Having no funds, I walked to my next stop, which was the United States Salmon Hatchery on the McCloud River. Livingston Stone, who had been sent out by Baird of the Smithsonian Institution to run the place, was a retired parson, but very wisely shed his religious ideas before going west. I’ll never forget when he let me into the secret of the drink he gave the workmen every hot summer afternoon. A huge washtub full of cold water into which was put a quart of raspberry shrub and a quart of pure alcohol. The men did not realize what they were drinking, as it looked like pink circus lemonade. Mr. Stone knew the government would not O. K. large bills for rum, but pure alcohol might be used for anything. To anyone who has not seen a fish hatchery it is a fascinating place. The big fish came up into the McCloud River to spawn, and from here most of the rivers of the world were supplied with their eggs. Exhausted from the trip up, for they never touch food from the time they leave their homes, an expert can simply reach down and catch them with his hand. The eggs of the female are pressed out into pans where the milt of the males is squirted over them, fertilizing them in water—the unimpregnated ones being sorted out. They are then ready for packing in cracked ice and swamp moss, some traveling as far as New Zealand. Nature hatches out twenty-five per cent of her salmon eggs, but it was considered a failure if we did not produce ninety-eight per cent in living fish. If we could only do the same with the human race, we could make perfect children and just the number the Government needed. The Indians were of the tribe of Wintoon, called “Digger.” They were dirty and lazy, and, although some of them had been educated in the public schools, they very soon lapsed into their original state. Even then it was against the law to sell them whisky, but I have seen a young Indian boy take a quart, sit down in the sand and knock off the head against a rock, clap the hole to his mouth, and drink the whole thing without stopping. Needless to say, he fell over as if stunned with a blow, and would have rolled into the river if he had not been rescued. The Indian women were certainly not attractive. In the winter they wore thickness upon thickness of old sacks and rags wound around themselves, principally their legs, and these never came off until they rotted or the summer heat drove them to take knives and cut the dirt-caked and incrusted stuff away. Along toward spring they were objects to keep away from, but in summer they were more bearable, as they bathed in the river almost daily. I remember venturing into their particular swimming pool one day and being taken by the arms and legs and almost drowned, they thinking it a joke. I believe the Indians were the originators of the Turkish bath in America. They had a religious ceremony very much like it which was about as good a way of getting rid of the unfit as I know of.