298 Fish Stories 



to come. How the ardent angler strolls through the woods 

 and fields days before, studying the conditions which are to 

 make or unmake his angling joys; wonders if the water is 

 too high, or too low, if the season has been too cold, and if 

 some enemy of man and trout has, despite the laws, been 

 fishing all winter. 



But in time the day of days arrives, and the angler is 

 away, all the expectations of a long winter, the longings for 

 spring days filling his heart and soul. The air is soft, the 

 brook sings to him in the ripples, the leaves rustle a lan- 

 guage he understands or interprets as a welcome from 

 Nature. There may be men who are proof against all these 

 allurements of spring, but I do not know them, and pray 

 that I never may; the average healthy normal man wel- 

 comes spring and goes a-fishing or afield. 



I conceive myself a lucky angler to have known the forest 

 region of New York, the Catskills and Adirondacks, before 

 its verdure was contaminated by smoke of engine, or the 

 timid loon demoralized by whirring propeller. When I first 

 reached the Adirondacks at the beginning of the chain of 

 lakes to the south, at the foot of Blue Mountain, it was like 

 staging in Oregon to-day around the Klamath region, on 

 the Dead Indian trail. The roads were devised for buck- 

 boards and two horses, the stumps left in the middle. Ned 

 Buntline held forth at Blue Mountain Lake, and there was 

 a little army of guides and woodsmen, to the manner born. 



I well remember the first launch that desecrated these 

 limpid waters, and how when it whistled to arouse the dorm- 

 ant echoes, the oldtimer, who resented the intrusion, came 

 down to the shore and shook his big fists at the skipper as 

 she went by. The inevitable had come ; the lakes and forests 

 are still there, but to wear evening attire in the big hotels 

 among these lakes of pure delight, does not seem really 

 fair to Nature, even to the ardent believer in the conven- 

 tionalities. 



The splendid forest of the Adirondack region still stands, 



