The River of Feathers 7 1 



portions, surely it is a dream. But on each 

 picture is the attest, the name, the weight, the 

 date, and these are the mere commonplace hap- 

 penings on Feather River, so named because in 

 the old days the Indians fastened bunches of 

 feathers by short strings to willow branches out 

 over the stream, which, dangling in the wind, 

 became targets for leaping trout which were 

 thus impaled by the spears of the relentless 

 fishermen. 



An old-timer and friend had told me that 

 when he first saw the river way back in the 

 fifties, he looked up-stream when the wind was 

 blowing and saw dozens of these feather bunches 

 leaping and swaying over the river, and after 

 them, madly, the guileless trout. With this 

 alluring incident in mind I buckled on my little 

 creel one morning, and with a companion who 

 knew all the pools, and who proposed to confide 

 them to me, started down the river. Directly 

 at the inn, where the " hired band " was the 

 leaping of trout, there was a little branch, and 

 at its head, the crown of Lassen, nine thou- 

 sand feet in air. From here the river bore 

 away to the south; now dividing around a 

 miniature island, racing over shallow reefs, to 

 plunge suddenly into a deep pool in which I 

 saw a drove of trout that gladdened the eye and 

 astonished the senses. 



The river was now in the Big Meadows, a flat 



