508 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



NES. Certainly, I have had great sport on Whittaker Lake, 

 a little sheet of water between Satterlee's and the Indian Clear- 

 ing. Some of the lakes appear to have a variety peculiar to 

 their own water. Those of Louie Lake are very long and 

 round in the body and exceedingly active. Two of us once 

 got our friend Satterlee to haul a boat from Lake Pleasant 

 and launch it in Echo Lake, a fairy little water a mile 

 or so from his house, to troll for some Brook Trout of fabu- 

 lous size which we were told inhabited it. We returned at 

 nightfall with one Trout, which Old Sturgis declared was "as 

 broad as a spruce shingle." We did not weigh it, but it took 

 four hungry men to eat it for supper. 



WALT. How wide was the spruce shingle to which the old 

 guide compared the Trout ? 



NES. You must not cross-question me. I have said that we 

 did not use the scales, nor an inch-measure ; the measure was 

 our appetites, and Sturgis's comparison was what Father Tom 

 Maguire calls " a figure of speech." If you want facts, with 

 dates, and figures of arithmetic, I refer you to the appendix 

 to Dr. Bethune's edition of Walton, where he gives extracts 

 from the journal of the Lake Piseco Club. 



NOR. How about deer-shooting ? you spoke just now of a 

 steak from a spike buck ? 



NES. Spike bucks and young does, are the only good veni- 

 son you get in June, the old does have fawns at that time, and 

 old bucks are out of season. You must go after the middle 

 of August for deer-hunting. Our guide once sent his dog out 

 and drove a deer into the water within a hundred yards of 

 us, but there was more murder than sport in killing it. After 

 it swam some distance from the shore we put after it ; a short 

 race brought the boat alongside, when the guide garroted it 

 with a leather thong tied to the two prongs of a forked stick ; 

 he passed his knife across its windpipe, and the "antlered 



