134 APPENDIX. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL 



or THE 



LAKE PISECO TROUT CLUB 



(KINDLY FURNISHED FOR THIS EDITION OF WALTON's ANGLER.) 



Some six gentlemen, from divers parts, have formed themselves into a 

 regularly organized fishing-club, and have been in the habit of visiting 

 annually one of those beautiful sheets of water that abound in Hamilton 

 County, in the northern part of the State of New York. At the first 

 irruption of these sportsmen into the wilderness, the country through 

 which they were obliged to pass presented a most savage aspect. They 

 were compelled to climb Pelion upon Ossa before tliey reached, not the 

 promised land, but the promised ivater. And they were well repaid for 

 their efforts, not only as lovers of nature, in finding a lake of surpassing 

 beauty, but as lovers of sport, in the abundance and superior excellence 

 of the trout that lay treasured within it. When first visited, a rude hut 

 made of logs, with crevices to admit air and light, formed the only 

 accommodations for the party ; the family bed was given up, and when a 

 light was asked for to retire with, they were informed that there had 

 not been a candle in the house for a twelvemonth ; corn meal, with 

 the fish caught, formed their only food. The next year stores were for- 

 warded in advance. The beautiful sheet of water, near which the Club 

 have pitched their tents, is about seven miles in length, and has an 

 average breadth of one and a half miles, its borders presenting a great 

 variety of picturesque and magnificent scenery in a perfect state of na- 

 ture, rising in some parts in gentle hills, in others in mountains of the 

 most magnificent proportions, swelling away in the blue haze to the 

 horizon. On one of the beautiful headlands running out into the lake 

 near its centre, they purchased X)ne hundred acres of land, upon which 

 they liave erected a fishing-lodge, and named it Walton Hall, in honor of 

 their patron saint, with convenient rooms for each member of the Club, 

 and a large hall for the accommodation of rods, &.c. It is here in these 

 beautiful and unbroken solitudes, unstirred by the hum of the world, the 



