Trout Fishing 109 



a breath of wind until the last half-hour, and the 

 lake was perfectly glassy, giving us a splendid pull 

 for some twenty-five miles. On reaching the creek 

 we were horrified at finding the hoped-for stream 

 a mere runlet of water, and camped in a little valley 

 between stupendous cliffs, with dire forebodings of 

 utter want of sport. This was the more disappoint- 

 ing as the stream is represented in the surveys as 

 considerably larger than the Mackenzie. The next 

 day we wandered up the half-dry stream, rather 

 cheered by the quantity of partridges we came across, 

 to a lumberman's shanty, where we were told that 

 the stream had been dammed up for the purpose 

 of floating dov/n logs, and then we went up and 

 away through the forest till we came to a succession 

 of long narrow lakes, or rather pools, which had 

 evidently led the engineer, who saw them from 

 some distant mountain top, into the belief that he 

 was looking at a big river. We toiled, however, in 

 the hope of better things, and were at last rewarded 

 by a glimpse of what was evidently the lake, and 

 judging from the birch-bark canoe which lay on the 

 shore, a fairly large lake too. We were sorely 

 tempted to utilise her, but refrained from fear of 

 being scalped by the infuriated Mr. Low, should he 

 discover the borrowing.^ Then the trail failed 

 utterly, and the bush on the shore was so thick 

 that it was impossible to get a cast. But at last 

 we found a fallen tree projecting far out into the 

 ^ " Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored mind."— Pope. 



