SPECKLED TROUT 



trout, or any other fish, were good roasted in the 

 ashes under the coals. He had the Walton requisite 

 of loving quietness and contemplation, and was 

 devout withal. Indeed, in many ways he was akin 

 to those Galilee fishermen who were called to be 

 fishers of men. How he read the Book and pored 

 over it, even at times, I suspect, nodding over it, and 

 laying it down only to take up his rod, over which, 

 unless the trout were very dilatory and the journey 

 very fatiguing, he never nodded! 



II 



The Delaware is one of our minor rivers, but it is 

 a stream beloved of the trout. Nearly all its remote 

 branches head in mountain springs, and its collected 

 waters, even when warmed by the summer sun, are 

 as sweet and wholesome as dew swept from the grass. 

 The Hudson wins from it two streams that are 

 fathered by the mountains from whose loins most of 

 its beginnings issue, namely, the Rondout and the 

 Esopus. These swell a more illustrious current than 

 the Delaware, but the Rondout, one of the finest 

 trout streams in the world, makes an uncanny alli- 

 ance before it reaches its destination, namely, with 

 the malarious Wallkill. 



In the same nest of mountains from which they 



start are born the Neversink and the Beaverkill, 



streams of wondrous beauty that flow south and 



west into the Delaware. From my native hills I 



195 



