NEW ENGLAND AND THE 

 AROOSTOOK* 



) HEN I was a mere lad travelers took stage or 

 steamboat from New York for New Haven, the rail- 

 road to Hartford, a " stern-wheeler " up the Connec- 

 ticut Kiver to Springfield, stage to Northampton, 

 and any available conveyance to indefinite regions 

 I remember making the entire journey in an old 

 rumbling parallelogram buttoned in hermetically by close 

 glazed curtains, with a water-bucket slung under the axle be- 

 hind. Those were comparatively primitive times. Manu- 

 factories had not utilized every cubic foot of running water, 

 and each wayside stream afforded sport for the angler. 

 Only twenty-three years ago it was considered a wonderful 

 stride in the march of improvement when the Connecticut 

 River was dammed at Holyoke and the foundations of a brick 

 city were laid ; but it was death to salmon and shad. Civil- 

 ization and trout, it is said, cannot exist together ; and like- 

 wise salmon. Where now are the speckled beauties that 

 once swarmed and multiplied in every brook and rivulet ? 

 Where are the salmon that skulled their way to the head- 

 waters of the noble Connecticut, the Merrimack, the Penob- 

 scot, the Kennebec, Aroostook, and the other rivers of Maine ? 



* See Harper's Magazine, Vol. XXVII., page 688. 



