THE AMERICAN TROUT. 37 
streams of Sullivan and Orange counties, and in fact all 
the lower tier of counties in tliis State, before the Erie 
Railroad was built, and opened the land to the crowd of 
market men. I am proud to say I have travelled that 
country when it took the stage coach twelve hours to go 
twenty -four miles, and when, if we were in a hurry, w^e 
walked, and sent our baggage by the coach. ISTow you 
are jerked along high above our favorite meadows, 
directly through our wildest hills, and often under our 
best streams, at the rate of forty miles an hour, and yet 
people call that an improvement. As well might you 
lug a man out of bed at night, drag him a dozen times 
round his room, and fling him back into bed, and say he 
was improved by the operation. 'No one wants to be 
lugged out of bed, precisely as no one wanted to travel 
beyond Sullivan County ; the best shooting and fishing 
in the world was to be found there. 
"When the railroad was first opened, the country was 
literally overrun, and Bashe's Kill, Pine Kill, the Sand- 
berg, the Mon Gaup and Callicoon, and even Beaver 
Kill, which we thought were inexhaustible, were fished 
out. For many years trout had almost ceased from out 
of the waters, but the horrible public, having their 
attention drawn to the Adirondacks, gave it a little rest, 
and now the fishing is good. 
If you go there, stop at George Durrance's, in Wurts- 
borough, and if he boasts of fishing, as he will, ask him 
whethei* he remembers going to the Sandberg one day, 
many years ago, to show a Yorker how to catch trout. 
It was a bright sunshiny day, and as we drove up to the 
edge of the bank, above a clear, rapid, sparkling stream, I 
