I close this abstract of foreign testimony with two English authorities often quoted. Sir Edward Belcher, while on the coast in 1837, records that “fish, halibut, and salmon of two kinds, were abundant and moderate, of which the crews purchased and cured great quantities.”[207] Sir George Simpson, who was at Sitka in 1841, says: “Halibut, cod, herrings, flounders, and many other sorts of fish, are always to be had for the taking, in unlimited quantities.… Salmon have been known literally to embarrass the movements of a canoe. About 100,000 of the last-mentioned fish, equivalent to 1,500 barrels, are annually salted for the use of the establishment.”[208] Nothing could be stronger as statement, and, when we consider the character of its author, nothing stronger as authority. Cumulative upon all this accumulation of testimony is that of recent visitors. Nobody visits here without testifying. The fish are so demonstrative in abundance that all remark it. Officers of the United States navy report the same fish substantially which Cook reported, as far north as the Frozen Ocean. Scientific explorers, prompted by the Smithsonian Institution, report cod in Behring Strait, on the limits of the Arctic Circle. One of these reports, that, while anchored near Oonimak, in 1865, the ship, with a couple of lines, caught “a great many fine cod, most of them between two and three feet in length.” He supposes that there is no place on the coast where they are not numerous. A citizen of Massachusetts, who has recently returned from prolonged residence on this coast, writes me from Boston, under date of March 8, 1867, that “the whale and cod fisheries of the North Pacific are destined to form a very important element in the wealth of California and Washington Territory, and that already numbers of fishermen are engaged there, and more are intending to leave.” From all this testimony there can be but one conclusion, with regard at least to certain kinds of fish. Salmon exists in unequalled numbers, so that this fish, so aristocratic elsewhere, becomes common. Not merely the prize of epicures, it is the food of all. Not merely the pastime of gentle natures, like Izaak Walton or Sir Humphry Davy, who employ in its pursuit an elegant leisure, its capture is the daily reward of the humblest. On Vancouver’s Island it is the constant ration given out by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the men in service. At Sitka ships are gratuitously supplied with it by the natives. By the side of the incalculable multitudes swarming out of the Arctic waters, haunting this extended coast, and peopling its rivers, so that at a single haul Portlock took not less than two thousand, how small an allowance are the two hundred thousand which the salmon fisheries of England annually supply!