"LA GRANDE DECHAKGE" OF LAKE ST. JOHN 171 



Professor. All our flies were tied on No. 5 and 6 hooks. 

 Small fish rose greedily at them, and made good re- 

 sistance when hooked. But as our time upon the island 

 was limited, and the largest fish we had yet seen since 

 landing was not more than a pound and a half in weight, 

 while several weighing a pound and under had been 

 returned to the water, twenty minutes' experience 

 proved sufficient for us here, and we followed our 

 guides on foot over a succession of boulders that paved 

 a deep ravine near the north shore of the island. In 

 the spring freshets this gully is undoubtedly the bed 

 of a roaring torrent. At a distance of nearly a quarter 

 of a mile we arrived at a likely-looking pool at the side 

 and near the foot of the heaviest of the falls in the 

 rapids upon this side of the island. The grandeur of 

 the scene which here confronted us riveted our atten- 

 tion, but we were soon recalled from our admiration 

 of the rapids above us by the summons of the matter- 

 of-fact guides, who had commenced casting our lines in 

 the pool below us, and were already both fast to fish. 

 Paul Savard, who had taken mine, promptly handed 

 me the rod, when I found to my surprise that there was 

 a fish on each hook. Neither of them was much above 

 a pound in weight, but they gave me about all that I 

 could do to keep rod and line intact, especially when, 

 tired of leaping alternately from the water, or forget- 

 ful of which was up last, they sprang into the air 

 almost together for two or three times in succession. 

 But, as a rule, they tugged and worked away so much 

 at cross-purposes that it was pretty clear they had 

 never been hitched up together before. When at last 

 they were brought to the net, only one was saved, and 



