a4 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
time was too precious! We must be there in an hour, for che 
greatest fish bite early ! 
The dark hills are past, and we have reached the level 
on the other side, and through the great trees can see the 
sobered glisten of the vexed tumbling stream we have leaped 
across so often in the highlands, now creeping in slow crystal 
spread beneath the overhanging shadows toward its neared 
bourne. There they go in splendid shoals, the great white 
trout, darting like wild pigeons through a fluid air, as we are 
seen; and now, too, we can slacken our swift pace to gaze in 
panting ecstacy for awhile. The green pike, lithe and swift, 
glances its white belly, like a sword flash, up at us as he darts 
past—the active succors scattering from its dreaded path! 
We cannot take them here—they hold their way towards the 
deep water that now shows like a great fog-bank through the 
thick towering forest stems ahead. 
Here we are at last! as the wide burst of water, blazing in 
the morning sun, dazzles our eyes accustomed to the shades! 
One shout of joyous greeting and then to work! Quickly 
the long tapering poles are cut from the bordering thickets— 
bait for our small hooks produced, and in hurried eagerness 
the favored spot secured. They are thrownin. Hey! hey! 
Hurrah !—a, fluttering splash !—and the first fish is landed 
amidst laughing congratulations, altogether at war with the 
favorite precepts of legitimate angling! But what care we 
for the shades of Cotton and Walton?—the fish are too 
abounding and too eager to be frightened easily, and the 
noisy sport goes on. 
Yonder, away across the lake-like Pond, is the Bottomless 
Spring. There the greatest fish are taken, and very soon, 
with a sufficiency of minnows secured, we hire the boat from 
the mill below to cross. At last comes the real time for 
sport. The excitement is too great now, and the stakes too 
important, for unseemly mirth or noise. With rapid ailent 
vars we urge across the broad sheet, avoiding here and there 
