THE BOATMAN'S STORY. 57 



as new. But I was talkin' about an adventer I had with a ' 

 trout, five year ago, here on the the Upper Saranac. I was 

 livin' over on the Au Sable then, and came over to these 

 parts to spend a week or so, and lay in a store of jerked 

 venison and trout for the winter. I broughi^mg a bag of 

 salt, and two or three kegs that would hold a hundred pound 

 or so apiece, and filled 'em too with as beautiful orange- 

 meated fellows as you'd see in a day's drive. The trout were 

 plentier than they are now. They hadn't been fished by all 

 the sportin' men in creation, and they had a chance to grow 

 to their nateral size. You wouldn't in them days row 

 across any of these lakes in. the trollin' season without 

 hitchin' on to an eight, or ten, and now and then to a twenty- 

 pounder. 



" Wai, I was on the Upper Saranac, up towards the head 

 of the lake, ten or twelve miles from here, trollin' with an 

 old-fashioned line, about as big as a pipe stem, a hundred 

 and fifty feet long, and a hook to match. Nobody in them 

 days tho't of sich contrivances as trollin'-rods, reels, and 

 minny-gangs. You held your lines in your fingers, and when 

 you hooked a fish, you drew him in, hand over hand, in a 

 human way. It was in the latter part of June, and the way 

 the black flies swarmed along the shore, was a thing to set 

 anybody a scratchin' that happened to be around. It was a 

 clear still mornin', and the sun as he went up into the 

 heavens, blazed away, and as he walked across the sky, if 

 he didn't pour down his heat like a furnace, I wouldn't say 

 so. I had tolerable good luck in the forenoon, and landed 



3* 



