The Trout of Los Laurelles 97 



way, then coming out into the open, gleaming and scintillat- 

 ing, to quickly dart under the trees again. And so, as the 

 angler waded down, casting, playing, losing fish, or catch- 

 ing them, he passed from sunlight to shadow, and out again, 

 continually, while new vistas of the ranges and valley were 

 constantly coming into view. Then the valley widened out 

 into a vast green river of verdure, fields of oats, barley 

 and wheat rippled in the sun, and little ranch houses clus- 

 tered beneath big oaks. 



The valley seemed terraced here with mesas' rising one 

 above the other, with deep canons which broke through the 

 range, and reached other fertile valleys far beyond, so that 

 the little river starting in the wilds of the upper range, now 

 flowed peacefully through miniature towns, by ranch houses, 

 under the live oaks ; and every rancher in all that fair valley 

 seemed to have his trout pool. 



The best fishing I found along the shadows where the 

 verdure came down and hung upon the water, and again 

 over little riffles where the river glided over polished rocks 

 and left a little vantage point in which a trout could poise 

 waiting for its prey, unreal or substantial. Sometimes the 

 brush was so thick that I was forced to climb the cliff and 

 walk around, from which point of vantage the entire valley 

 could be seen; and amid the trees, bits of river, like emer- 

 alds in settings of turquoise, and above, the high mountains, 

 and over all, distant vistas of the Santa Lucia and Gabilan 

 melting into blue and tender tints far over the edge of the 

 world. And so, casting and wading, now and again riding, 

 I followed the Rio Carmelo down toward the sea, where a 

 little laguna within the sand dunes holds the waters ; where 

 the steelheads or salmon trout, in the fall, winter and spring, 

 come in from the outer sea, where I have seen them five 

 miles offshore. 



Little wonder the padres of old cast the fortunes of San 

 Carlos Borromeo by this fair stream and valley — one of 

 the garden spots of California, where the wind is soft. 



