Repairs. 255 



to the surface. It is a misfortune not only of the mo- 

 ment, but in the future as well. 



In September of 1880 I stood on the boom which re- 

 strains the drift-trash from clogging the sluiceways of 

 the lumber dam located on the Magalloway River, about 

 a mile below Parmacheene Lake, in Maine. The dam 

 had been used t^hat spring for the first time. It was built 

 to aid in sluicing the logs cut in the surrounding wilder- 

 ness down the river to civilization, and was, except for a 

 couple of weeks or so in the spring, idle and apparently 

 uncared for. The deep black water shoaled as it ap- 

 proached the dam, quickened 'its pace, bent downward 

 like oil, and then, breaking into foam, rushed forty feet 

 through the sluices, and thundered into the pool below. 



I stood upon the logs forming the boom, and cast a 

 large single fly the queen of those waters, the "Parma- 

 cheene Belle" to where, about thirty-six feet distant, the 

 current just began to gather its strength. As I now rec- 

 ollect, some four or five fair trout had rewarded my ef- 

 forts, running from two up to three and a half pounds. 

 At last up rolled the very Monarch of the River. His 

 swirl was like the eddy made by an eighteen-foot oar. 

 He was a monster. An exclamation from my guide, a 

 bound of my heart that sent the blood like fire to every 

 extremity of my body, greeted the rise. I struck sharply 

 of course, but he never touched the fly, and it came back 

 empty handed. With sinking hearts, for we knew from 

 experience that such fish seldom rise the second time, we 

 changed the fly to another as different in color as possible, 

 and tried again. For two hours or more we rested and 

 fished the water in alternate five-minute intervals, chang- 

 ing and rechanging the fly, but though we took others 

 which would elsewhere be accounted large fish, yet he, 



