HAMLIN ON THE SALMON OF MAINE. 339 



fill in the hands of the British angler in the rivers of England, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland. There is no reason, so far as I know, why our fish 

 should refuse the bait so tempting to his foreign brethren. Although 

 disturbed at the mouths of the rivers by the fishermen with their weirs 

 and seines, and harassed and injured by the floating sawdust in the 

 current of the streams for a long distance, yet it finds deej), silent pools 

 in tlie upper tributaries, which flow through the primeval forests, where 

 the steps of men are seldom heard. And here, in the very depths. of 

 the forests and among the wildest glens, we might expect that success 

 would attend the eflbrts of the skillful angler, but history records but 

 few instances of it. I remember a party of European sportsmen, who 

 fivshed twenty-five years ago in the undisturbed pools of the Aroostook 

 Eiver, catching but one salmon. I have seen the fish leap high into 

 the bright sunshine after the natural flies as they played near the sur- 

 face of the water on a summer evening, and yet refuse the golden-hued 

 artificial insects of the angler. 



Why the salmon should be so sullen, wary, or capricious I am at loss 

 to comprehend; still, I am willing to admit that it is possible that in 

 other seasons it might take the bait with great readiness. A part of 

 this singular wariness may be due to the injurious effect of sawdust in 

 obstructing the respiration of the fish; for we know that Sir Humphrey 

 JJav.y could catch no salmon in the rivers of iS"orway, whose waters 

 were disturbed by mills and laden with sawdust, yet he was eminently 

 successful in Sweden, where the rivers were clear and unobstructed. 

 On the Seine, the Loire, and other great rivers of France, the anglers 

 cannot raise the salmon with their flies or minnows until they have 

 reached the head-water streams, and all attempts at Paris and Nantes 

 have failed. This circumstance should encourage our fishermen to per- 

 severe in their efforts and seek the fountain-streams of our salmon- 

 rivers. 



But if we cannot boast of our success with the sea-salmon, we may 

 truly exalt over the game qualities of the mysterious fresh- water salmon, 

 which inhabits five of our lake-s^'stems, and which affords as fine sport 

 as the best fish of the Tweed or the Shannon. This fish is less known 

 to anglers than to naturalists, since the latter have quarreled over its 

 classification and made known to themselves the range of its habitat. 

 But the naturalists have been very carefnl not to express themselves on 

 paper, and hence the sporting fraternity have not been able to glean 

 much from the scientific reports concerning the disputed fish. 



Nearly twenty years ago 1 learned from the hunters that the great 

 lakes which supplied the Saint Croix Eiver abounded with little salmon, 

 whose boldness and activity delighted the few sportsmen who had ven- 

 tured to penetrate the lonely forests in which the fishing-places were 

 situated. A wild and extensive district of forest-land surrounded the 

 tributaries and lakes of the western branch of this river, and was unin- 

 habited save by a portion of the Passamaquoddy tribe of Indians. This 



