Just at this moment a man approached me and said that he would like to have me deliver a lecture that evening in the theater. He was the manager, Mr. Poole. I saw my opportunity, and accepted, refusing, however, his proffer of $500 in gold, and agreeing to take one-half the gross receipts for a series of lectures. I delivered twenty-eight lectures to crowded houses, and took in, for my share, $10,000 in gold. I did not spare my critics, but flayed them alive. My lectures made me the most conspicuous man on the Pacific coast, and I received despatches of congratulations, or invitations to deliver lectures and speeches, almost every hour of the day. I accepted a five-hundred-dollar check to go to Portland, Oregon, to make the Fourth-of-July oration, and the Gussie Tellefair was sent to meet me and take me up the Columbia in state. The oration was delivered to a big audience of Oregonians, trappers and mountaineers, some of them wearing the quaintest garb I had ever seen. I mention this visit to Portland because it afforded me opportunity for doing several things of importance. I visited the famous Dalles of the Columbia river, and while there saw the Indians spearing salmon. I asked what they were doing, and was told that they were laying in their supply for the winter. I went to the place where the braves were spearing the fish and asked one of them to let me try my hand at the fish-spear. Having accustomed myself a little to throwing the harpoon, I found that I could manage the Indian's weapon quite skilfully, and succeeded in landing 200 salmon in two hours. Of course the fish were running in swarms, but this two hours' work would have brought me $1,000 if I could have taken the catch to New York. I was the first white man, I believe, that had taken salmon out of the Columbia, and it then occurred to me, if the Indians could lay up a supply of fish for the winter, why could not white men do the same thing? I thereupon suggested the canning of salmon, which has since been developed into so large an industry and has made the Quinnat salmon the king-fish of the world, putting Columbia salmon into almost every household of civilization. Another fact may be recorded here. My Fourth-of-July oration had been such a success that I was asked to make another speech at Seattle, on Puget Sound, which was then a struggling village. I was accompanying a delegation or committee from the East that was looking for a good place for the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railway, which had been projected after the great success of the Union Pacific. When we passed the point where Tacoma now stands, I was attracted by its appearance and said: "There is your terminus." The committee selected the spot, and Tacoma was founded there.