sitting bolt upright as if surveying the danger, sometimes lying down as if to avoid it, but continually whistling to each other. They have two long front teeth for cutting, like the river beaver,, and feet like a squirrel. In the winter they burrow under the snow, and their fur, which in summer is yellow, becomes a dark gray.
Of fur-bearing animals which are hunted for their skins, there is the hair-seal in the Columbia Kiver, a pretty creature of a bluish-gray color spotted with white. They swim up the river as far as the Cascades, and in high water as far as The Dalles. They are smaller than the red seal of the Pacific, and very docile in disposition. Instances have occurred of their domestication, when they have shown the same attachment to their masters that the dog does, following also by scent, even into the thick woods, where they have torn themselves fearfully in their efforts to overtake those who had deserted them. The Indians roast and eat them.
Minks are common to the waters of Oregon and Washington, but are most numerous in the lakes and streams of the latter. It is said that when they inhabit the Sound they subsist upon shell-fish. The beaver, which was nearly exterminated during the occupancy of the country by the Hudson’s Bay Company, is again quite abundant in the streams of all the wooded portions. One of the features of the Columbia attractive to the sportsman is the sight of the hunting-boat—a scow with a house upon it—which goes peering into all the creeks and sloughs leading into the river, after game of this sort, and, in the ducking season, after water-fowl. The “ California otter” also inhabits the mountain streams, especially those which come down from the Cascades.
The pine-marten, or American sable, is found along the streams of the Cascade Mountains, and clinging to the pine-trees on their eastern slopes, in Oregon and Washington. Their skins are quite valuable, though not collected except by Indians, who prize them for ornament.
The sea-otter, whose fur is of such exquisite fineness, is taken off the coast of Washington, from Damon Point, at the entrance to Cray’s Harbor, northward to Point Grenville, a distance of only twenty-four miles. Considerable prep
