Ch. 3: American Salmon - Page 2

soldering their own tops as they passed. Each can was hastily
tested for flaws, and then sunk with a hundred companions into a
vat of boiling water, there to be half cooked for a few minutes.
The cans bulged slightly after the operation, and were therefore
slidden along by the trolleyful to men with needles and
soldering-irons who vented them and soldered the aperture.
Except for the label, the "Finest Columbia Salmon" was ready for
the market. I was impressed not so much with the speed of the
manufacture as the character of the factory. Inside, on a floor
ninety by forty, the most civilized and murderous of machinery.
Outside, three footsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense
solitude of the hills. Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at
that place, but I counted two hundred and forty finished cans
made from the catch of the previous night ere I left the
slippery, blood-stained, scale-spangled, oily floors and the
offal-smeared Chinamen.

We reached Portland, California and I crying for salmon, and a
real-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by an insurance
man, met us in the street, saying that fifteen miles away, across
country, we should come upon a place called Clackamas, where we
might perchance find what we desired. And California, his
coat-tails flying in the wind, ran to a livery-stable and
chartered a wagon and team forthwith. I could push the wagon
about with one hand, so light was its structure. The team was
purely American--that is to say, almost human in its intelligence
and docility. Some one said that the roads were not good on the
way to Clackamas, and warned us against smashing the springs.
"Portland," who had watched the preparations, finally reckoned
"He'd come along, too;" and under heavenly skies we three
companions of a day set forth, California carefully lashing our
rods into the carriage, and the by-standers overwhelming us with
directions as to the saw-mills we were to pass, the ferries we
were to cross, and the sign-posts we were to seek signs from.
Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we struck (and
this must be taken literally) a plank road that would have been a
disgrace to an Irish village.

Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could
move. A railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette,
and another above us through the mountains. All the land was
dotted with small townships, and the roads were full of farmers
in their town wagons, bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins
sitting in the hay behind. The men generally looked like
loafers, but their women were all well dressed.

Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort
with hay-wagons.