152 Recreations of a Sportsman 



not because it is light and airy, foamy and al- 

 together fluffy, but because the Indian anglers 

 had a habit of hanging bunches of feathers on 

 sticks over the water to attract the attention 

 of fishes, a great scheme this, and when a ten- 

 pound trout moved inshore to size up the bait 

 of helgramite, the noble red man smote it in 

 the back and harpooned and jerked it in ; and 

 as the moral lies with the fish and its foolish 

 propensity for noticing feathers, it need not be 

 dwelt upon. 



But the mountain, it was Lassen, ten thousand 

 feet high; a volcano covered with ashes, and all 

 about it grew the great forests of Oregon, which 

 crept down to a great green spot about ten miles 

 long and six or eight wide, called Big Meadows, 

 through which Feather River runs in a circui- 

 tous and altogether bewildering fashion, as when 

 you are rowing on it, or wading it after a trout 

 has jerked you overboard, you sometimes are 

 going the other way, when you are really going 

 home. 



But this is not what made the angler exclaim. 

 Another angler not quite so gorgeous in his out- 

 fit, stopped and asked the brother angler why 

 he spake thus. 



" Why, it is this way," replied the man with 

 a rod, " I have been casting in this pool, and, by 

 the way, did you ever see anything so beautiful 

 [he had just accepted the writer's thermos] 



