DIES PISCATORI^. 505 



front of it, is hot, if the nights are warm ; or one of hemlock 

 boughs, which is like a patent ventilator or a refrigerator, if 

 the nights are cold. There is a pleasing novelty associated 

 with this " happy-go-lncky" waj of living, if the time does 

 not extend beyond a few days or a week. A couple of us 

 once set up our shanty, or rather our guide did it for us, at a 

 place known as the " Indian Clearing," eight or nine miles 

 from Satterlee's, on the Jessup River. It was a beautiful 

 eminence of four or five hundred acres, covered with ferns. 

 In olden times the tribe of St. Regis Indians made it their 

 chief abode, and their lodges covered the top of the hill. We 

 made our shanty on the wooded slope, within hearing of the 

 rapids, to avoid the cool night winds. My recollection of the 

 scene has been refreshed by reading some beautiful lines in 

 Hiawatha, — shall I repeat them to you ? 



Nor. I don't like Longfellow's hexameters, they jingle like 

 the song of "The Nigger Gin'ral," that Old Dick Cooper used 

 to sing with his banjo accompaniment, — go on and tell us 

 about the fishing. 



Nes. You are no poet. — Well, when you fish the ripples, 

 you wade of course; but there is not a great deal of rough 

 water in that part of the country, though there are some rifts 

 on Jessup River and the outlets of some of the lakes. All the 

 month of June you have great sport in the rapids, but after 

 that time there is apt to be but little water on them, and the 

 fish are found mostly in deep, still water, where cool spring 

 brooks enter. In the early part of June I have filled a large 

 creel during the last hour of an afternoon by fishing the 

 rapids, but in that space of time the flies have taken the 

 angler as often as the fish have taken his flies, and with 

 slapping and scratching, you are glad when at sundown you 

 see the guide away down the river under the lee of a good 



