SERGEANT WILLIAM PATTERSON. 311 



come up close to the bluffs to keep from being swept 

 down in the current. When the water falls they get 

 trapped in these holes, and thereTthey are." 



"Yes; but when the spring freshet comes don't they 

 swim out and go to their breeding grounds, and so keep 

 the river stocked?" 



"Not by," and he referred to a spot where a mill 

 might be placed. "These ponds freeze over tight and 

 the fish die. They die in thousands of just such holes all 

 along the river, and they have died in this hole year after 

 year. This spring water coming in here is a new thing; 

 it wasn't here last winter, and it may stop or cold weather 

 may close it; I don't care whether it does or not, there's 

 a chance to send a sleigh load of fish to Dubuque, and 

 that's all there is of it." 



I saw it was as he said. I cut into some of these pond 

 holes later in the winter, and found a stench of decaying 

 fish. Within the past few years the United States Fish 

 Commission, through the urgent requests of Colonel S. 

 P. Bartlett, of the Illinois Commission, has sent a car up 

 the river, and seined the imprisoned fish from these holes 

 and returned them to the river as good a work as hatch- 

 ing millions of fish eggs; perhaps better, for it saves the 

 parents, and allows them to breed next spring. 



Henry came with the team, and found us on the shore 

 cooking fish and frying sausages for dinner. Bill thought 

 he was as good a camp cook as I, but we differed on that 

 point. Without discussing the question, I feel impelled 

 to go off the track to say: Our open-air appetites, whether 

 in the woods or on the waters, make camp cooking seem 

 superlative. Benedick says in "Much Ado About Noth- 

 ing:" "But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the 

 meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age." 



This leads me to say that after many years' experience 



