88 



Life in the Open 



reach, then gliding smoothly over a moss-covered 

 incline to rush out into the open and form a little lake 

 where the willow leaves made an arcade of green tracery 

 over its surface, and their red roots blazed in the 

 shallows. Here great banks of ferns and brakes grow 

 beneath the bays, and just above, you cast and unreel 

 and let the capricious stream take you down the stream. 

 It seems an impossible place, with its polished rocks, 

 projecting ledges, the big tangles of brush, but down 

 goes the fly to the melody of running waters. It 

 shoots along, enters a little arcade of brakes, and then, 

 ah ! how the line straightens out ; a new and unknown 

 music, the click of the reel, breaks in upon the rush of 

 waters and the rustle of leaves ; how the slender rod 

 bends and doubles as the gamy trout of the Sierra 

 Madre makes its rush down-stream, dashing by polished, 

 slippery stones, around the smooth edge of boulders, 

 through the rift where the sun blazes brightly, and 

 caressing the water with its sparkle, out and along the 

 edge, to stop, double around a stone, and come up- 

 stream with a flying rush. This is a trout stream indeed. 

 There is not a ragged stone in sight ; the waters have 

 worn and polished every one, so that even the tree-toads 

 that mimic them have difficult work to hold on. This 

 saved the day, as the line slipped deftly over their sides 

 and came taut just as the gamy fish made another 

 splendid rush clear away, with the reel in full cry, zee, 

 zee, zeeee, echoing musically among the willows and 

 alders. Nowhere was the water over a foot in depth. 



