INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxvii 



Robinson Crusoe ; and, I suspect that, in like man- 

 ner, many of those worthy gentlemen, who are 

 given to haunt the sides of pastoral streams with 

 angle-rods in hand, may trace the origin of their 

 passion to the seductive pages of honest Izaak 

 Walton. I recollect studying his ' Complete Angler,' 

 several vears since, in company with a knot of 

 friends in America, and moreover that we were all 

 completely bitten with the angling mania. It was 

 early in the year ; but as soon as the weather was 

 auspicious, and that the Spring began to melt into 

 the verge of Summer, we took rod in hand and sal- 

 lied into the country, as stark mad as was ever Don 

 Quixote from reading books of chivalry. 



" One of our party had equalled the Don in the 

 fulness of his equipments, being attired cap-a-pie 

 for the enterprise. He wore a broad-skirted fustian 

 coat, perplexed with half a hundred pockets ; a pair 

 of stout shoes, and leathern gaiters ; a basket slung 

 on one side for fish ; a patent rod ; a landing-net ; 

 and a score of other inconveniences, only to be 

 found in the true Angler's armoury. Thus harnessed 

 for the field, he was as great a matter of stare and 

 wonderment among the country folk, who had never 

 seen a regular Angler, as was the steel-clad hero 

 of La Mancha, among the goatherds of Sierra 

 Morena. 



" Our first essay was along a mountain brook 

 among the highlands of the Hudson : a most un- 

 fortunate place for the execution of those piscatory 



