DIES PISCATORI^. 533 



" Mackinaw, June 24, 1843. 

 ' Dear Will : — 



"In your last letter, which I received just 

 before leaving New Orleans, you begged 'that I would all 

 my pilgrimage dilate,' and tell you if my anticipations of 

 Trout-fishing at Sault Ste. Marie were realized. As I shall 

 have to wait here until the 27th for the Detroit boat, and 

 have seen all the sights about the island, I take this method 

 of killing time, and will tell you of my adventures 'and 

 portance in my travel's history.' 



" Previous to my departure from New Orleans, I made the 

 acquaintance of Mr. Chew, of Mississippi, who gave me a 

 pressing invitation to call on him on my way up, and make 

 one of a party to visit ' Lake Bruin,' opposite Grand Gulf, 

 where he had caught, in an afternoon of the previous summer, 

 thirty * Trout' (Southern Bass), each of them two feet long 

 Think of that I sixty feet of Bass at a single fishing 1 As I 

 had in view my trip to Lake Superior, I reluctantly declined 

 Mr. Chew's kind invitation, and pushed on to St. Louis, and 

 then to see our cousins near Boonville. 



" The Brents have settled some fifteen miles back of the 

 town, on the edge of a prairie, and are doing well ; one of the 

 complaints, though, amongst the settlers from the Old Domin- 

 ion is, that they have scarcely tasted a smoked herring since 

 leaving their native state. The afternoon of the day of my 

 arrival. Bob proposed fishing in some of the ' sleughs' and 

 ponds supplied by the back water of the Tete Saline, in time 

 of the spring freshets ; when the Bass and Perch run up to 

 spawn, and many of them are left in the ponds when the 

 water recedes. Fancy two men, armed with long reed-poles, 

 on leggy horses, loping over the prairie d la Camanche, 

 nothing in sight but the blue sky above, and the rolling 

 green beneath, and no sound but the occasional whirring of a 



