up with small nets distended on hoops and attached to long
handles, and cast them on the shore.

They are then cured and packed in a peculiar manner. After having
been opened and disemboweled, they are exposed to the sun on scaffolds
erected on the river banks. When sufficiently dry, they are pounded fine
between two stones, pressed into the smallest compass, and packed
in baskets or bales of grass matting, about two feet long and one in
diameter, lined with the cured skin of a salmon. The top is likewise
covered with fish skins, secured by cords passing through holes in the
edge of the basket. Packages are then made, each containing twelve of
these bales, seven at bottom, five at top, pressed close to each other,
with the corded side upward, wrapped in mats and corded. These are
placed in dry situations, and again covered with matting. Each of these
packages contains from ninety to a hundred pounds of dried fish, which
in this state will keep sound for several years.**

**(Lewis and Clarke, vol. ii. p. 32.)

We have given this process at some length, as furnished by the first
explorers, because it marks a practiced ingenuity in preparing articles
of traffic for a market, seldom seen among our aboriginals. For like
reason we would make especial mention of the village of Wishram, at the
head of the Long Narrows, as being a solitary instance of an aboriginal
trading mart, or emporium. Here the salmon caught in the neighboring
rapids were "warehoused," to await customers. Hither the tribes from
the mouth of the Columbia repaired with the fish of the sea-coast, the
roots, berries, and especially the wappatoo, gathered in the lower parts
of the river, together with goods and trinkets obtained from the ships
which casually visit the coast. Hither also the tribes from the
Rocky Mountains brought down horses, bear-grass, quamash, and other
commodities of the interior. The merchant fishermen at the falls acted
as middlemen or factors, and passed the objects of traffic, as it were,
cross-handed; trading away part of the wares received from the mountain
tribes to those of the rivers and plains, and vice versa: their packages
of pounded salmon entered largely into the system of barter, and being
carried off in opposite directions, found their way to the savage
hunting camps far in the interior, and to the casual white traders who
touched upon the coast.

We have already noticed certain contrarieties of character between th