CHAPTER XV 

 THE TROUT OF THE GREAT FOREST 



NE would hardly think that Santa Cruz with its 

 mountains tumbling into the sea, its splendid red- 

 woods, its many trout streams born in the shadow 

 of giant trees, many of which sprang into life 

 long before the Christian era, needed any special allurement 

 to attract the angler, yet when I entered one of its inns one 

 cool night in the spring long after midnight, almost the first 

 object my eyes fell upon was a leaping trout, not a mere 

 fingerling, but a lusty fellow of comely shape and fair pro- 

 portions. 



Observe the coincidence : a belated traveler intent on fish- 

 ing, enters the inn; there are several, possibly a score or 

 more, in Santa Cruz, so the late arrival might possibly be 

 on a tour of inspection; he might take exception to some- 

 thing in his preregistering glance about the apartment; but 

 at that moment the trout leaps, the boy seizes his rods, the 

 die is cast, a man so fond of trout must know where they 

 are to be had — a logical conclusion, and so the traveler 

 becomes an inmate of the Steelhead Inn. This is not the 

 name over the door, but it might well be, as in the office, 

 confined in a roomy tank, were twenty or thirty of the 

 most interesting steelhead salmon trout it was ever an 

 angler's good fortune to see. 



Once in walking through a Canadian town, I came upon 

 a little hotel, so strange, at least to me, that I stopped and 

 looked at it long and earnestly. It was flush with the 

 street, of an ancient design, and reached by an arched door- 

 way which led far into its inner depths, which reeked with 



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