AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE. 79 



the commercial fishermen and the naturalist a fact which Englishmen, who are 

 always ioremost in such matters, were not slow to discover and avail themselves 

 of. British officers stationed in the provinces were able to enjoy exclusively the 

 delights of the Canadian salmon streams for half a century at least before the 

 unsophisticated settlers or their neighbors in the States were even aware of their 

 existence. Quietly they tossed the "Kippurns," or what-not, into the sequestered 

 pools of a primitive wilderness, and were not envied or disturbed, because, for- 

 sooth, their sports were not appreciated or understood. This anomaly of tastes 

 and pastimes can be explained. Up to forty years ago Americans were too busy 

 to wile away time in fishing. They had not accumulated the "piles" which now 

 make millionaires as plenty as blackberries ; indeed, they hardly knew a salmon or 

 trout by sight. If they wanted sport, they naturally turned to hunting. The 

 gun and the chase were incidental to their everyday associations and employ- 

 ment of subduing the forest and driving pioneer stakes. And so it happened in 

 respect to the primitive literature of this new country, that many topical books 

 appeared on the dog, gun, and saddle, bear hunting, trapping, buffalo running, 

 Indian fighting, and the like, but none at all on angling. 



Once in a while a contemplative author like Thoreau, sauntering by the river 

 side, or Willis, from "Under a Bridge," or Prime in "Owl Creek Cabin Letters,'' 

 or Ik Marvel, wrapt in "Reveries," would lead us unsuspectingly into secluded 

 by-paths of the forest, discanting piously upon the silvery denizens of the brooks 

 in a fashion to prompt an occasional vacation rambler to go a-fishing. But these 

 new men (novi homines) in the days of their novitiate, never aspired to higher 

 game than the "trout in speckled pride." The way in which they held him up 

 to tender recognition might make a sentimental person wish to fondle, but never 

 to skin and eat him. Prime, good master, was adolescent then and callow, but 

 he was a born angler, well versed in the mysteries of the brooks ; and, as soon as 

 ever his heart was hardened and he ceased to regard the beautiful things as pets, 

 he began to write bravely of kidnapping them from their fluvial home and "play- 

 ing them scientifically." and so has continued to write for forty years, though he 

 has never risen to the higher plane of the salmon. I suppose that the undisputed 

 pioneer of American Anglishing Literature, pure and undefiled, is Charles Lanman, 

 who came as one crying in the wilderness, as early as 1848, when he printed (in 

 London) his "Adventures of a Salmon Angler in Canada." The same book was 

 issued contemporaneously in America as a "Tour of the Saguenay." His sub- 

 sequent wanderings by lake and river were woven into a double octavo volume 

 of most entertaining sketches, under the title of "Adventures in the Wilds of 

 America," printed in 1856. He has no peer among his countrymen. Surely it 

 was no kid-glove excursion to go salmon fishing here before the era of railroads, 

 clubs, culexifuge, and all that, though the chap who daintily airs his latter day 

 experience seems as much of a "feller" as the man who took it in the rough before 

 the lad was born. No doubt the memory of the Rev. John Todd has passed away 

 with his corporeal taking-off, yet he was a companion of Audubon, and wrote 

 "Long Lake" in 1850, a volume which embodied the first oracular utterances 

 from the Adirondack Woods. And there was the Rev. Dr. Bethune, who edited 

 a volume of Walton in 1848, or thereabouts ; he knew the intricacies of the Maine 

 forests and the haunts of the mysterious land-locked salmon for forty years before 

 the scientists determined what it was. It seems but yesterday since I knew them 

 all indeed, Lanman and Prime are still living and hearty. 



Although I write of pastime, I would not detract one iota from the meed of 



