too, why it is called Poor Man's
Rock.

Under certain conditions of sea and sky the Rock is as lonely and
forbidding a spot as ever a ship's timbers were broken upon. Point Old
thrusts out like the stubby thumb on a clenched first. The Rock and the
outer nib of the Point are haunted by quarreling flocks of gulls and
coots and the black Siwash duck with his stumpy wings and brilliant
yellow bill. The southeaster sends endless battalions of waves rolling
up there when it blows. These rear white heads over the Rock and burst
on the Point with shuddering impact and showers of spray. When the sky
is dull and gray, and the wind whips the stunted trees on the
Point--trees that lean inland with branches all twisted to the landward
side from pressure of many gales in their growing years--and the surf is
booming out its basso harmonies, the Rock is no place for a fisherman.
Even the gulls desert it then.

But in good weather, in the season, the blueback and spring salmon swim
in vast schools across the end of Squitty. They feed upon small fish,
baby herring, tiny darting atoms of finny life that swarm in countless
numbers. What these inch-long fishes feed upon no man knows, but they
begin to show in the Gulf early in spring. The water is alive with
them,--minute, darting streaks of silver. The salmon follow these
schools, pursuing, swallowing, eating to live. Seal and dogfish follow
the salmon. Shark and the giant blackfish follow dogfish and seal. And
man follows them all, pursuing and killing that he himself may live.

Around Poor Man's Rock the tide sets strongly at certain stages of ebb
and flood. The cliffs north of Point Old and the area immediately
surrounding the Rock are thick strewn with kelp. In these brown patches
of seaweed the tiny fish, the schools of baby herring, take refuge from
their restless enemy, the swift and voracious salmon.

For years Pacific Coast salmon have been taken by net and trap, to the
profit of the salmon packers and the satisfaction of those who cannot
get fish save out of tin cans. The salmon swarmed in millions on their
way to spawn in fresh-water streams. They were plentiful and cheap. But
even before the war came to send the price of linen-mesh net beyond most
fishermen's pocketbooks, men had discovered that salmon could be taken
commercially by trolling lines. The lordly spring, which attains to
seventy pounds, the small, swift blueback, and the fighting coho could
all be lured to a h