42 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



Arctic and Pacific. Dozens of them have never been fished 

 with a fly. Some, perhaps, are virgin even to netters. Only 

 the rude spear or clumsy hooks of Esquimaux have tested 

 the quality of the most isolated. 



First of all are the inimitable short rivers of Nova Scotia, 

 numbering fifteen or twenty, which pour out from the limpid 

 reservoirs on the height of land forming the watershed of the 

 peninsula along nearly its entire longitudinal axis of one hun- 

 dred and twenty miles. These are set like glistening gems in 

 a sylvan crown, and the water which flows therefrom is as 

 clear as crystal, and the Salmon which run up betimes from 

 the sea have only a holiday journey to make to the sources, 

 always blithesome and comely of form, and performing the 

 taxing duties of life with the ease and comfort of the favored 

 and high-born among men. They live in luxury, with no end 

 of choice food in variety, the young of lobsters, and innu- 

 merable crustaceans, mollusks, and annelids, which hide on 

 the beach and among the rocks, the herring-sile and small fry 

 which come in from the sea, when its waters are tepid; the 

 larvae and fingerlings of the upper streams and lakes, and 

 the endless variety which nature supplies from her largess of 

 woods and waters, both salt and fresh. Here, likewise, the 

 angler may enjoy the luxuries of civilization, without hard- 

 ship of the camp, or the pest of brulards and black flies, or 

 the taxing tedium of the wilderness canoe-voyage, or the pro- 

 tracted journey by sea en route. For comfort, pure and 

 simple, with a modicum of fun, commend me to the rivers 

 and hospitality of Nova Scotia. With McKinlay's excellent 

 map, published at Halifax, one may soon learn the country 

 like a book, and he need never get permanently lost in the 

 woods, for this goodly strip of Bluenose Land is scarcely forty 

 miles wide from the ocean to the Bay of Fundy, and if the 

 uninitiated stranger would cross from shore to shore without 

 a guide, he has only to follow some water-course up to its 

 source on the ridge, and then down the other side to the sea, 



