FISHING IK MAINE. 145 



Yankee cousins. If your hand is bare for a moment 

 a dozen will be on it ; when up to your knees in a 

 pool, and fast in a big fish, both hands consequently 

 employed, your face and the back of your neck 

 will begin to itch to burn as if scalding water 

 had been poured over them. Nor were the sand-flies 

 deserving of better character, for though so small that 

 you can scarcely perceive them, their powers of an- 

 noyance are tremendous.* Thank Providence that 

 none of these wretches are made as big as the ferce na- 

 turce, or else genus homo must soon become extinct. I 

 will here tell a little circumstance that befell the wri- 

 ter : he and two acquaintances were fishing under a 

 fall ; fish were abundant, but space, on account of the 

 trees, too limited for so many rods, so down the stream 

 he started, and forgot, in his desire to beat the others 

 in results, the odious preparation of oil of tar. After 

 half an hour's scrambling through brush and climbing 

 over rocks, he at length reached such a lovely pool. 

 The first cast showed it to be alive with fish, and they 

 in the proper way of thinking. Soon the gravel mar- 

 gin had over a dozen beauties glittering in all their 

 glorious coloring, but the sun was near the horizon, 



* Called by the Indians "No-see urns," from their minuteness. 



7* 



