152 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



grated by it, thus forming the deep excavations al- 

 hided to. 



My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in 

 a mountain stream. The water was almost as trans- 

 parent as the air, — Avas, indeed, like liquid air ; and 

 as it lay in these wells and pits enveloped in shadow, 

 or lit up by a chance ray of the vertical sun, it was 

 a perpetual feast to the eye, — so cool, so deep, so 

 pure; every reach and pool like a vast spring. You 

 lay down and drank or dipped the water up in your 

 cup, and found it just the right degree of refreshing 

 coldness. One is never prepared for the clearness 

 of the water in these streams. It is always a sur- 

 prise. See them every year for a dozen years, and 

 yet, when you first come upon one, you will utter 

 an exclamation. I saw nothing like it in the Adiron- 

 dacks, nor in Canada. Absolutely without stain or 

 hint of impurity, it seems to magnify like a lens, so 

 that the bed of the stream and the fish in it appear 

 deceptively near. It is rare to find even a trout 

 stream that is not a little " off" color, " as they say of 

 diamonds, but the waters in the section of which I 

 am writing have the genuine ray ; it is the undimmed 

 and untarnished diamond. 



If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream 

 till I found the Rondout. It is the ideal brook. 

 What homes these fish have, what retreats under 

 the rocks, what paved or flagged courts and areas, 

 what crystal depths where no net or snare can reach 

 them ! — no mud, no sediment, but here and there 

 in the clefts and seams of the rock patches of white 

 gravel, — spawning beds ready-made. 



