Flies (md Fly-fishing. 375 



any possible future enmity against her in the settle- 

 ment, that was as gratifying as it was unexpected. 

 Indeed, from that moment his marked good-will towards 

 her, and the active interest he took in securing her the 

 best boarding-place in the settlement for an unprotected 

 girl, was really chivalrous. For though sensitive to a 

 supposed slight and prompt to resent it, our landlord 

 really hid a heart of gold under his rough exterior a 

 type of man not so uncommon in the wild West. 



Well may the reader ask, How do you associate all 

 this with the Black Dose fly, with reference to which 

 you introduced this somewhat lengthy episode? The 

 answer is that the recollection of a good deed well 

 done, of which few of us have a superabundance, is ever 

 a perennial gratification, and that this fly alone did me 

 any service on our trip up the river. So the two have 

 become so associated in my mind that I seldom use the 

 one without thought of the other. 



Well, we went up the river in our heavy-dew steam- 

 boat a pea-soup-looking river, hopeless for fly-fishing, 

 adorned with many verdure - covered islands, flowing 

 through a level valley five or six miles wide, bounded 

 by the mighty Rockies on the east and the mightier Sel- 

 kirks on the west. Sometimes the banks were fringed, 

 sometimes covered by forest, while at frequent intervals 

 we came upon back-water lagoons abounding in wild 

 ducks and geese, overlooked from the superstructure of 

 the boat wherein we were quartered. 



It was great navigation. Crippled by a recent fall 

 received while goat hunting in the Selkirks, shore ex- 

 cursions were not for me. But our senior and junior 

 were in fine condition and simply devoured with desire 

 to reduce to possession some out of the myriads of ducks 



