FOREST, LAKE, AND RIFER 



In October, 1885, George F. Peabody, now of 

 Sunapee, then a resident of the East Shore, acci- 

 dentally came upon a mid-lake spawning-bed, an 

 acre or two in area, covered with hundreds of the 

 new trout, ranging from three to ten pounds in 

 weight. He promptly notified the Fish Commis- 

 sioners of his find, and specimens were sent to 

 Washington and Cambridge for identification. 

 They proved to be representatives of a highly 

 variable Alpine charr distributed through the 

 Dominion of Canada, Labrador, and Greenland, 

 but whose presence in United States waters was 

 unsuspected. The charr is now believed to be 

 aboriginal to Lake Sunapee, as well as to Flood's 

 Pond, in the town of Otis, near Ellsworth, Maine. 

 The water of both these lakes is deep and excep- 

 tionally pure and cold. Lake Sunapee is a true 

 ancient rock basin, as shown by the natural granite 

 dam at the outlet. It now discharges into the 

 Connecticut River ; but until the receding ice of 

 the last glacial epoch reached, in its sluggish melt 

 toward the north, the lower valley of the Sugar 

 River, the mighty inland sea of primeval times 

 poured into the Merrimack over Newbury Sum- 

 mit, sixty feet higher than the level of the present 

 effluent. Through the Merrimack watershed, 

 while the valley of the Sugar River was as yet 



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