5<H 



The Michigan Grayling. 



the Bay City and Detroit markets. We made a permanent camp 

 four miles below Babbit's, and fished five days, giving him three- 

 fourths of our fish, which he came for every day, and which 

 (keeping none under a half pound) amounted to over five hundred 

 pounds. 



One of my most pleasant trips, however, was that of the latter 

 part of August and early in September of the following year, when, 

 in company with two young friends, I spent two weeks on the 

 Manistee. We went by the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad to 

 Mancelona, well up toward the Straits of Mackinaw. Here we 

 loaded boats, stores, and camp equipage on a wagon drawn by a pair 

 of stout horses, and journeyed eleven miles east to the head-waters 

 of the main branch. Our trip was dashed with a spice of adventure 

 and a good deal of hard work. We had struck the stream higher up 

 than we expected. It was small, scarcely sufficient to float our boats, 

 and still had the temperature it had acquired in the little lake which 

 was its source. There were no cedars, which only appear when the 

 streams have flowed far enough from the ponds to feel the influence 

 of spring water. On the morning of the second day, we came to the 

 cedars and cold water, and with them the sweepers, which are cedars, 

 as already described, which have been undermined by the current and 

 have fallen into the water and always across the stream. We had 

 three days and a half of hard chopping and hauling our boats over 

 huge cedar logs, some of which had probably lain there for a cent- 

 ury — for a cedar log, if it remains in the water, never rots. On 

 coming to some of these logs, we had fo make a " carry," placing our 

 luggage on their mossy covered trunks and pulling our empty boats 

 over. We would then load up and go on to cut more sweepers and 

 make more carries. At last, the stream widened and was free of 

 sweepers, and we had magnificent fishing. The grayling were per- 

 fectly reckless and would take one's flies within ten feet of the boats. 

 It was virgin water ; no fly had heretofore been cast on it. After a 

 day's sport, we came to the sweepers again, and had a day and a 

 half more with them and half-sunken logs and a few carries. At 

 two or three of these carries, the logs were over two feet through. 

 Mosses had grown and spread on them until, as we saw by certain 

 signs, bears used them as a highway. On one we found thrifty 

 cedars growing at regular intervals from the parent trunk that were 



