DIBS PISCATOKI^!. 533 



"Mackinaw, June 24, 1843. 

 "Dear "Will :— 



"In your last letter, which I received just 

 before leaving New Orleans, yon begged 'that I would all 

 my pilgrimage dilate,' and tell you if my anticipations of 

 Trout-fishing at Sault Ste. Marie were realized. As I shall 

 have to wait here until the 27th for the Detroit boat, and 

 have seen all the sights about the island, I take this method 

 of killing time, and will tell you of my adventures 'and 

 portance in my travel's history.' 



" Previous to my departure from New Orleans, I made the 

 acquaintance of Mr. Chew, of Mississippi, who gave me a 

 pressing invitation to call on him on my way up, and make 

 one of a party to visit ' Lake Bruin,' opposite Grand Gulf, 

 where he had caught, in an afternoon of the previous summer, 

 thirty 'Trout' (Southern Bass), each of them two feet long 

 Think of that ! sixty feet of Bass at a single fishing ! As I 

 had in view my trip to Lake Superior, I reluctantly declined 

 Mr. Chew's kind invitation, and pushed on to St. Louis, and 

 then to see our cousins near Boonville. 



" The Brents have settled some fifteen miles back of the 

 town, on the edge of a prairie, and are doing well ; one of the 

 complaints, though, amongst the settlers from the Old Domin- 

 ion is, that they have scarcely tasted a smoked herring since 

 leaving their native state. The afternoon of the day of my 

 arrival, Bob proposed fishing in some of the 'sleughs' and 

 ponds supplied by the back water of the T3te Saline, in time 

 of the spring freshets ; when the Bass and Perch run up to 

 spawn, and many of them are left in the ponds when the 

 water recedes. Fancy two men, armed with long reed-poles, 

 on leggy horses, loping over the prairie d la Gamanche, 

 nothing in sight but the blue sky above, and the rolling 

 green beneath, and no sound but the occasional whirring of a 



