A BEAR ADVENTURE. 



THE greater portion of the State of Maine, North 

 America, is a perfect labyrinth of lakes. As may be 

 imagined, they are of all sizes and shapes, and are as 

 picturesque as rugged outlines, rocky shores, numerous 

 islands, pellucid water, and abundant and varied trees 

 can make them. Moreover, grand mountains look 

 down upon these retreats of game and fish moun- 

 tains quite as sublime as any to be seen in the High- 

 lands of Scotland, and infinitely more attractive to 

 the human eye, for often they are wooded right to 

 the summit. This is truly the land of the pine the 

 houses, the forests, and even the very lakes smell of 

 it, and a more delicious or health-giving odour does 

 not exist in any part of the world that I know of. 



I was standing at the door of a wayside tavern, a 

 genuine Yankee hostelry, for it was as clean and 

 bright as paint and water could make it, when a 

 visitor drove up in one of those ugly but handy traps, 

 "a sulky." The burthen of his conversation with 

 the landlord was about the size and quantity of trout 

 that Reuben Aimes had caught the day before, at a 

 pond (small lake) in the vicinity. There I and 

 my chum determined to go next day, for although 

 trout were more than abundant in our immediate 

 neighbourhood, their average weight was little more 

 than three-quarters of a pound. 



We had some difficulty in finding the sheet of 

 water we desired to wet our flies in, and doubt very 

 much that we should have done so, but for the assist- 



