110 I GO A -FISHING. 



and so covered with alternate rock and under-brush that 

 two men would have found it quite impossible to carry 

 up safely any boat, however light. An axe and an auger 

 wherewith to build a raft were therefore essentials to my 

 equipment, and these, with some hard bread and sand- 

 wiches, and one heavy and one light fly-rod, made up the 

 sum total of my luggage. 



Taking the forenoon accommodation train up the road, 

 I went forward to find my old informant, the baggage- 

 master, or, if not him, some other one who could supple- 

 ment my scanty knowledge of the locality I was seeking. 



Luckily there was a man who said he knew all about 

 it, and, after riding forty miles or so, the conductor stop- 

 ped his train at a road crossing in the woods, I tumbled 

 out, and civilization at once departed from me, drawn by 

 the power of steam. 



It had been a sudden idea, and the realization was 

 somewhat discouraging. Alone in the woods, with sun- 

 dry traps in the way of luggage, and with no other guide 

 than the words of the confident individual I had met on 

 the cars, who said that the lake lay at the foot of a hill 

 to which he pointed across the forest, I set out, and aft- 

 er a half-mile tramp came on the traces of a clearing, 

 and, soon descending into a hollow, found a saw-mill. 

 Two men who were running it were evidently astonished 

 at the appearance of a traveler, but they very good-nat- 

 uredly offered advice, to wit, that, if one wanted trout- 

 fishing, he could find it then and there in the mill-dam, 

 but that if he went to the lake he would find no trout, 

 for nobody ever could take trout there except through 

 the ice in the winter. 



" What size do they take them, then ?" 



" Oh, sometimes five or six pounds." 



