Fishing in the Air 67 



joined, they would form a continuous line reaching from the 

 Mackenzie River to the constellation of the fish. There 

 was also, if I remember aright, an exact computation in tons, 

 on the amount of metal lost in hooks on these fishes which 

 got away. All of this suggests that there is a wide and 

 comprehensive field for the teller of fish stories, if only he 

 will take advantage of it, remembering all the while that 

 to the honest angler not all fishing is catching fish. 



This sentiment, whether founded on a logical reason or 

 not, has often appealed to me, especially when the wind was 

 in the east and the fish were not biting readily. At such times 

 the angler is forced to turn his mind to other things than 

 flies or lures, and pass, figuratively, from fields of flowers to 

 fields of singing naiiads, as did Piscator and his friend ; all 

 of which recalls a day on the Florida coast when drifting on 

 the edge of a vast patch of the seaweed called sargassum, 

 which floats upon the Sargasso Sea, about which so much 

 mystery and romance has gathered. 



The floating island into which I had forced my boat was 

 cut and traversed by a maze of mimic rivers as rich and 

 deep in cobalt blue as was the Florida sky above it. The 

 garden of sargassum, acres in extent, was a world in itself, 

 extending away, a map of rich olive hue, through which, 

 here and there, the blue ocean showed — a rare and radiant 

 mosaic, sapphires of some titan mine set en cabuchon in 

 fields of emerald. The wind was dead, the sun blazing, and 

 rays of light and color appeared to be dancing from the mass 

 where the long swells of ocean came rolling in; waves of 

 blue in the open, waves of green as they reached the sar- 

 gassum, lifting it in splendid billows of color, rolling on and 

 eternally on, the breathing, sighing, of the sea. 



The little blue winding rivers were wide enough for me to 

 scull my dinghy in, and I was presently several hundred 

 feet from the edge of the shore line, or end of my sapphire 

 river. Standing in the blazing quiet I looked around. A 

 hundred miles and more from land, nothing in sight but the 



