16 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 



rifts, as we did several times, they leaped out quickly, 

 with their bare feet and legs, and pushed us off. 



*' I think," said Johnny, " if you keep her straight 

 and let her have her own way, she will find the deepest 

 water. Don't you, Denny ? " 



"I think she will," replied Denny; and I found the 

 boys were pretty nearly right. 



I tried them on a point of natural history. I had 

 observed, coming along, a great many dead eels lying 

 on the bottom of the river, that I supposed had died 

 from spear wounds. "No," said Jolinny, "they are 

 lamper-eels. They die as soon as they have built their 

 nests and laid their eggs." 



" Are you sure ? " 



"That's what they all say, and I know they are 



lampers." 



So I fished one up out of the deep water with my 

 paddle-blade and examined it; and sure enough it w^as 

 a lamprey. There was the row of holes along its head, 

 and its ugly suction mouth. I had noticed their nests, 

 too, all along, where the water in the pools shallowed to 

 a few feet and began to hurry toward the rifts: they 

 were low mounds of small stones, as if a bushel or more 

 of large pebbles had been dumped upon the river bot- 

 tom; occasionallv thev were so near the surface as to 

 make a big ripple. The eel attaches itself to the stones 

 by its mouth, and thus moves them at will. An old 

 fisherman told me that a strong man could not pull 

 a large lamprey loose from a rock to which it had at- 

 tached itself. It fastens to its prey in this way, and 

 sucks the life out. A friend of mine savs he once saw 

 in the St. Lawrence a pike as long as his arm with a 

 lamprey eel attached to him. The fish was nearly 



