V 

 A DAY ON A NOVA SCOTIAN TROUT LAKE 



THE lake, as I first saw it, glimmering and flashing beneath 

 the direct rays of the midday sun like a sheet of burnished 

 silver, reflected a clear image of the frowning granite rock walls 

 running sheer down into serene depths. Directly in front, for a mile 

 or more, the rough stretch of landscape swept away in a succession 

 of bold undulations, billow succeeding billow, until finally, plunging 

 steeply downwards, these broke into the oily calm of its sleeping 

 waters. The scene might strike the casual beholder as a mere 

 melancholy waste of desolate silence, or it might exert an inexpres- 

 sible charm by the unquestionable fascination of its wild wayward 

 grace and a mystery of inexplicable rugged beauty. It was a 

 stretch of landscape rich in variety of colour. The play of the 

 brilliant sunlight touched each point of the rock terraces with a 

 glittering salience. Their exposed weather-worn slopes were diver- 

 sified by clusters of tasselled alders, still wearing the fresh tints of 

 their early verdure ; splashed here and there with the pale olive 

 greens of little coppices of beech saplings ; dotted with a few black 

 clumps of dwarf mountain pine weak stragglers from the belt of 

 dark forest bordering the distant shore, separated from the lake 

 by a wide beach of silvery sand. 



The air was quiet, save for the clear bell-like notes of that 

 cheerful songster of the Canadian wilderness, the white- throated 

 sparrow, repeated again and again from the tallest of a group of 

 gaunt stems of fire-killed pines. A pair of white-necked ospreys 

 soared high overhead in majestic circles, now and again indulging 

 in shrill screams, intended as a menace to the invaders of their 

 sanctuary. 



On the shores of the lake there seemed to be no one place more 

 likely than another for a cast. Almost everywhere the water 

 was dimpled by the rising trout. Faint puffs of a balmy westerly 

 breeze kept incessantly driving the mayflies, weak on the wing, 

 in masses to the sheltering lee side of the boulders and behind 

 clumps of alder coppice, until there the atmosphere looked as if 

 filled with a dense smoke. The faintest breath, catching the feeble 



