DAY-DREAMS AND EXCITING SPORT. 249 



derwood along the shore, and Duncan called my attention to 

 a bear that, having discovered us, was making off with all the 

 speed possible. I could not turn to look from my salmon, for 

 it had not yet decided upon what course of tactics to pursue. 

 After a few minutes, when the salmon had concluded to run 

 the hook out, I turned to see, but the bear was no longer in 

 sight. After several runs, tacks, shifts, sweeps, and leaps, I 

 brought the salmon home as gentle as a kitten, so that it 

 seemed a pity to gaff it. 



My friends had been fully as lucky as I had, and, as the 

 flies were disappearing, and we had examined our plateau, 

 walled by mountains and watered by beautiful rivers, we 

 concluded to digest a good dinner by admiring the works of 

 nature and enjoying the aurora borealis and lunar bow. 



Rosy were our dreams ; but, be it remembered, one of the 

 party began to sigh for Susan Jane. 



The following day, and for several days thereafter, the 

 sport was about the same. The river soon began to shrink 

 and clarify, and as the salmon became more scarce, the num- 

 bers of sea trout increased. Sea trout are precisely like those 

 of Long Island. Their voyage to sea renders them as white 

 and plump as are those of the Willows, below Oba. Snedicor's, 

 and perhaps cleaner and whiter ; but they are the same fish 

 in ichthyological peculiarity. 



The next day that I fished Rattling Run I took two salmon 

 at its mouth, where the eddy was formed by the confluence 

 with the St. John; and I cast again to the foot of the rapid, 

 where my fly was usually drawn into the eddy, and before 

 it fairly touched the water a salmon took it, and leaped some 

 ten feet up stream, dropping it while thus leaping. As I saw 

 the fly fall, I was in the act of retrieving my line, when an- 

 other salmon was fast to the fly, and I broke the top of my 

 rod. This proved to me that the movement of a salmon is 

 too swift to be followed by the eye. I played and killed the 

 salmon after the rod w r as broken, and my gaffer landed him. 



Before I could splice another top to my Martin Kelly (a 



