"Here and there along the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the melting snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy waterfalls from heights that are higher than the Yosemite. From the canons which divide the foot-hills, cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I could catch them with my hands as long as my strength endured, so helpless and infatuated are these creatures of predestination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson spots as large as a pea; and the rainbow trout, with his iridescent lateral stripe; and his cousin germain, the 'cut-throat trout,' slashed with carmine under the gills. And there is another trout, most familiar to the eye in Eastern waters, and doubly welcome to the sight in this far-off region--the _Salvelinus Canadensis_, or 'sea-trout,' which I have recognized these many years as a separate species. * * * Here he is in his garniture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up-stream neighbors of New England and the Provinces. * * "The seas are full of strange species. Here the family _Percidae_ is regnant and supreme among the food fishes. The number of species and varieties is remarkable. Here are the _Embiotocidae_, or _viviparous_ perch, which bring forth their young in litters, like cats or dogs, to the number of eight to forty at a time. There are no less than seventeen known varieties of them. Here, also, are at least fifteen varieties of _Scorpaenidae_, all fine table fish, which are locally known as rock-cod, groupers and snappers, but having no close relations at all to the family of _Gadidae_. I send herewith the differential characteristics of four of them taken near our present berth, in latitude 51 degrees 30 minutes. The scarlet snapper seems very closely allied to the _Lutjanus Blackfordi_ of Eastern Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, from which he could scarcely be distinguished in appearance. The others are all fish of brilliant colors. No. 2 can scarcely be distinguished from the fresh-water bass of the lakes lying west of the Mississippi,--the _Micropterus_,--either in form, fin system or color. At Sitka I found a fish of exactly the same shape, but black as a sea-bass of the Atlantic (_Centropristis atrarius_). No. 4 belongs, I believe, to the family of _Chiridae_, and is locally known as a sea-trout. * * * These fish take salmon roe, clams, sand-worms, crabs, meat and cut-fish bait. The black bass of Sitka is taken alongshore with a trolling spoon. * * * The other fish were taken chiefly in thirty fathoms of water on the young flood tide.