204 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



water nine miles long and from one to three wide; 

 fifty rods below was Little Lake Jacques Cartier, an 

 irregular body about two miles across. Stretching 

 away on every hand, bristling on the mountains and 

 darkling in the valleys, was the illimitable spruce 

 woods. The moss in them covered the ground 

 nearly knee-deep, and lay like newly fallen snow, 

 hiding rocks and logs, filling depressions, and muf- 

 fling the foot. When it was dry, one could find a 

 most delightful couch anywhere. 



The spruce seems to have colored the water, 

 which is a dark amber color, but entirely sweet and 

 pure. There needed no better proof of the latter 

 fact than the trout with which it abounded, and 

 their clear and vivid tints. In its lower portions 

 near the St. Lawrence, the Jacques Cartier River is 

 a salmon stream, but these fish have never been 

 found as near its source as we were, though there is 

 no apparent reason why they should not be. 



There is perhaps no moment in the life of an 

 angler fraught with so much eagerness and impa- 

 tience as when he first finds himself upon the bank 

 of a new and long-sought stream. When I was a 

 boy and used to go a-fishing, I could seldom restrain 

 my eagerness after I arrived in sight of the brook 

 or pond, and must needs run the rest of the way. 

 Then the delay in rigging my tackle was a trial my 

 patience was never quite equal to. After I had 

 made a few casts, or had caught one fish, I could 

 pause and adjust my line properly. I found some 

 remnant of the old enthusiasm still in me when I 



