BROOK TROUT 



his is the memory of their former wildness and beauty, 

 of trout rising on lakes and streams, of deer roaming 

 the dense woods and drinking from quiet waters, and 

 of a strange, wild life. With this memory, he now 

 finds a large part of the woods region peopled for three 

 months of the year with the votaries of fashion, with 

 steamboats puffing on the lakes and engines shrieking 

 through the forests, with prosperous villages here and 

 there, and the old wild life gone never to return. 



I open as I write, an old and well-worn book, dear 

 to all older American sportsmen, written by William C. 

 Prime, and published in 1873, entitled "I Go a-Fish- 

 ing," and I turn to two chapters respectively entitled 

 " The Saint Regis Waters in Olden Times, i860," and 

 the "Saint Regis Waters Now, 1872." Would that 

 the venerable author, now I believe a very old man, 

 and long since unable to handle the rod and gun, 

 could revisit the Saint Regis waters and paint us their 

 scenes of to-day. The twelve years which elapsed be- 

 tween his first and second visits seemed to him to have 

 brought many changes, the most marked of which was 

 the expansion of Paul Smith's first little house, built 

 in 1858, and holding not more than eight people, to 

 a large hotel, capable of accommodating 150 guests. 

 On both occasions Mr. Prime had to drive into Paul 

 Smith's from Port Kent, on Lake Champlain, a dis- 

 tance of fifty-five miles. The rare old fisherman and 

 lover of nature, floating in his canoe on the Lower 

 Saint Regis in i860, wrote as follows: "The day 



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