THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN TROUT. 279 



another time or in another place, I heard little of them now. 

 I was too busy watching the rapidly changing panorama of 

 that grand torrent beneath our wheels. Not a stroke of the 

 piston rod or an exhaust of the cylinder, as the great engine 

 climbed the steep grade, and rounded the ever-recurring 

 curves, but revealed new beauties, and inspired fresh admi- 

 ration. 



I inquired the distance to the point where we should leave 

 the stream, and learning that it was yet some miles ahead, I 

 rushed back to the coach, found the conductor and besought 

 him to give me a stop-over check, and have my baggage 

 unloaded. He complied, and a fellow-passenger who had 

 been watching the stream, and had heard our conversation, 

 made a similar request. So we were both unloaded at the 

 mouth of a wild gorge where there was a small, new board 

 building, that served for the station, and a few log-cabins 

 occupied by the section men. 



The sun was now well toward the zenith, and by the time 

 we exchanged our good clothes for our fishing suits, and got out 

 our tackle, the dinner-horn blew. We went into one of the 

 cabins, elbowed our way among the section men, and wrestled 

 with corned beef, salt pork, potatoes and sour bread until we 

 felt equal to a big afternoon's work. In the course of our 

 conversation, I learned that my fellow-traveler was a Congre- 

 gational minister, from a thriving city in Pennsylvania, and 

 that he was on his first journey west of the Mississippi; so that 

 this wild country was especially wild and fascinating to him. 



Dinner over, we walked up the track about two miles to 

 where there was a good place to get down to the stream, 

 waded into it, and the trouble began at once. We entered 

 at the head of a boiling rapid, and both cast at about the 

 same time. I missed my first rise, but my companion hooked 

 a big one that, after making two frantic leaps, turned and 

 went down the stream like a bolt of lightning, taking the lead, 

 fly, and a foot of leader with him. He appeared to be 



