Chapter V: Part 5

to give place again, as the golden meshes weave, to cowled monks or ladies, fair, as suits the whim of the artist’s patron. Again, the goblins of the range begin their game of nine-pins, and the fleecy clouds that have been slowly drifting, drifting all the day, settle down upon the mountain top and change from white to gray and from gray to black as the sport grows furious. Something these elves must have to light up their frolic, and presently it comes in great flashes of wicked steel-blue and red, zigzaging down the mountain side, or in straight blinding bolts that rive paths in the hard granite, scattering the loose rock and shivering the pines, while the noise of the jolly nine-pins rattles and re-echoes among the crags, and dies away to come again more quickly, until the mountain-top is a sheet of lurid flame and the din unceasing, so closely follows peal upon peal. The game is too violent to last, but the gnomes love to hug the range in their pastime, and I, understanding the signs, and having no fear of their electric lights, watch the fast growing rift of azure that crowds hard upon the driving blackness. At last the mellow rays touch up my mountain ruins, and they are arrayed in new splendors and peopled with other phantoms.

So I have dreamed, and might go on dreaming, but this time I am brought back to the green slope and a little figure. The Governor is toiling up the trail with a quart bucket, his special chattel, from the spring, whence he volunteered to bring a drink for his mother. I can see no impediment in his path, yet he stumbles and falls. Would I had been there to warn him; but the water is spilled. He does not cry, but gathers himself and his property up, and goes back to begin his task over again. Just then there came to me pat, an aphorism, I think, of “Poor Goldsmith”: “True greatness consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall;” and I took it as an omen of good for the boy.

The time is approaching when we must break camp and go back to the brick and mortar and the realities of civilization. Duties to be performed will be undertaken with better zest when I get to them, but I cast lingering looks toward my mountain ruins as the day of departure draws nigh. I even have a thought that it would be pleasant to relapse into barbarism, if out of such as mine our civilization has grown—we might build up a better. As this may not be, I am encouraged by the thought that another season will come, and with hope in my heart I am better prepared for the work awaiting me. I know that I shall go back with a fresher feeling for my kind, and more charity. So when one September morning, after a day of gray mist hanging over the range, the wind comes down chill from the heights, and the morning sun lights up my castles and pinnacles in diadems of new-fallen snow, I say we must be off. We gather together our lares of nomadic life, and with a regretful farewell to those I cannot bring away, we make the journey home, a better man and woman, with a nut-brown, healthy boy, for much of which I give credit to the artificial fly, and the beautiful denizens of the mountain streams.

FLY FISHING IN THE YOSEMITE.

By A. Louis Miner, Jr.

A merry party had come for a holiday to the Yosemite, and their camp was established between the north and south domes near the forks of the Merced. Toward the east the Tenajo Canon opened, revealing through its vista of granite crags the highest peak of “Clouds’ Rest,” crowned with eternal snows. Westward, the Sentinel Rock, like a minaret among the domes, pierced the sky.

There were seven in the party, including a heathen from the flowery kingdom, almond-eyed—Ah Yang. His nominal function was to do as he was bid, and serve as man of all work, but in reality he ruled; and ruled with a rod of iron. Yang had been induced to come by motives purely sordid; but the others, aside from seeing the wondrous valley, had various reasons for making the journey.

The Judge came for relaxation. He needed it. For the last dozen years he had devoted himself to reading the morning papers, lunching at his club, and entertaining his friends sumptuously at dinner.

His wife, who, in the levelling atmosphere of camp, came to be styled the _Judgess_, imagined herself on the verge of a decline, and sought recuperation in the forest. If the Judgess were described as fat and forty, omitting the fair, the description would fall far short of truth. In spite of her ailments, the Judgess would have enjoyed herself in a way, had it not been for the young woman she was chaperoning. This was Madge. Certain young men in San Francisco called her a _rattler_, and certainly there was nothing slow about her. The chief end of her existence, at home and everywhere, seemed to be the pursuit of fun; to this end she flirted with anything that came in her way, from stray herdsmen on the plains to an English baronet at a Yosemite hotel. When nothing else was at hand, and to the Judgess’ indignation, she flirted with the Judge. With charming zest she played continued games of poker with him till his honor’s purse was far thinner than its owner. The Judge’s admiration for Madge was profound, but after an hour at cards, he would usually remark, “that girl has the devil in her, _as it were_, bigger than a wolf.”

It is said that all men have a ruling passion. Be that as it may, a passion certainly ruled a worthy clergyman of the company. The men of our generation affected with beetle mania are many, but his Reverence was absolutely devoted to bugs. The Judgess, a zealot to such a degree that Mary of England was but lukewarm in comparison, said that his Reverence valued a butterfly more than a human soul; and Madge insisted that, while he pretended to read his office, he was engaged in dissecting a coleoptera or something.

The Doctor, who was Madge’s unworthy brother, had come with the avowed intention of sketching. All the long way from San Francisco he had been at work with brushes and blotting paper. Often the “prairie schooner,” in which the party travelled, had “lain to” while the Doctor washed in patches of blue and white to represent cloud-effects, or a jagged gray band against streaks of orange, portraying sunrise in the Sierras.

The last member of the party without professional distinction, and familiarly called “Jack,” had also a _penchant_, though many years had passed since it had been gratified. When they had left the San Joaquin plain and its sluggish rivers oozing their way through mud and reeds, and had climbed into the mountain, a halt was made in a deep canon. Here was a stream indeed. How blithely it danced along, eager to find the Golden Gate and the Pacific! How it sang to Jack of fellow streams near the other ocean! How it whispered of trout streams ahead! Presently a long-cherished fly book was produced and Jack was poring over it. His Reverence, attracted by the little volume, looked over Jack’s shoulder. He was entranced. A volume of ecclesiastical Latin would not have interested him half so much. He began to criticise and expound. Some were perfect. Some were caricatures of diptera. The other members of the party drew around. “Pooh!” said the Doctor, “I hope you don’t expect to catch any trout with those things in Yosemite! Everybody knows that the Merced trout don’t take the fly.” The Doctor went on to say, “that with a common string, such as any grocer would use to tie up a package of tea, a good strong hook, and a worm,” he would catch in the same time, more fish than could all the sportsmen of California, fishing with fancy flies.

The Doctor, like most cynics, was somewhat given to hyperbole.

During the remainder of the journey into the valley, Jack felt himself regarded as the victim of a mild hallucination.

The Doctor could sketch; beetles were awaiting his Reverence’s microscope; flirtation and frolic were dawning on Madge’s horizon; even the Judge and Judgess could get rid of a stone or two avoirdupois if they tried; but poor Jack had come, it appeared, to fish, and there were no fish to catch, or at least to catch with a fly. Such was the tradition, and so the Doctor had asserted, and no one ever disputed the Doctor excepting Yang, the Chinaman.

Our friends had been revelling in the enchantments of the valley a week; had climbed the trails that crept zig-zag up the dizzy heights; had spent hours among the soft mist and rainbows at the first landing of that wonder of the world, the Yosemite Falls; and still Jack had not accomplished the cherished desire of his heart. He had not the moral courage to take from its swaddling clothes his beloved rod (which the Doctor would persist in calling “your fish-pole”). Never had he so longed to cast a fly; but he thought, of the teasing Madge and waited. At best, he was but a poor male creature. Madge, in his place, would have been whipping the stream, with defiance and determination, an hour after her arrival.

His Reverence and the Doctor had arranged to ascend Clouds’ Rest on a Thursday and return next day. Early Thursday morning, before Yang or the birds were stirring, Jack sauntered forth to his morning bath in the icy waters of the river. This Rio, de la Merced, would it prove to him indeed a _river of mercy_, or a river of humiliation? But what a glorious stream it was! Here it glided through wooded banks, the opposite side black in the shadow of overhanging manzanita, while nearer the rippling waters were checkered with the shadows of the cotton-wood leaves, trembling in the growing light. Further on, the river whirled and eddied around great boulders, resting among the mossy rocks in deep, dark pools, bordered with fern and flecked with patches of lace-like foam. Further still, it wound silently through the sedges, reflecting on its glassy surface the storaied-carved Cathedral Rocks, or the huge mass of El Capitan. Here was an ideal trout stream, but were there trout in it! No doubt, for the Doctor had taken his grocers’ string and a worm and a veritable pole, and after a day’s tramp had returned to camp wet, hungry, in a sulphurous mood, but with four unmistakable trout. These, served up the next morning, were appropriated by the Judgess, and made an excellent appetizer to more abundant bacon and flap-jacks.

Jack had reached that pearl of waters, the Mirror Lake, and was watching the marvellous beauties pictured on its bosom, when suddenly there was a soft plash, the sleeping depths were troubled, a circling ripple crept toward him, and Jack’s pulses bounded. A trout had risen!

Through the dewy chaparral and the fragrant whispering pines, our friend hurried back to camp in a fever of impatience. He tried to help Yang with breakfast, but was told by that dignitary to “giv’ us a rest,” and so humbly retired. He then waked his Reverence. He wakened the Doctor and was greeted by language far from complimentary. He aroused the Judgess, and was pierced with daggers from her eyes while she hurriedly adjusted her teeth.

After breakfast more torturing delays, the Judgess declined to join the mountain party. The others must not think that she feared to ride the mules, for she adored mountain climbing, and the exercise and all that. (This was a dreadful fib, which was probably made use of at her next confession.) Both the Judge and herself were pining for a few refinements of life at the hotel. Without napkins and finger-bowls, life became a burden. The poor Judge had to acquiesce and said: “She wants a little civilization _as it were_.” Then Jack rebelled. There was a general confusion, in the midst of which Yang began to fire his pistol. This pistol was the idol of his pagan soul, and his frequent salutes the terror of the party. No one dared to interfere. At this time the volley was continued and promiscuous. The Judgess screamed, and having no immediate revenge in the shape of ill-cooked dinners to fear, sharply expostulated. Thereupon Yang, with utmost _sang froid_, told her to “shut your head” and journey to regions he had probably heard the Doctor name. This was too much. The Judgess climbed into the wagon and stated her opinion of people who permitted such “goings on” and of a priest who allowed a Christian woman to be sworn at. Madge was convulsed with laughter, even his Reverence smiled, while the Judge, poor man, looking as if every brewery on the continent had been burned, snapped his whip, and the wagon was lost to sight beneath the arching sequoias.

It was high noon when the sure-footed mules had arrived and the party fairly started off. Jack waved an adieu with one hand, and with the other reached down his rod from the branches of a live oak. Yang proceeded to dissect a sucker he had caught for bait, saying: “If you fishee, me fishee too, but j’ou no sabee nothing.”

Later in the afternoon Jack stood on the grassy point where the lake narrows into the river. He had adjusted his flies, and everything was in readiness. He paused to watch Yang, who was stationed below on the river, fasten a cubic inch of sucker to his hook, expectorate upon it, turn around three times, and fling it with a tremendous splash into the water. Whether these performances were the result of Oriental superstition, or whether the Chinaman imitated some American example, he did not stop to consider. His long unpractised hand, trembling a little now, had sent the flies far out beneath the shadows of some willows. Another cast was made, and then another. At the fourth there was a rise, and the fish was hooked. The struggle was short but spirited. Yang, abandoning his primitive tackle, was ready with the landing-net, and the fish was killed. As the sport continued, Jack grew calmer, while Yang’s excitement increased. He trembled as if the ague were upon him. His stoicism was laid aside. He laughed, jabbered, and Jack was obliged to address him as the Chinaman had addressed the Judgess. Yang begged to try the rod, and by reason of his imitative faculties might have made good use of it, but he had to content himself with the net.

At last the lengthening shadows deepened into twilight, and the gathering darkness put an end to the sport. The great dome of Mt. Watkins, inverted in the motionless water, had changed from gold to crimson, and from crimson to violet; they paid no heed until the reflection faded, then, looking up, the real mountain, circled by rising mists, seemed to float in the darkening sky, and Jack, with that feeling of perfect content and peace which kings can never know unless they are anglers, stowed away his flies, unjointed his rod, while Yang shouldered the catch.

It was a happy couple that went down the Tenajo canon that evening. The moon smiled upon them; an owl hooted enviously; Jack softly whistled a strain from Schubert, while Yang made the towering rocks echo and re-echo to the joyous banging of the pistol.

The fish were dressed, supper eaten, Yang’s tin dishes washed, and everything was snug for the night. Jack, stretched beneath a giant pine and smoking his evening pipe, was watching the weird play of the firelight in the canopy of foliage above. The Celestial appeared.

“Me heap lonesome, got no more cartridges; you no care; go down hotel stay Chinaboy to-night.”

Unselfish, devoted, and charitable as Yang claimed to be, he could hardly pretend to heroism. The Chinaman was permitted to go, and Jack, appropriating the Judgess’ hammock, turned in. This hammock owed Jack a lodging. All the way across the plains, and up the mountains, and in the valley, that hammock had almost nightly collapsed. Perhaps the Judge did not know how to tie a knot; perhaps the ample physique of the Judgess was too much for any knot, but the thing kept occurring, to the great discomfiture of the Judgess and all the rest of the party. As Jack, with his feet at the fire, and his head on a sack of barley, lay studying the midnight heavens, there would come a shock as of an earthquake. The Judge was a little deaf and after a night or two of experience, would lie just beyond reach of whatever member his better half could disentangle with which to punch him. First, his Reverence would be summoned; but he slept the sleep of the just. Then cries for Ah Yang and the others would follow. Yang was too wise a Chinaman to awaken. Jack sometimes rolled over and kicked the Doctor till he roused, and the good lady hearing his exclamations, claimed his assistance; but sometimes Jack also shed his blankets and relieved the massive limbs from a state of suspension.

With content Jack rolled himself in the hammock. Never had he slept in such profound solitude. The nearest camp was far away down the valley; and towards the east, beyond the mountain-barrier, nothing but the wild desert, and solitary, sage-clad hills of Nevada.

The river murmured over the pebbles, the pines faintly whispered, and that was all. For once he was alone, and oh! the peace of it! Was it such a night as this that tempted men to leave their fellows for a hermitage? Such visions came to him as seldom visit men beneath a roof. At last he slept, and dreamed of the first trout he had killed in a little New England meadow-brook. He was filling a creel with bass from a fair Wisconsin lake. He was in a plunger off Montauk Point, striking the blue-fish. He was trolling for pike through Champlain, and casting a fly from a canoe on Adirondack waters.

The South Dome was glowing in the ruddy morning light; a flock of blackbirds were piping cheerily; an odor of fried trout and coffee was in the air, and Yang was tugging at the blankets, and saying:

“Come, you heap laze, bleakfast all leddy. Git up!”

What a dinner Yang and Jack had in readiness for the party that night! The Judge and spouse, after much pressing, had come. The lady could not withstand the trout, especially on a Friday. The judicial pair arrived just as Madge and his Reverence raced into camp on the sturdy mules. The Doctor and guide followed. Madge’s cheeks were glowing, her eyes sparkling, and her tongue rattling, as she leaped from her saddle. “Such a time as they had had! His Reverence had been a duck, and the Doctor for once had behaved himself and kept civil.” She gave her hand to the Judgess, but kissed the Judge.

At Yang’s summons, a jovial company sat down to such a table as campers in the Sierras seldom see. Madge was in ecstasies, and even the Judgess expressed approval. There was real damask upon it, with napkins and silver forks and wine from the hotel, with all sorts of garnitures of Yang’s contrivance.

The dinner began, continued, and ended with fish; but fish cooked in every way which Oriental imagination could devise, and camp facilities permit. Even “Simpson’s Fish Dinner,” of seven courses, in Billingsgate, could not surpass it. The Judgess, having disposed of about a dozen fish, remarked that, after all, these were _only_ California trout, and entirely lacked the flavor, as they lacked the beauty, of their Eastern cousins. She thought, however, that Yang’s salad—of cresses from the Merced—was not bad; but wine—even if it was champagne—when sipped from a tin cup, left much to be desired. Alas! Jack had forgotten to borrow the glasses.

All that evening, around the camp-fire, the party listened to an account of the catch. The Doctor did not hesitate to express his entire disbelief in the story. It was his opinion that Jack had hired the Indians to fish for him, and bribed Yang to hold his tongue. Then Yang spoke:

“You think you heap smart. Jack heap sabee how fish, and you no sabee, but me sabee you. Last Fliday you go fish, and when me water horse, see Injun sellee you fish. I sabee _you_.”

In the peals of laughter which followed, the Doctor went away to his blankets muttering. So the trout the Judgess had enjoyed a week before were not the Doctor’s catching, after all.

A week longer the party lingered in the valley. Madge and his Reverence became quite expert with the fly. The lake seemed to have yielded all its finny treasures to Jack, but the Merced afforded ample sport. Many strings of trout were sent to fellow-campers, and to friends at the hotel; and one little hamper made the long journey by stage and rail to San Francisco.

The “trout-camp” became famous in the valley, and paragraphs noticing the catch appeared in the _Stockton Independent_, and even in the _Sacramento Bee_. Jack had accomplished his purpose, and had not come to the Yosemite in vain.

Then the prairie schooner sailed away through the mountains, Madge and his Reverence driving by turns, while the Judge held his ponderous foot on the brake. Yang was mounted on a mustang, while the doctor and Jack trudged through the dust. Frequent halts were made, the Judgess taking her noon-day siesta; the “three fishers,” as she called Madge, his Reverence and Jack, striking out for some neighboring stream. Near the Tuolumne big trees his Reverence took the largest trout of the trip—a four-pounder. On the Tuolumne Biver the three met with fair success; but on the upper waters of the Stanislaus the sport was better. They tarried by the stream winding through that dead little mining town, Big Oak Flat. The banks of the little river were honey-combed by the old placer mining. The population of the Flat wondered to see Madge cast a fly. Even the Chinamen who were still washing for gold, would throw aside their cradles and pans to gaze.

An ancient beau of the town stranded there fifteen years ago (such a man as Bret Harte would have gloried in), became so enamored with the fair angler that he would have followed in her wake; but the fickle object of his admiration eluded her admirer, and the miner sadly headed his mustang toward his mountain home, promising to call “next time he went to ’Frisco.” The schooner dropped anchor in Oakland. The Judge asked all to dine with him that day week—“a sort of a re-union, _as it were_, you know.” His Reverence hastened to don something more in keeping with his cloth than a blue shirt; Madge threw a kiss to Jack as the Doctor handed her into a carriage; and Jack was left to cross the ferry alone. Yang, however, had not abandoned him. He produced a piece of red paper and asked Jack to write his address upon it.

“I hab one fliend who come get your washee Monday.”

Jack, inured to submission, could not refuse, and Yang’s “fliend” still does his “washee.”

Since the Yosemite excursion Jack has trailed salmon flies on the noble Columbia River, and whipped the California trout streams from the cactus-covered plains of the Mexican border to the glaciers of Mount Shasta, but he has never had such keen enjoyment with the fly as on that afternoon at Mirror Lake.

When he arranges his tackle for a little holiday sport on the Russian River, or the streams among the red woods of Santa Cruz, he sees again the reflected fir-trees and granite dome trembling in the water as the trout leap to his fly; he again hears Yang’s ejaculations and commands. “Fifty-sleven, Jack. Hi! that big fish; fifty-eight. You _heap_ sabee. Hold him tight.’Rusalem, him sabee how swim! Pull like hella, fifty-nine!”

“Trout take some flies because they resemble the real fly on which they feed. They take other flies for no such reason.”—_W. C. Prime._

“The oft-repeated quotation, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ has been misconstrued for many a long day, and if I had known early in life its real significance it would hardly have made so doleful an impression. There is no doubt to-day in my mind that this ‘rod’ meant a _fishing-rod_, and the timely cherishing of it in youth tends to develop the portion of one’s nature to which the former use was entirely innocent.”—_Thomas Sedgwick Steele._

“My favorite fly of all is a snipe feather and mouse body.”—“_Frank Forester_.”

31. Cinnamon.

32. Deerfly.

33. Red Fox.

34. Camlet Dun.

35. Governor.

36. Green Drake.

37. Alder.

38. Cheney.

39. Soldier.

40. Hod.

41. Kingdom.

42. Oak Fly.

43. Gray Coflin.

44. Fire Fly.

45. Beaverkill.

46. Yellow May.

47. Black Jun.

48. Quaker.

“Often the whereabouts of a trend is betrayed by a break or a leap from the surface, and the wide-awake angler will make it his business to toss his fly over the spot sooner or later. Sometimes the trout rush at the lure like a flash, leaping clear over it in their eagerness. They are difficult to hook then.”—_Charles Hallock._

“No description of the brook trout, that has ever been given, does him justice. It stands unrivalled as a game fish.”—_Theodatus Garlick, M.D._

“The best flies to use are imitations of those which are born on the water; for, though trout will often take land flies, and indeed almost any insect you can throw on the water, yet it is on the water-flies which he chiefly depends for his sustenance.”—_Francis Francis_.

“A trout does not always get the fly when he attempts to; it may be lying against the leader, making it impossible for him to get it in his mouth; you may strike too quickly, taking it out of reach; the strike may be too hard, tearing his mouth. More trout by far are pricked than hooked. Practice only can teach you when to strike; you see a faint gleam under the surface, when you instinctively twitch, to find you have hooked a beauty. Few fishermen can separate force from quickness of motion. Never use your arm in making the strike, only your wrist; then will the difficulty be overcome.”— _T. S. Up de Graff, M.D._

“Innocent stranger! Thou who readest these lines! perhaps you never caught a trout. If so, thou knowest not for what life was originally intended. Thou art a vain, insignificant mortal! pursuing shadows! Ambition lures thee, fame dazzles, wealth leads thee on, panting! Thou art chasing spectres, goblins that satisfy not. If thou hast not caught a trout, this world is to thee, as yet, a blank, existence is a dream. Go and weep.”—_Thaddeus Norris._

“On one occasion the writer was awakened at a very early hour, when, lo! Mr. Webster, who happened to be in a particularly playful mood, was seen going through the graceful motions of an angler throwing a fly and striking a trout, and then, without a word, disappeared. As a matter of course, that day was given to fishing.”—_Lawman’s Life of Webster_.

HOW TO CAST A FLY.

By Seth Green.

I am asked a great many times what is the secret of fly-casting? There are three principles. First, quick out of the water; second, give the line time to straighten behind you; third, throw. I will explain these principles more definitely.

Raise your rod straight up, or nearly so, the inclination being backward; then make a quick stroke forward. When you take the line from the water it should be done with a quick jerk; then give your line time to straighten behind; then give it the same stroke forward that you did to get it out of the water.

Why so many fail in fly-casting is, they throw the rod backward too near the ground behind them, and when they make the forward stroke, and the line gets straightened out, it is some distance above the water and kinks back, so that when it falls upon the water it lies crooked, and is some distance short of what it would have been if it had struck the water as soon as it was straightened out.

If a fish should strike at your flies at this time you are pretty sure to miss him. By never throwing your rod back more than to a slight angle from the perpendicular, and making the stroke forward, your line goes straight out and the flies go to the point you desire.

Great care should be taken when you have thrown the line behind you, that the line is given time to straighten before making the stroke forward. I have thrown seventy feet of line against a strong wind, first, by giving my rod a quick, strong back stroke, carrying my rod but slightly back of the perpendicular, and giving my line time to straighten behind me, then making the same stroke forward that I did to get it back of me.

I nearly forgot to mention that it is more important to have your line fit your rod than it is to have your coat fit your back.

You may think it strange that I should tell you three or four times over in the same article, that in order to do good fly-casting you must throw your rod back only just so far, and then wait for your line to straighten behind you; and when your line is straight, to make a quick stroke forward, without carrying your rod forward, even a little, before delivering your line, but these movements are the essential principles in flycasting. By observing them one may hope to become a skilful fly-caster.

TROUT:

MEETING THEM ON THE “JUNE RISE” BY “NESSMUK.”

There is a spot where plumy pines

O’erhang the sylvan banks of Otter;

Where wood-ducks build among the vines

That bend above the crystal water.

And there the blue-jay makes her nest,

In thickest shade of water beeches;

The fish-hawk, statuesque in rest,

Keeps guard o’er glassy pools and reaches.

Tis there the deer come down to drink,

From laurel brakes and wooded ridges;

The trout, beneath the sedgy brink,

Are sharp on ship-wrecked flies and midges.

And of the scores of mountain trout-streams that I have fished, the Otter is associated with the most pleasing memories.

It is, or was, a model trout-stream; a thing to dream of. Having its rise within three miles of the Tillage, it meandered southward for ten miles through a mountain valley to its confluence with the second fork of Pine Creek, six miles of the distance being through a forest without settler or clearing.

The stream was swift, stony, and exceptionally free of brush, fallen timber and the usual _débris_ that is so trying to the angler on most wooded streams. Then, it was just the right distance from town. It was so handy to start from the Tillage in the middle of an afternoon in early summer, walk an hour and a half at a leisurely pace, and find one’s self on a brawling brook where speckled trout were plenty as a reasonable man could wish.

Fishing only the most promising places for a couple of miles always gave trout enough for supper and breakfast, and brought the angler to the “Trout-House,” as a modest cottage of squared logs was called, it being the last house in the clearings and owned by good-natured Charley Datis, who never refused to entertain fishermen with the best his little house afforded. His accommodations were of the narrowest, but also of the neatest, and few women could fry trout so nicely as Mrs. Davis. True, there was only one spare bed, and, if more than two anglers desired lodgings, they were relegated to the barn, with a supply of buffalo skins and blankets. On a soft bed of sweet hay this was all that could be desired by way of lodgings, with the advantage of being free from mosquitoes and punkies. The best of rich, yellow butter with good bread were always to be had at Charley’s, and his charges were 12½ cents for meals, and the same for lodging.

The two miles of fishing above the “Trout-House” led through clearings, and the banks were much overgrown with willows, making it expedient to use bait, or a single fly. I chose the latter: my favorite bug for such fishing being the red hackle, though I am obliged to confess that the fellow who used a white grub generally beat me.

But the evening episode was only preliminary; it meant a pleasant walk, thirty or forty brook-trout for supper and breakfast, and a quiet night’s rest. The real angling commenced the next morning at the bridge, with a six-mile stretch of clear, cold, rushing water to fish. My old-fashioned creel held an honest twelve pounds of dressed trout, and I do not recollect that I ever missed filling it, with time to spare, on that stretch of water. Nor, though I could sometimes fill it in a forenoon, did I ever continue to fish after it _was_ full. Twelve pounds of trout is enough for any but a trout-hog.

But the peculiar phase of trout lore that most interested me, was the “run” of trout that were sure to find their way up stream whenever we had a flood late in May or the first half of June. They were distinct and different from the trout that came up with the early spring freshets. Lighter in color, deeper in body, with smaller heads, and better conditioned altogether.

They could be distinguished at a glance; the individuals of any school were as like as peas in color and size, and we never saw them except on a summer flood. The natives called them river trout. They came in schools of one hundred to five times as many, just as the flood was subsiding, and they had a way of halting to rest at the deep pools and spring-holes along their route. Lucky was the angler who could find them at rest in a deep pool, under a scooped out bank, or at the foot of a rushing cascade. At such times they seemed to lose their usual shyness, and would take the fly or worm indifferently, until their numbers were reduced more than one-half. To “meet them on the June rise” was the ardent desire of every angler who fished the streams which they were accustomed to ascend. These streams were not numerous. The First, Second, and Third Forks of Pine Creek, with the Otter, comprised the list so far as I know. And no man could be certain of striking a school at any time; it depended somewhat on judgment, but more on luck. Two or three times I tried it on the Otter and missed; while a friend who had the pluck and muscle to make a ten-mile tramp over the mountain to Second Fork took forty pounds of fine trout from a single school. It was a hoggish thing to do; but he was a native and knew no reason for letting up.

At length my white day came around. There was a fierce rain for three days, and the raging waters took mills, fences and lumber down stream in a way to be remembered. Luckily it also took the lumbermen the same way, and left few native anglers at home. When the waters had subsided to a fair volume, and the streams had still a suspicion of milkiness, I started at 3 P.M. of a lovely June afternoon for the Trout-House. An easy two hours walk, an hour of delightful angling, and I reached the little hostelry with three dozen brook trout, averaging about seven inches in length only, but fresh and sweet, all caught on a single red hackle, which will probably remain my favorite bug until I go over the last carry (though I notice it has gone well out of fashion with modern anglers).

A supper of trout; an evening such as must be seen and felt to be appreciated; trout again for breakfast, with a dozen packed for lunch, and I struck in at the bridge before sunrise for an all day bout, “to meet ’em on the June rise.” I didn’t do it. I took the entire day to whip that six miles of bright, dashing water. I filled a twelve-pound creel with trout, putting back everything under eight inches. I put back more than I kept. I had one of the most enjoyable days of my life; I came out at the lower bridge after sundown—and I had not seen or caught one fresh-run river trout. They were all the slender, large-mouthed, dark-mottled fish of the gloomy forest, with crimson spots like fresh drops of blood. But I was not discouraged. Had the trout been there I should have met them. I walked half a mile to the little inn at Babb’s, selected a dozen of my best fish for supper and breakfast, gave away the rest, and, tired as a hound, slept the sleep of the just man.

At 4 o’clock the next morning I was on the stream again, feeling my way carefully down, catching a trout at every cast, and putting them mostly back with care, that they might live; but’ for an hour no sign of a fresh-run river trout.

Below the bridge there is a meadow, the oldest clearing on the creek; there are trees scattered about this meadow that are models of arborial beauty, black walnut, elm, ash, birch, hickory, maple, etc. Most of them grand, spreading trees. One of them, a large, umbrageous yellow-birch, stood on the left bank of the stream, and was already in danger of a fall by

“The swifter current that mined its roots.”

It was here I met them on the June rise.

I dropped my cast of two flies just above the roots of the birch, and on the instant, two fresh-run, silver-sided, red-spotted trout immolated themselves, with a generous self-abnegation that I shall never forget.

Standing there on that glorious June morning, I made cast after cast, taking, usually, two at each cast. I made no boyish show of “playing” them. They were lifted out as soon as struck. To have fooled with them would have tangled me, and very likely have scattered the school.

It was old-time angling; I shall not see it again.

My cast was a red hackle for tail-fly, with something like the brown hen for hand-fly. I only used two, with four-foot leader; and I was about the only angler who used a fly at all in those days, on these waters.

I fished about one hour. I caught sixty-four trout, weighing thirteen and three quarter pounds. I caught too many. I was obliged to _string_ some of them, as the creel would not hold them all. But my head was moderately level. When I had caught as many as I thought right I held up; and I said, if any of these natives get on to this school, they will take the last trout, if it be a hundred pounds. And they will _salt them down_. So when I was done, and the fishing was good as at the start, I cut a long “staddle,” with a bush at the top, and I just went for that school of trout. I chevied, harried and scattered them, up stream and down, until I could not see a fish. Then I packed my duffle and went to the little inn for breakfast. Of course every male biped was anxious to know “where I met ’em.” I told them truly; and they started, man and boy, for the “Big Birch,” with beech rods, stiff linen lines,’ and a full stock of white grubs.

I was credibly informed afterward, that these backwoods cherubs did not succeed in “Meeting ’em on the June rise.” I have a word to add, which is not important though it may be novel.

There is a roaring, impetuous brook emptying into Second Fork, called “Rock Run.” It heads in a level swamp, near the summit of the mountain. The swamp contains about forty acres, and is simply a level bed of loose stones, completely overgrown with bright green moss.

“Rock Run” heads in a strong, ice-cold spring, but is soon sunken and lost among the loose stones of the swamp. Just where the immense hemlocks, that make the swamp a sunless gloom, get their foothold, is one of the things I shall never find out. But, all the same, they are there. And “Rock Run” finds its way underground for 80 rods with never a ray of sunlight to illumine its course. Not once in its swamp course does it break out to daylight. You may follow it by its heavy gurgling, going by ear; but you cannot see the water. Now remove the heavy coating of moss here and there, and you may see glimpses of dark, cold water, three or four feet beneath the surface. Drop a hook, baited with angle-worm down these dark watery holes, and it will be instantly taken by a dark, crimson-spotted specimen of simon pure Salmo fontinalis. They are small, four to six inches in length, hard, sweet; the _beau ideal_ of mountain trout. Follow this subterranean brook for eighty rods, and you find it gushing over the mountain’s brink in a cascade that no fish could or would attempt to ascend. Follow the roaring brook down to its confluence with Second Fork, and you will not find one trout in the course of a mile. The stream is simply a succession of falls, cascades, and rapids, up which no fish can beat its way for one hundred yards. And yet at the head of this stream is a subterranean brook stocked with the finest specimens of _Salmo fontinalis_. They did not breed on the mountain top. They _cannot_ ascend the stream. Where did they originate? When, and how did they manage to get there? I leave the questions to _savans_ and _naturalists_. As for myself, I state the fact—still demonstrable—for the trout are yet there. But I take it to be one of the conundrums “no fellah can ever find out.”

P. S.—A word as to bugs, lures, flies, etc. Now I have no criticism to offer as regards flies or lures. I saw a Gotham banker in 1880, making a cast on Third lake, with a leader that carried _twelve_ flies. Why not? He enjoyed it; and he caught some trout. Even the guides laughed at him. I did not: he rode his hobby, and he rode it well. Fishing beside him, with a five-dollar rod, I caught two trout to his one. What did he care? He came out to enjoy himself after his own fashion, and he did it. Like myself, he only cared for the sport—the recreation and enough trout for supper. (I cannot cast twelve flies.)

Now my favorite lures—with forty years’ experience—stand about thus. Tail fly, red hackle; second, brown hen; third, Romeyn. Or, tail fly, red ibis; second, brown hackle; third, queen of the waters. Or, red hackle, queen, royal coachman. Sometimes trout will not rise to the fly. I respect their tastes. I use then—tail fly, an angle worm, with a bit of clear pork for the head, and a white miller for second. If this fails I go to camp and sleep. I am not above worms and grubs, but prefer the fly. _And I take but what I need for present use_. Can all brother anglers say the same?

“It has so happened that all the public services that I have rendered in the world, in my day and generation, have been connected with the general government. I think I ought to make an exception. I was ten days a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and I turned my thoughts to the search of some good object in which I could be useful in that position; and after much reflection I introduced a bill which, with the consent of both houses of the Legislature, passed into a law, and is now a law of the State, which enacts that no man in the State shall catch trout in any manner than in the old way, with an ordinary hook and line.”—_Daniel Webster_.

“If you do not know a river it is always most desirable to have someone with you who does.”—_Francis Francis_.

49. The Teal.

50. Reuben Wood.

51. Red Spinner.

52. No. 68.

53. Hawthorne.

54. Dorset.

55. Widow.

56. Grasshopper.

57. Stebbins.

58. March Brown.

59. Shoemaker.

60. Orange Black.

61. King of the Water.

62. Gen: Hooker.

63. Gray Drake.

“The angler atte the leest, hath his holsom walke, and mery at his ease, a swete ayre of the swete savoure of the mede floures, that makyth him hungry; he hereth the melodyous armony of fowles; he seeth the yonge swannes, heerons, duck’s, cotes, and many other fowles, wyth theyr brodes; whyche me semyth better than allé the noyse of houndys, the blastes of hornys, and the scrye of foulis, that hunters, fawkeners, and fowlers can make. And if the angler take fysshe; surely, thenne, is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte.”—_Dame Juliana Berners._

“Skill, and trained skill at that, does the good work, and the angler’s score is just in proportion to his knowledge of ‘how to do it.’”—_Wm. C. Harris._

“A gray-haired bait-fisher is very rare, while the passion for fly-easting, whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it feeds upon, and continues a source of the highest pleasure even after the grasshopper becomes a burden.”—_George Dawson._

“It is not the number of fish he captures that makes the angler contented, for the true angler can enjoy the mere casting of the fly if he has only an occasional fish to reward his efforts.”—“_Random Casts._”

“The great charm of fly-fishing for trout is derived from the fact that you then see the movements of your fish, and if you are not an expert hand, the chances are that you will capture but one out of the hundred that may rise to your hook. You can seldom save a trout unless you strike the very instant that he leaps. The swiftness with which a trout can dart from his hiding-place after a fly is truly astonishing; and we never see one perform this operation without feeling an indescribable thrill quivering through our frame.”—_Charles Lanman_.

“There is nothing grovelling in fly-fishing—nothing gross or demoralizing.”—_Charles Hallock_.

“Angling is a maist innocent, poetical, moral and religious amusement. Gin I saw a fisher gruppin creelfu’ after creelfu’ o’ trouts, and then flingin’ them a’ awa among the heather and the brackens on his way hame, I micht begin to suspee that the idiot was by nature rather a savage. But as for me, I send presents to my freens, and devour dizzens on dizzens every week in the family—maistly dune in the pan, wi’ plenty o’ fresh butter and roun’ meal—sae that prevents the possibility o’ cruelty in my fishin’, and in the fishin’ o’ a’ reasonable creatures.”—_James Hogg_.

WHY PETER WENT A-FISHING.

By W. C. Prime.

Never was night more pure, never was sea more winning; never were the hearts of men moved by deeper emotions than on that night and by that sea when Peter and John, and other of the disciples, were waiting for the Master.

Peter said, “I go a-fishing.” John and Thomas, and James and Nathanael, and the others, said, “We will go with you,” and they went.

Some commentators have supposed and taught that, when Peter said, “I go a-fishing,” he announced the intention of returning to the ways in which he had earned his daily bread from childhood; that his Master was gone, and he thought that nothing remained for him but the old, hard life of toil, and the sad labor of living.

But this seems scarcely credible, or consistent with the circumstances. The sorrow which had weighed down the disciples when gathered in Jerusalem on that darkest Sabbath day of all the Hebrew story, had given way to joy and exultation in the morning when the empty tomb revealed the hitherto hidden glory of the resurrection, joy which was ten-fold increased by are interview with the risen Lord, and confirmed by his direction, sending them into Galilee to await Him there. And thus it seems incredible that Peter and John—John, the beloved—could have been in any such gloom and despondency as to think of resuming their old employment at this time, when they were actually waiting for His coming, who had promised to meet them.

Probably they were on this particular evening weary with earnest expectancy, yet not satisfied; tired of waiting and longing, and looking up the hillside on the Jerusalem road for His appearance; and I have no doubt that, when this weariness became exhausting, Peter sought on the water something of the old excitement that he had known from boyhood, and that to all the group it seemed a fitting way in which to pass the long night before them, otherwise to be weary as well as sleepless.

If one could have the story of that night of fishing, of the surrounding scenes, the conversation in the boat, the unspoken thoughts of the fishermen, it would make the grandest story of fishing that the world has ever known. Its end was grand when in the morning the voice of the Master came over the sea, asking them the familiar question, in substance the same which they, like all fishermen, had heard a thousand times, “Have you any fish?”

* * * * *

The memory of this scene is not unfitting to the modern angler. Was it possible to forget it when I first wet a line in the water of the Sea of Galilee? Is it any less likely to come back to me on any lake among the hills when the twilight hides the mountains, and overhead the same stars look on our waters that looked on Gennesaret, so that the soft night air feels on one’s forehead like the dews of Hermon?

I do not think that this was the last, though it be the last recorded fishing done by Peter or by John. I don’t believe these Galilee fishermen ever lost the love for their old employment. It was a memorable fact for them that the Master had gone a-fishing with them on the day that He called them to be His disciples; and this latest meeting with Him in Galilee, the commission to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” and the words so startling to John, “If I will that he tarry till I come,”—words which He must have recalled when He uttered that last longing cry, “Even so come, Lord”—all these were associated with that last recorded fishing scene on the waters of Gennesaret.

Fishermen never lose their love for the employment, and it is notably true that the men who fish for a living love their work quite as much as those who fish for pleasure love their sport. Find an old fisherman, if you can, in any sea-shore town, who does not enjoy his fishing. There are days, without doubt, when he does not care to go out, when he would rather that need did not drive him to the sea; but keep him at home a few days, or set him at other labor, and you shall see that he longs for the toss of the swell on the reef, and the sudden joy of a strong pull on his line. Drift up along side of him in your boat when he is quietly at his work, without his knowing that you are near. You can do it easily. He is pondering solemnly a question, of deep importance to him, and he has not stirred eye, or hand, or head for ten minutes. But see that start and sharp jerk of his elbow, and now hear him talk, not to you—to the fish. He exults as he brings him in, yet mingles his exultation with something of pity as he baits his hook for another. Could you gather the words that he has in many years flung on the sea winds, you would have a history of his life and adventures, mingled with very much of his inmost thinking, for he tells much to the sea and the fish that he would never whisper in human ears. Thus the habit of going a-fishing always modifies the character. The angler, I think, dreams of his favorite sport oftener than other men of theirs.