104 Fish Stories 



from anywhere. We reached it from the little station of 

 Thrall, by a picturesque mountain railroad which switches 

 back and forth, climbing the lofty Siskiyous over the edge 

 of the world, crossing or skirting deep canons, carrying one 

 above mighty forests, by splendid streams, cascades and 

 falls, twenty or more miles to Pokegama. Here we took a 

 six-in-hand stage for a thirty-mile ride through the fir and 

 pine forests of the Cascade range, often crawling along the 

 side of a steep canon, high above the rushing Klamath, on 

 its way to the sea, or through mysterious forests, dark and 

 beautiful, where the wind was loaded with the perfume of 

 things untouched, uncontaminated and resinous. 



The very road was a rich, dark red — the ground bark of 

 giant firs that had lived and died here ages ago. It wound 

 through the forest according to its fancy, a mile above the 

 sea, then dipped into some canon half a mile lower, always 

 the forest reaching away and around the visible world; 

 always the murmur of the distant sea played by the wind on 

 pine needle castanets, rising and falling, a requiem of the 

 forest glades; then on the eastern slope, which overlooked 

 the land of the Modocs, thirty miles distant, pitched down 

 to lands but half a mile high and discovered Keno, a little 

 hamlet that did not look its name; then over level plains 

 along shining waters, rolled into Klamath Falls in the crisp 

 evening air. 



Long before this, down the road, we had heard of big 

 trout and laughed at the stories. The natives evidently took 

 us for tenderfeet, and spoke of ten, and even twenty-pound 

 trout without emotion, as though such a catch was an every- 

 day affair ; but when we wandered down to the rushing and 

 muddy Klamath and saw hundreds of trout rising and leap- 

 ing, caught glimpses of monsters two feet long and broad 

 of back, the realization came that here, indeed, was the 

 land of the biggest rainbow, the piscatorial elysian seen 

 but in a dream. 



But these colossi would not rise to the fly, and we were 



