BULL-MOOSE LAKE. 213 



peculiar sound, but I afterwards learned that it 

 emanated from the little chain-mouse. 



It being useless to remain abroad longer, I 

 returned to camp, and listening for a time to the 

 strange but attractive notes of the Whip-poor-will, 

 unconsciously glided into repose, and slept a most 

 delightful and refreshing sleep. 



I rose with the sun in the morning, and enjoyed 

 a pleasant shower-bath among the spray that fell 

 from a neighbouring miniature cascade. The stream 

 was alive with fish, whose rapid and eccentric 

 movements were apparently so reckless and pur- 

 poseless, that I began to imagine the scaly gentry, 

 when in undisturbed retreats, were a very hare- 

 brained lot. Possibly on this brook there might 

 be few foes no formidable pikes, with ogre-like 

 eyes, lying in ambush, ready to pounce out upon 

 the unwary ; no cruel fish-hawks, with massive 

 talons, quick to swoop down upon the venturous, 

 that floated too near the surface of their liquid 

 home. 



The Cockney angler, who travels all the way from 

 his musty-looking town residence to Teddington or 

 Reading, or even finds courage to visit the Lakes or 

 Wales, where he may hook a few half-pound trout, if 

 dropped on Bull-Moose Lake or tributaries, would find 

 the realisation of his brightest dream relating to the 

 capture of the finny tribe. He would not have to 

 *sit for hours watching an incorrigible float that 

 would not go under water, although the unfortunate 



