LITERARY WORK AND TRAVEL. 51 



A little before that I was up at St. Regis lake, in the Adirondacks, with H. 

 Polhemus, of Brooklyn, to see him stake out a sportsmen's hotel for Apollo Smith, 

 who is alive yet and frisky at 80 odd. That time I met Mrs. W. H. H. Murray, with 

 "Adirondack Murray." They had a camp of their own at Raquette lake. She 

 talked me down for shooting my .22 at her pet duck, which was paddling 

 about the edge of the water in front. I mistook it for a wild widgeon. When I 

 saw her husband in after years it was at Boston, Montreal and the Guadalupe 

 mountains in Texas, where he was raising horses. 



Your venerable correspondent, "Almo," tells in your last number (SPORTSMEN'S 

 REVIEW) the most wonderful fishing story I ever read of a two and a half hours 

 he and a dog spent in the Scotland highlands in landing a great salmon when 

 he was a youngster. But I have the photo of a boy of twelve who caught a large 

 Otsego bass by his nose in New York state in the 7{Xs while looking over the 

 side of the boat into the water. The bass jumped for it and the boy held on 

 until he had him lifted over the gunwale. He was badly lacerated by its jaws. 

 I do not recall the names of the fishing party. 



In 1879 the English cricketers had great contests at Staten Island, N. Y., and 

 when their secretary, Edwin Brown, was about to return to England with Richard 

 Daft and his party he wrote a compliment to my assistant, Frank Satterthwaite, 

 for cultivating the trans-Atlantic game in this country. He expressed an intense 

 wish for the success of "Forest and Stream." 



Right here may be a good place to correct another prevalent error regarding 

 the fireproof quality of the salamander, which both ancient and modern literature 

 have represented as being able to withstand a degree of heat which would quickly 

 prove fatal to any other form of life. Yet there is something in the fire tradition. 

 I have had myself the most positive ocular evidence that this interesting species 

 of lizard could walk right into fire and not be burned. But my eyes deceived me. 

 This tiny creature, \ve know, like all of its kind, is able to adapt its color to its 

 environment ; and when in the precincts of a charcoal burner in the Tennessee 

 mountains, I saw one of them assume a scarlet hue and walk right into the 

 cincture of white ashes which bordered the red-hot coal's of the woodkiln, I felt 

 convinced that truth had come to the support of allegory and tradition. (Mind, 

 I have not said that I saw him walk into the flame.) However, to be positive, 

 where such momentous issues were at stake, I poked the place where the lizard 

 went in, and almost instantly ousted 1 him out, alive and active. Like the three 

 Israelites in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, there was no smell of fire on its 

 cuticle. It then occurred to me to test the temperature of its ash-bed with my 

 bare finger, and I found it quite tolerable, and not at all disagreeable on a frosty 

 morning up in the mountains. It was certainly a secure hiding-place from almost 

 any other creature than an inquisitive naturalist. It was the last place where one 

 would think of looking for anything but a roast. 



Half a century ago I was a guest of the Messrs. Russell at the Russell 

 House on Palace street. Both were great salmon fishermen. One had a spliced 

 ash rod 18 feet long, in two parts, which became mine by gift. Not very many 

 of my friends of those days are now to be found in Quebec. Sir James LeMoine, 

 however, is one and Mr. John S. Budden was another. Both are still alive in the 

 age of 86, and they write their names to amanuensis letters. Mr. Buden became 

 very intimate with Messrs J. U. Gregory, Geo. M. Fairchild, Jr., E. T. D. Cham- 

 bers, W. C. Hall, Walter Moodie and Col. Rhodes, and with them he fished most 

 of the accessible waters of the district of Quebec. 



