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FOX FARMERS. TO RAISE FUR SALMON
From their verdure clad blue fox island in Freshwater Bay, where
the wraithing loists linger lover-vn.se along the Chatham Straits and where
the fogs drift gracefully pendent in 2>vely clusters on the balmy breath of
Icy Straits1 inviting air, write Snors Colburn' and Sutherland, erstwhile
members of the martial forces of our Uncle Samuel here at Chilkoot Barracks,
relative to the raising of that festive Alaskan fish, the fur salmon,
as follows:
"We have an extra island, a new patent skiniiipig apparatus, an idea,
a desire to get in touch with a fur-salmon trapper and Frof. H. T. Meskits
statement* To start from the bottom backward (our military education helps
here) we will start with Frof. 14* Ma'skit* s statement: "Female fur sal
mon bear from nine to nintey young per season.' Therefore, according to
mathematics that will be an average of fifty per season. Therefore we wish
to purchase from some fur-salmon trapper 100 females and a male or two.
These should produce 5,000 pups the first season, according to the above
average. Ihe first skinnings from these pups should' bring vlOO apeice on
the London Fur Market, or tf500,000 for our first year; and as one half of
these pups will be females, or to be exact, 2,500, and as these females
will raise 125,000 pups at tflOOOa peice, which is over a million dollars,
we would have at the end of thettiird season enough money to pay for the
soldiers' bonus, Oermany1 s war debt and a case of bonded Scotch#
Therefor© this is an opportunity of a lifetime, two or three life
times in fact, not ordinary lifetimes, but Methuselah lifetimes; so what
we want most at the present time is to get in touch with some honest fur
salmon trapper in order to purchase these first 100 females and enough
males to go * round. We are prepared to pay il, 000 apiece for them as
follows: vlO in cash and the rest in gilt-edge stock in our newly organ
ized Fur Salmon Stock Company.
”^ow we have started this Fur Salmon Stock Company off with our new
skinning apparatus. This device is constructed along the lines of the
ordinary salmon gill net except that it is made of vary fine fcteel wire,
the mesh being slightly smaller than the circumference of the body of the
fur salmon. Tnese nets we will stretch around the base of steep cliffs
and inclines parallel with and about four feet from the ground. Under
this wire we will securely hang large ice beetles tied by strong cords
about two feet below the tfire, thus allowing them to fly and buzz around.
This buzzing will soon attract the fur-salmon's attention from the heights
above, and being unable to see the wire, but seeing the lvscious ice beetles,
they daph rapidly down the incline after their prey, striking the net,
their weight and impetus driving them through the mesh but leaving their
skin behind, which remains on the top of the net. Uiis means of skinning
saves all the labor of removing the pelt and during the skinning season all
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we would have $o do would be cruise around the island wren our gas-boat
and remove the pelts fronthe net and replace an Occasional exhausted ice
beetle or two. On our otherisland we would raise blue foxes and as the
principal diet of blue foxes is solnon, we intend feeding the unnecessary
male carcasses of the fur-salmon tb the blue foxes after the last skinning
of the fur-salmon. Ihis will prove an excellent side-line.
"life are prepared now to issue out this new stock in the Fur Salmon
Stock Company at ilOO per share snot cash, no jaw-bone, marks or rubles
accepted. We therefore exhort all the friends of Chilkoot Barracks to '
hasten and purchase as many shares a3 possible as this money making skin
game can not be beaten, so hurry and hasten, mail pr wire your money today.
11 Our references we have carefully fixes as follows:
"The First High Bank of Freshwater Bay, of which the following .ore tja© v