44 



Fish Stories 



swift gorge — the famed and fated White Horse Rapids-^a 

 below which it widens out into the immense Lake Labarge, !i| 

 which runs to the northward as far as the eye can see, and 

 a good deal further. Some men, about one in ten, perhaps,- 

 . preferred to take their chances in running the White Horse 

 Rapids, rather than to carry their belongings over the Cari- 

 bou Hills. Some of them, one in two, perhaps, got through; 

 safely. The rest went to swell the romance, the terror, the 

 tragedy of the gold of the Klondyke and the White Pass of 

 the Yukon. 



But Caribou Crossing is full of fish and some of these, 

 lake trout, cisco, pike, ling, sculpin, take the hook 

 when it is properly baited. You can stand on the little 

 wharf in front of the bishop's house, or on the bank in 

 Skookum Jim's dooryard, and cast for grayling, and the 

 grayling will respond. Better than this, you can cross the 

 river and go a couple of miles through the fields and woodsy 

 and around a bayou when the thicker forest begins. In a 

 little glade of the woods you will find a roaring brook (Kil- 

 bourn I think its name is), and at the foot of a cascade you 

 will find the grayling as eager as you are, and if you are 

 contented with a reasonable basket, you will fish awhile, 

 then lie down on the heather and take for yourself, some- 

 thing better than many fishes — that which Wordsworth! 

 called "the Harvest of the Quiet Eye." 



