yo Sporting Sketches 



clump of dock leaves conceal a willow root. Put a 

 hand under that root startlingly cold in there, is it 

 not ? Under the root is a wee cavern no larger than 

 the crown of your hat, its bottom the whitest, finest 

 sand. If you wanted a drink and had the hollow 

 stem of a weed, you might suck up your fill of the 

 purest water ; nor would there be danger of exhaust- 

 ing the tap, for in that tiny cavern is born our big 

 river. Farther it does not extend ; all above is 

 bone-dry. 



How may one know this trifling cavern to be the 

 source of a river ? Easily enough. Our baby stream 

 surely is born here, but he is somewhat of an im- 

 provement upon the ordinary run of babies, inas- 

 much as he is very silent and retiring. From this, 

 his parent pool, he slyly creeps through an under- 

 ground crevice to the riprap of the wall. Crawl 

 along the wall, put an ear to the boulders, and you 

 will hear him gurgling and whispering over his 

 hidden play. He seems to be having rare fun in 

 there, for the only sound he makes is like the ghost 

 of a laugh. By ear you may trace him to the end 

 of the wall. 



Here in the sunlight smiles a larger pool, perhaps 

 two feet across, and a trout pool in miniature. The 

 rock ledges about it are some six inches high ; the 

 green growths stand a foot or more ; the rock boul- 

 ders are marble-like in size; the fall at the outlet 

 might measure one inch, yet you see everything 

 which lends the charm to the big trout pool one 

 hundred miles below. The tiny fall has its whis- 

 per of song, its trace of snowy- foam. If we could 

 magnify one hundred times and in true proportion 



