The ‘Est,’ Est West (continued)

HERE is a riddle for you. What is it that has no legs and yet can jump as high as the Washington Monument? I’ll tell you the answer in a minute.

Between Oregon and Washington is a river named Columbia, after Columbus. In the Columbia River are large fish called salmon. Salmon live in the salt ocean, but when Mrs.Salmon wants to lay her eggs she goes way up the Columbia River, far above the falls to fresh water, looking for a quiet place to do so. How can she get by the falls? She jumps the falls. You may wonder how fish without legs can jump at all, and it is peculiar that they can, but they do. They bend their tails into a kind of spring, then flip!—up they go; for a salmon can jump as high as the Washington Monument.

“Are the falls as high as the Washington Monument?”

“No, they are all low.”

“But you said a salmon could jump as high as the Washington Monument.”

“A salmon can, for the Washington Monument can’t jump at all!”

Millions of salmon together called “schools” swim up the river and fishermen catch them in nets, but they leave most of them so that they can lay eggs from which little salmon are born, and the little salmon swim down the river and out into the ocean, where they live and grow up.