92 NEW ENGLAND AND THE AROOSTOOK. 



the Connecticut Valley Road to Littleton and Whitefield, 

 the Portsmouth and Great Falls Railroad to Conway, or the 

 Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad to North Conway of 

 which the two latter, not yet finished, will be completed this 

 summer. * 



Not to mention categorically those lakes, like Magog, Se- 

 bago, and Winnipiseogee, which lie in the path of summer 

 travel, and are resorts for loungers rather than for anglers, 

 I proceed to regions more congenial. 



MAINE ! There is no region in the United States (I speak 

 advisedly) equal to it. As to fishing, who that has ever wet 

 his line in these waters could thereafter be content to angle 

 elsewhere, unless it be in the more distant waters of the 

 Canadian Dominion? The orthodox sportsman may here 

 roam from stream to stream, and cast his fly with a certainty 

 of success and liberal reward which might well excite the 

 envy of many a trans- Atlantic angler. Let the rambler 

 make his camp on whatever lake or stream he will, it is all 

 the same, whether it be in the St. Croix country, the region 

 of Moosehead Lake, or the more northern waters of the 

 Aroostook ; whether along some one of the dozen romantic 

 tributaries of the Penobscot, the Kennebec, and St. John, or 

 on the margin of the magnificent lakes in which they invari- 

 ably have their sources lakes with euphonious names and 

 unpronounceable names lakes called Wassataquoik, Chesun- 

 cook, Mooseluckmaguntic, Bamedumphok, Pangokwahem, 

 Umsaskis, Madongamook, Raumchemingamook ! Maine is 

 emphatically a country of lakes and streams. There are no 

 mountain ranges in Maine. But isolated and cloud-capped 

 peaks stand out in solitary grandeur from the comparatively 

 level tracts surrounding, inviting wonder and admiration. 

 Of these the number is large, the most prominent being the 

 Sugar Loaf, Katahdin, Abraham, Chase's, and Mount Blue. 



Moosehead Lake, long a sequestered haunt of the ambi- 

 tious sportsman, and the grand centre of a vast wilderness 

 region, has experienced the fate of the Adirondacks, and 



