8 SPOIIT m NORTH AMERICA. 



song-tlirush ! How ripe the fruits which I could 

 gather everywhere around ! Alas ! the dream is 

 vanished, and the reality finds me at Paris, seated 

 before my old oak table inditing this preface of a 

 dream — a dream which was the truth twelve years 

 ago. 



Among the fresh-water fish which abound in the 

 great rivers of America, I would mention the cat 

 fish, which weighs from one to one hundred pounds 

 — a glutton by nature, and by no means nice iu its 

 choice of dainties. Like the vulture, he will content 

 himself with garbage, when he can get nothing 

 better; but the best bait to catch him with is certainly 

 the toad. Those who go out to fish for him alwaj^s 

 lay in, therefore, a good stock of toads, and by bait- 

 ing them upon snoods fixed upon a trot-line of a 

 hundred and twenty to two hundred yards long, they 

 catch quantities of this fish. The toad impaled upon 

 the hook jumps about in the water and forms a most 

 attractive bait for these water-gluttons. The trot- 

 line is laid in the morning and taken up in the 

 middle of the day, and again at night ; so that often 

 the take is very considerable. 



There are several species of cat fish in the North 

 American rivers ; above all, the Blue, the White, and 

 one the colour of mud. These differ as much in 

 their habits as in their colour. The flesh of the last- 

 named is the best, but it rarely attains the size of 

 the others. The blue fish is the biggest, and when 



