70 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



Restigouche by our several routes and conveyances. "Great Caesar's Ghost'' received 

 the royal guests, and being duly manned and victualed was towed up stream to the 

 Indian pool with a lounge aboard. 



Ah ! what a marvelous series of pools there is from tide-water to the Kedge- 

 wick, overshadowed for the most part by the high hills which flank the river on both 

 sides and alternate with long stretches of white water which sparkle in the noontide 

 sun. The upper river runs off the divide through sixty miles of broad, level forest, 

 expressing itself in cadences which vary from a murmur to a roar, according to the 

 pitch of the fall, and receiving a small brook here and a rivulet there until it finally 

 mingles with the lusty Tom Kedgewick. which is the larger of the two. 



It is an exhilirating run for a birch canoe, though somewhat gloomy and monoto- 

 nous in cloudy weather. But as soon as ever the river becomes expansive with 

 greater depth and volume and wider bottom the scenery changes rapidly as one 

 passes along, not only from placid pool to impetuous rapid, and from impinging 

 crag to sloping shore, but each rapid has its peculiar moods and features, and each 

 separate landscape some striking point of view. 



It was wild enough, too, in those days, with no trace of human habitation for 

 the entire distance of 120 miles, except old Chane's and Merrill's log shanties, which 

 were a day's journey apart, until we came to John Mowat's, at Dee Side, now in the 

 midst of a fashionable quarter. 



Once. I remember, when careering down the crests of a rattling rapid, one canoe 

 came near striking a big bull moose which stood in mid channel to rid itself of flies, 

 the huge animal not seeming to comprehend the situation of the approaching object 

 or to have the slightest conception of the rapidly diminishing distance as the birch 

 swept on. But for an opportune flip of the paddle we should have hit the brute 

 full in the face ! 



PRINCESS LOUISE AND HER SALMON. 



The sun was off the river when the princess fastened to the big salmon the 

 evening of her arrival, for the hills were so high as to throw their shadows over 

 the surface by four o'clock of the longest day of June. The marquis was occupied 

 upstream and the major below, each with his canoe and Indian guides, and her 

 highness had the fun all to herself and her gaffer for a full hour before her gentle- 

 men friends becajne aware that anything momentous was afloat. By that time the 

 shadows had deepened and the anglers were prepared to reel up for the night. On 

 arriving at the home pool they found the indomitable heroine standing on the bow 

 of "Great Caesar's Ghost" with the stock of her salmon rod pointing skyward and 

 the limber part of it bending over the dark and solemn water in a great big curve, 

 from the point of which the line ran down into the depths, taut as a fiddle string. 

 Her canoe was hauled alongside of the scow. 



She said the fish had been sulking for fully twenty minutes and seemed deter- 

 mined to make a night of it. The water was so deep that her gillie couldn't start 

 him by throwing in stones or prodding at him with the setting pole, and as for 

 lifting at him with the line one might as well think of trying to raise the dead. 

 Was it a very large fish? Indian Joe said, "Suppose him big as one canoe!" Had 

 he showed himself at all? Oh, yes; many times. He had given her ladyship the 

 liveliest sort of a turn. Was she not fatigued, and would not the marquis spell 

 her for a while? 



But the plucky woman declined to share the honors with her husband and held 

 on persistently to the rod. Meanwhile the attitude of the principals remained in 

 status quo. 



