272 Fish Stories 



ten feet above the water, and how they were formed was 

 something of a mystery. Possibly, they suggested the river 

 level long ago, or had been made by Indians. 



There was a little trail leading across Murray Island, 

 which finally joined a trail on the east side, skirted the 

 island and led to an inn and civilization, and the charms 

 of this elysium after half a day on the skiff cannot all be 

 enumerated. There were banks of daisies and other wild 

 flowers, pastures given over to blueberries, rich and good; 

 hollows of brakes and ferns, wild strawberries, picturesque 

 vistas at every hand, where the clear and beautiful river 

 could be seen through the trees. The colors here always 

 seemed marvelous to me, they were so rich, so clear and 

 pure. On one side of the island a mass of wild roses 

 blocked the landing; growing almost, and in some cases, in 

 the water; big single-petaled flowers, redolent with fra- 

 grance. Here we found old friends with their cottage and 

 camp, boathouses and all the appurtenances of modern sum- 

 mer life. If you went to call on the clergyman who had 

 taken three muskallunge, you went by boat. It was a sort 

 of Venice, with St. Lawrence skiffs for gondolas. The 

 grocer came puffing around in a skiff with a two-horse- 

 power engine. The milkman rowed over from his island 

 dairy, and one day I went down to the dock to extend a wel- 

 come to a boatman, and ye gods and fishes ! he was a book 

 agent. There was nothing lacking in this harbor of delights. 



Bill had promised me a wall-eyed pike on a fly, and one 

 evening when we were rowing along the north side of West- 

 minster, not far from the Canada shore, he backed the skiff 

 up to a rocky point where there was deep water with a 

 perceptible current, and I began to cast. I was using an 

 eight-ounce, ten-foot split bamboo, my short black-bass rod 

 which had been tested on a seventeen-pound yellowtail in 

 California in an hour's contest, and one of Andrew Clerk's 

 famous St. Patrick flies from a lot he had given me in one 

 of our many days' fishing, an irresistible dainty, which I 



