CHAPTER XXXV 

 MY RECORD MUSKALLUNGE 



The Judge : For two years you men have fished together peace- 

 ably, and yet you wrangle over this fish. 



The Sportsman: You see, your honor, this is the first time we 

 have ever caught one. 



— Transatlantic Tales. 



F all the regions in Canada that lure the angler 

 in summer days, none has a greater charm than 

 the fair, smiling river, the St. Lawrence, and its 

 contiguous country to the north. Here we 

 have an angling Venice, a river of a thousand islands, reach- 

 ing from the Great Lakes to the sea. 



So filled is the St. Lawrence with islands that its actual 

 size is rarely appreciated. In its narrowest part, it is one 

 of the great rivers of the world, and from helow Montreal, 

 where it widens out and reaches far to the north through 

 that deep, silent estuary, the Saguenay, it becomes a sea in 

 vastness. 



Into it many salmon streams flow, and reaching it indi- 

 rectly, connected by brooks and streams, are myriads of 

 lakes, from St. John, the home of the ouananiche, to the 

 famous black-bass and muskallunge lakes and streams of the 

 west. 



I know it well from Kingston to Chicoutomi on the Sag- 

 uenay, and where the Thousand Islands, like gems, stem 

 the tide, each an emerald in a setting of ultramarine, and of 

 such variety and beauty that its oldest habitues find new 

 charms year after year. No stream has water more pure, 

 more perfect in its aeration. 



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