A merican Game-Fishes 



lithe and very muscular. The water and 

 the soil about him vary his color, but in 

 the dullest mill-pond he is not ugly. In 

 bright, cold water with clean bottom, how 

 he gleams, be he the fingerling of a ro- 

 mantic stream in his first nuptial garment 

 or the six-pounder of a Nepigon reach. 

 From his olive back, vermiculated like the 

 damascening of an old sword-blade, and 

 his spotted side, to his ruddy belly, and fins 

 barred with black and gold, he is a beauty. 

 Beautiful, too, are all his haunts. In 

 mountains and in lowlands, in rushing riv- 

 ers and in quiet lakes, where the springs 

 gush out beneath the roots of the ever- 

 greens, or where the salt tide forces back 

 the flowing streams, he is ever the same 

 lover of clear, cold water. Not even hun- 

 ger will take him where it is foul or warm. 

 It has been my good fortune to know this 

 lovely fish in many brooks and streams and 

 in larger waters, from the Bay of Heats 

 and the Saguenay to that great river whose 

 rapids were Niagara's training-school ; and 

 everywhere he has led me to pictures of 

 abiding beauty. But in memory none is 

 lovelier than the streams where I first 

 fished, and which I still visit. Come to 

 one of them. 



In the springy meadows of the uplands, 

 236 



