he object to fill each can as full as possible with fish,
the bone being excluded.

The top of the can, which has a small hole pierced in it, is then soldered
on, and five hundred tins set on a form are lowered into a huge kettle of
boiling water, where they remain until the heat has expelled all the air.
Then a Chinaman neatly drops a little solder over each pin-hole, and after
another boiling, the object of which is, I believe, to make sure that the
cans are hermetically sealed, the process is complete, and the salmon are
ready to take a journey longer and more remarkable even than that which
their progenitors took when, seized with the curious rage of spawning,
they ascended the Columbia, to deposit their eggs in its head waters, near
the centre of the continent.

I was assured by the fishermen that the salmon do not decrease in numbers
or in size, yet in this year, 1873, more than two millions of pounds were
put up in tin cans on the Lower Columbia alone, besides fifteen or twenty
thousand barrels of salted salmon.

From Astoria to Portland is a distance of one hundred and ten miles, and
as the current is strong, the steamer requires ten or twelve hours to make
the trip. As you approach the mouth of the Willamette you meet more
arable land, and the shores of this river are generally lower, and often
alluvial, like the Missouri and Mississippi bottoms; and here you find
cattle, sheep, orchards, and fields; and one who is familiar with the
agricultural parts of California notices here signs of a somewhat severer
climate, in more substantial houses; and the evidence of more protracted
rains, in green and luxuriant grasses at a season when the pastures of
California have already begun to turn brown.

Portland is a surprisingly well-built city, with so many large shops, so
many elegant dwellings, and other signs of prosperity, as will make you
credit the assertion of its inhabitants, that it contains more wealth in
proportion to its population than any other town in the United States.
It lies on the right bank of the Willamette, and is the centre of a
large commerce. Its inhabitants seemed to me to have a singular fancy
for plate-glass fronts in their shops and hotels, and even in the private
houses, which led me at first to suppose that there must be a glass
factory near at hand. It is all, I believe, imported.

From Portland, which you can see in a day, and whose most notable sight is
a fine view of Mount Hood, obt