw a tug tied up. Great piles of shapely glittering fish were lying on her deck, and working over them were men with poles, in the end of each of which was a spike. Each man on the deck pierced a fish with the spike on his pole and threw it up on the wharf where lay a great pile of its fellows. They threw out the fish just as a farmer would throw hay out of a wagon with a pitchfork.

Hugh and Jack had never seen so many fish before, and for a little while were almost stunned by their mass. No one paid any attention to them, but each person went on with his or her work. At one end of the pile stood a couple of Indians who were taking fish from the wharf, and throwing them one by one into a large tub of clear water. Immediately next to this tub stood a row of tables at which were people armed with long knives. A woman next to the tub reached down, got a fish from it, placed it on the table before her and removed the head, sliding the fish along to a man next to her, who, by a single motion of his knife removed the entrails and cut off the fins and tail. The fish, thrust again along the table, fell into a tub of clean water and was washed by an attendant. Thrown on an adjacent cutting table, it was passed along to a cam, armed with knives about four inches apart, which was constantly revolving, thus cutting the fish into lengths. The pieces were then placed in the tin cans which were filled up even-full.

Jack and Hugh stared at these different processes which went on without a pause. It seemed as if each operator might be a machine. Each one performed a certain task and only that, and beyond that did nothing but shove each fish along, then reach back and take another. The knives, it seemed, always fell in the same place, and cut off the same parts with the same precision. It was a rising and falling of arms and knives, in the preparation of a food which was soon to be distributed all over the globe.

At length they reached the cutting table. "Here," said Mr. James, "you can see how systematically the thing is done. It isn't enough that the fish should be cut into pieces, but it must be cut into sizes that are just about long enough to fill the can so that as few motions as possible need be gone through with to get the can level full."

"There! do you see!" he went on, pointing to a Chinaman, who with two or three motions of his right hand filled a can, just even-full; and then slid it along the table to a man next to him, who slipped on it the circular cover of tin and passed this on to the next man, who was handling a soldering iron and a bit of solder. In but a second, as it seemed to Jack, the soldering of the can was finished, and then with a push the can went on to join those which were being bunched up by the Chinamen, and placed in a shallow tray made of strap iron. When this tray was full a hook on the end of a chain running down from a traveller near the ceiling was hooked into a ring attached to chains running to the four corners of the tray, the tray was lifted, and run along the traveller a short distance until it stood over a vat of boiling water. It was then dropped into this, hung there for a few moments; and then, rising again, moved a little farther along the traveller, and descended on a table. By this table stood a Chinaman, holding a small wooden mallet with which he tapped each can.

"You see," said Mr. James, "the expansion of the contents of the can under heat makes the cover bulge, and when the Chinaman taps it with the mallet he can tell at once by the sound, whether the solder is perfectly tight or not. If, when the mallet strikes it, the cover yields much, he knows that there is an escape for the air and the can is thrown out. There, see him throw that one out? When the Chinaman taps the cans it seems as if he were paying little attention to the work, but when a defective can comes along he detects it at once and casts it aside, just as he did that one." This happened to be the only one rejected of this lot, and the operator at once reversed his mallet and began to tap them over again.

"What is he doing now, Mr. James?" asked Jack. "Is he going over them again?"

"No," said Mr. James; "look closely at the mallet and you will see that he has reversed it; and in this end of the mallet there is a little tack. Each time he strikes a can he punctures it, allowing, as you see, air, water, and steam to escape. As soon as this is done, the other workmen, with their soldering irons seal up these little bits of holes, and the work is done. Now the only thing to do is to label the cans, box them, and ship them to the markets."

"How many fish do they put up here in a day, Mr. James?" asked Jack.

"About five hundred cases," said Mr. James. "It's a lot, isn't it?"

"I should say so," said Jack, "it makes my head swim to think of it, and that is being done all along the river, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Mr. James. "It is, and it keeps up for weeks and sometimes for months. The run of sockeye salmon usually lasts from four to six weeks, and during that time the factories run from four in the morning to seven or eight at night; and the work goes on constantly, Sundays as well as week days."

"Well," said Hugh; "I don't see how there are any salmon left in the river. I should think you would catch them all. There must be a lot of factories just like this all along the river; what becomes of the people living farther up the stream?"

"I can't answer that very well, myself," said Mr. James, "except that I know that there are plenty of them. Here comes a man, though, who can tell you. He is an old fisherman, and has been in the canning business for years. Oh, McIntyre!" he called out to a raw-boned, weather-beaten man who passed not far from them. Mr. McIntyre looked at him, came over, and was introduced to Hugh and Jack as the proprietor of the cannery. He was glad to see them, and readily talked about salmon and salmon canning.

"Mr. Johnson, here," said Mr. James, "was wondering that there were any salmon left in the river for the people who live above here. He thinks you are catching them all."

Mr. McIntyre laughed loudly as he replied: "Oh, not all of them; there are a few that get up. You see, this year we have not been able to use all the fish we caught, and we have taken off one half the boats. I don't believe that one fish is caught out of ten thousand that enter the river. Everybody between here and the head of the river captures all the fish he wants, and in the autumn you will see fish that have spawned and died, floating down the river by the million. Of course, I don't know how many are taken here, but I fancy more than two million or two and a half million fish. The Indians all the way up the river have no trouble whatever in catching all they want. If you should go up the river you would see their camps along the shore, and you would see, too, that they were catching many fish."

"How do they catch them, Mr. McIntyre?" asked Jack.

"They catch them chiefly in purse nets; scooping them up out of the water, just as fast as the net can be swept."

"You ought to take them up the river, Charlie," he added, turning to Mr. James, "and let them see what goes on between here and Yale."

"That's just what I am trying to do," said Mr. James. "I want to get them to go up with me and I hope perhaps we can start to-morrow."

Much time was spent at the cannery, for Jack and Hugh did not seem to tire of watching the swift, certain, and never-ending movements that went on here for hours until the whistle blew for noon. Then, indeed, they reluctantly left the factory and returned to the hotel.

It must be remembered that all this occurred some twenty-five years ago, and that since that time wonderful changes have taken place in the methods and operations of salmon canning. This is merely an account of what Jack saw when he visited New Westminster.