280 FISHING IN AMERICAN WATEKS. 



him after your oarsman lands him in the bottom of the boat, 

 where he always keeps a mallet or billet of hickory wood to 

 pound the fish on the head and prevent him from leaping 

 out of the boat, for his saltatory powers surpass those of the 

 salmon. It is said that a trout will rise a fall six feet high, 

 a salmon one of eleven feet perpendicular, and a maskinonge 

 one of nearly thirty feet. 



Far where Lake Erie's billows glance, 

 An ocean-like immense expanse, 

 The sharp-teeth'd maskinonge abides, 

 The shark of the fresh-water tides. 

 Now in the dark abyss of waves 

 He glides ; now where the shallow laves 

 The grassy shore, and crisp waves break 

 O'er the white sands that gird the lake. 



SECTION THIRD. 



THE BLACK BASS. 



Amid the Thousand Isles that gem 



St. Lawrence like a diadem, 



Where winds are soft, and waves are calm, 



And pine-woods steep the air with balm, 



Piscator floats the calm abyss 



'Mid scenes of most transcendent bliss ; 



Wafted across that teeming flood, 



His heart o'erflows with gratitude. 



Many anglers think the black bass next to the salmon for 

 game. It is unquestionably high game. Being numerous in 

 many waters of the Northern States, it has come to be re- 

 garded as a commercial fish, and, through ignorance, many 

 confound it with the Oswego bass, which is quite an inferior 

 fish as to game and for the table. Some persons have ex- 

 ported the black bass both to England and France with the 

 view of propagation ; but whether they were the real black 

 bass is questionable, as they are difficult to export after they 

 grow to be larger than fingerlings. 



The black bass is supposed to belong to the perch family, 

 or rather order of fishes, because its mouth, gills, fins, and 

 scales are similar to those of the Percidce / but, in order to 



