“In the following year Hume and Hapgood migrated to the Columbia River, locating themselves on the Washington side, about forty miles above Astoria. There they started a cannery, packing four thousand cases the first season, the fish being put up in one-pound tins 4½ inches high. They had great difficulty at first in finding a market. A good deal went to Australia and to San Francisco, and the price realised was twelve dollars a case. The demand grew rapidly; other canneries were opened; and Hume’s brothers came out from Maine to go into the business. The brothers were George W. Hume (who is still alive, and a very wealthy man), R. D. Hume, and Joe Hume. Each started a cannery of his own; and R. D. Hume’s “Crown” brand came to be very well known in the old country. “Everything was extremely crude at first. The cans were imperfectly packed, and many had to be thrown away. In those days all the processes were done by hand, whereas now, of course, machinery operates throughout. “The Humes were practical fishermen. As a boy I worked for one of the brothers, and so I am able to speak from personal knowledge. The fish were, and still are, caught in what are called ‘gill nets.’ These are made from a linen thread known as shoe thread. We used to make the nets ourselves, spinning the twine and using from seven to twelve strands, which we twisted up lightly. With weights at the bottom to keep them down, the nets hang from cotton lines attached to cedar floats. They drift with the tide, and the fish, swimming up the river, thrust their heads into the meshes and then cannot extricate themselves, owing to the twine catching in their gills. “The fishing is rather hazardous. It takes place at the mouth of the river, off the sand spits, where the water is usually in great commotion. Very good boats are used, but they are often capsized, a number of fishermen being drowned every year. Each boat carries two hands—the net man, or captain, and the boat puller. It is nothing unusual for a boat to capture in one night from two to three hundred large fish varying in weight from 25 lb. to 28 lb. This is the fish that is known on the Fraser River as the ‘spring,’ on the Columbia River as the ‘chinook,’ and in Alaska as the ‘king.’ “In 1876 Alexander Ewan started below New Westminster to can the salmon of the Fraser River. These are a different variety, their local name being the ‘sockeye.’ They are without doubt the finest of all salmon for canning, being of a uniform red colour and having red oil. Their flavour is even better when they are canned than when they are eaten newly-caught. The sockeye is much smaller than the spring, running to a uniform weight of six or seven pounds. On the Fraser River, therefore, the fishermen use a smaller net, made of finer thread, only five or six ply, the mesh being six inches instead of nine.