A wholesale system of capture is practised in Puget’s Sound, Point Discovery, and Port Townsend, where large mud-flats run out for long distances into the sea, which are left quite dry at low-tide. Across these flats Indians make long dams of latticework, having here and there openings like our salmon-traps, allowing herrings to pass easily in, but preventing their return. Shoal after shoal pass through these ‘gates,’ but are destined never to get back to their briny home. It is not at all uncommon to take from two to three tons of fish at one tide, by this simple but ingenious method. When the tide is well out, and the flats clear of water, the Indians bring down immense quantities of fir-branches, and stick them in the mud, lay them on the ground, and, in all sorts of ways, distribute them over the flats, within the weir-dam. On these branches the herring-spawn gets entangled; when covered with spawn the branches are carried to the lodges, and the fish-eggs dried in the sun. Thus dried, and brushed into baskets, it is in appearance very much like coarse brown sand; it is then stored away, and when eaten mixed with fish-oil is esteemed by the Indians as the very perfection of feeding. This spawn is to Indians what _caviare_ is to Russians; but as I do not like either, it may be I am not an authority on its merits as a table dainty. All herrings taken in the weirs are not eaten; the Indians dry or otherwise preserve them, but the great use to which they appropriate them is to extract the oil. This is a grand process, and carried on entirely by squaws. It would be a great blessing, and save much annoyance, if you could only leave your nose at home, or at some distance away, during your visit to an Indian village in herring-time, or whilst oil-making. The entire atmosphere appears saturated with the odour of decomposing fish, rancid oil, Indians, and dogs—a perfume the potency of which you only realise by having a thorough good sniff. Then, if you ever forget it, or wish to indulge your olfactory organ again, your tastes and mine, gentle reader, must widely differ. The oil is extracted and stored away (as described in a previous chapter) in native bottles.