242 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



were quite young, not being over eight or nine inches in 

 length ; or the markings might have been obliterated by the 

 alcohol in which they were preserved. 



In a recent publication (" Game Fish of the North"), the 

 author, who writes over the name of " Barnwell," says, when 

 speaking of fishing for Canadian Trout on the way from 

 Chatham to Bathurst : " In case you should be too late to 

 reach Bathurst the same day, or have leisure on your hands, 

 stop at the Half Way House, on the Tabasintac, which has the 

 last syllable accentuated, and fish that night and next morn- 

 ing for Sea Trout. They are taken from a horse-boat in 

 abundance and of great size." 



After reading the above, I concluded, last summer in visit- 

 ing the Nipissiguit, to take " Barnwell's" advice, but was puz- 

 zled as to what he meant by a " horse-boat ;" after thinking 

 the matter over, though, I came to the conclusion that the 

 Tabasintac was a river of some size, crossed by means of an 

 old-fashioned horse ferry -\i02ct, from which an angler had 

 nothing to do but cast his flies, and take wheelbarrow-loads 

 of three and four pound Trout. Judge of my surprise, when 

 I found the Tabasintac, at the Half- Way House, a shallow 

 brook crossed by a wooden bridge of a single span ; that 

 there was no fishing worth stopping for, unless one would 

 make up his mind to go five or six miles down the brook, 

 where it joined another stream of the same size, which would 

 occupy a whole day, or necessitate one's staying all night at 

 the junction, if he started in the afternoon; and then with a 

 certainty of being stung terribly by mosquitoes, and bled 

 copiously by black flies. I also found that Barnwell's " horse- 

 boat" was a large, leaky old " dug-out," made of two huge 

 logs, joined together with wooden pins, and drawn up and 

 down the bed of the brook by a pair of stout horses, the bot- 

 tom grating over the pebbles, and bumping along over the 



