148 vie: the Eel-Man 



I will not attempt to 

 .ic truth would not be accepted, tad 

 1 will not spoil a good story by using 

 colors. I can only hope that his strange 

 physique will shine through what I shall 

 tell about him. 



I have said that the last of the Perri- 

 winkles had a glimmer of higher aims than 

 servitude, and while yet a lad had acquired 

 such freedom as he wished, becoming a self- 

 sustaining trapper, fowl.ir, and fisherman. 

 It was as the last that he pr y ex- 



celled. He alone, of all the men who lived 

 and loafed near the creek, knew Crop.- 

 Creek thoroughly. It seemed as if he must 

 have felt with his hands or feet, or both, the 

 whole bed of the stream, from the riyer, 

 where it ended, up to the first mill-dam, a 

 distance of about eight miles. On one oc- 

 casion, when with Winkle, I remember he 

 stopped his boat suddenly, and, thrusting an 

 oar to the bottom, showed me how dei 

 the water at this point, it was 

 the time, and remarked, " C 

 there's a walnut-stir 



three feet across. Once a tin :k ran 



over yander," and he pointed to a long row 



