[."Entered According to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by the Forest and Stre 



at Washington.! 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1880. 



THE SANDPIPER. 



TITE little sandpiper that has a great stride 

 Lijie ti tltlg "f the initios, ancl toys with the tide, 

 Is u Jolly (rood follow of III finite pride. 



He signals your presence, assuming much feal'. 

 And pipes of the dwnger that's onmlng too near, 

 Or whistles alarm that, others may hear. 



He eyes you obliquely, a comical way, 



And flutters a distance as much as to say, 



Thus far and no farther, and there you may stay. 



But if you should trespass he'll nod in disdain, 



Then I ell his displeasure with might and with main, 

 And skitn o'er the water to safety again. 



When danger has passed liiui he settles bis plumes, 

 The mien of importance he quickly assumes, 

 Subaqueous searching he gravely resumes. 



All, little sandpiper of falry-likc stride, 

 Willi beautiful nature so closely flllica, 

 I'VB noted thee often with love and with pride. 



-A river is flowing through life to the sea, 



A river that fancy Oil pictures to me, 



Where the soul is a rambler and thought is like thee. 



Jerome Brie sett. 



Spring 0m% bv ih$ §lne 



€33 tiSA-2 * L 



IN a former paper I casually alluded to an intention I 

 then had of taking down from the nail on which for 

 years it had hung, my long neglected fly-rod, and setting- 

 out in search of fronting localities more congenial to the 

 lovers of fly-fishing, At the end of the long, cold, dry 

 weather that persecuted us through May, after waiting 

 and watching the heavens for days and days, the limit of 

 my opportunities for absence was reached, and as the 

 sun rose over the mountains on a harsh and dewless 

 morning, I found myself with C, jogging away from 

 home with distended saddle-bags and fifty miles of road 

 between us and our destination. The rugged chain of the 

 Blue Ridge Mountains towered upon our left, and our 

 horses' heads pointed to the north. With further partic- 

 ulars I will not bore my readers, since strangers coming 

 to this part of the world to fish would be foolish to 

 choose the eastern side of the range, with the wealth of 

 trout streams that sparkle down the mountain sides of 

 the western counties open to them. The case though is 

 different witli residents whose lot happens to be cast upon 

 the sunny side, for there is a vast difference to men 

 with occupations, between a trip that entails two days 

 upon the road aud one that demands four, Neither will 

 I tax the patience of my reader with a detailed account 

 of a wearisome ride of fifty miles. The trout streams, or 

 I should rather say the brooks that held trout higher up, 

 trickled feebly over our horses' feet at the innumerable 

 fords through which we crossed. The usual motley array 

 of anglers for white chub and suckers that every stream- 

 washed Virginia hamlet exhibits were there, seated on 

 fence rails— a melancholy band. At one village, or a spot 

 that had been a village about the time of the Revolution- 

 ary War, beneath whose crumbling walls dances a clear 

 purling stream, the store keeper had erected over the 

 ■water a rude pier from the summit of which his lordly 

 legs are to be seen dangling fro it court dav to court dav, 

 and where doubtless, with one- longing eye upon bis store 

 door and the other upon bis float, he chews in silence and 

 Badly ruminates upon the day? that are, no more. The 

 populace are also there, in rows along the bank, or 

 perched upon the rocks in mid-stream— black and wltito 

 —sad and dejected. 

 "Caught anything?" 

 "Nothing." 



And the refrain is echoed dismally front mouth to 

 mouth along the shore. The, thought occurs to one that 

 if such' a show of anglers can be turned out in such an 

 unpropitious state of water and weather, what a happy 

 time the chub and suckers, the horny -heads and catfish 

 must have of it on showery days. 



Ask me not to recall the wicked — the cruel fabrications 

 as to mileage that were poured into ears ears along that 

 red and winding track. As an old horseback traveler 1 

 am prepared to find men and women who will without 

 malicious intentions double or halve a distance that they 



may traverse twice a week. I am prepared to come 

 across individuals who look you straight m the face and 

 calmly deny the existence of considerable towns six 

 miles from where they are standing. I am not at all sur- 

 prised when a blacksmith of good character, or a very 

 high-toned store keeper tells me my destination is five 

 miles off and I find it fifteen — but the dwellers upon this 

 Virginia highway fairly and squarely outliedauy roadside 

 population upon whose tender mercies I have yet been 

 thrown. Their diversity of opinion not only on several 

 occasions deprived us momentarily of our breath, which 

 was a small matter, but finally robbed us of half our 

 much required night's rest, The small hours must have 

 been tolling ere the tardy moon at length rose just in 

 time to throw her rays upon the chimneys and gables of 

 the hospitable mansion that was to be our shelter, and it 

 is needless to add that that night the terms bed and sleep 

 were synonymous. I don't know that there is anything, 

 to my idea, more heart-breaking than the act of travers- 

 ing in the darkness of the night an unknown road in a 

 strange and thickly wooded country. People who are 

 accustomed only to the superb highways of the Northern 

 States, and whose idea of road traveling is to sit behind 

 trotting hoises and watch the milestones dash by every 

 few minutes, would find it hard to realize the tedium of 

 accomplishing long journeys through countries where a 

 more primitive civilization exists. In winter time let us 

 forbear description : we are supposed to be writing about 

 trout fishing, and gladly do wo confine our utterances to 

 matters pertaining to the leafy months when, if it has 

 not rained for a few days, and you are riding, not driv- 

 ing, and it is daylight, your wife and family may see 

 you start without particular cause for alarm. But sup- 

 posing your route to be through the Piedmont section of 

 the State, and any of the other conditions are present, 

 if you have not already insured your life I should recom- 

 mend you to do so for a considerable sum. But, jesting 

 apart, when a strange road enters a river, on a moonless 

 night, that you take it for granted only is shallow and 

 and apparently never emerges again, the most equable 

 tempers are apt to be tried. "Such is frequently the case 

 where a mountain torrent for several hundred yards does 

 duty for a road— evident, though uncomfortable by day, 

 but by night, bewildering. 



1 am, I'm afraid, a little hardened by constant famili- 

 arity to the sublimity of nature, but as I looked out of 

 my bedroom window in the morning the panorama that 

 the raising of the blind revealed was beautiful in the ex- 

 treme. The sun, I am ashamed to say, had risen, but had 

 not yet dried up the dew drops that glittered over the sur- 

 face" of a well mown lawn, on fragrant hedges of osage 

 orange, and on the fresh green leaves of myrtle and of 

 ash. Beyond stretched a long and level valley, rich in 

 fields of wheat and clover, through the centre of which 

 lines of willows and alders marked the course of a stream 

 whose murmuring was plainly audible in the stillness of 

 the morning air. In the background, dwarfing every- 

 thing else into insignificance, rose the mountains of the 

 Blue Etdge, clothed in all the beauty and the glory of 

 spring. Not a cloud hung round the clear cut pinnacles 

 with which each summit was crowned. Cold and dis- 

 tinct their razor edges, bristling with winds, swept and 

 ragged forests, cut the sky and the ear could almost fancy 

 the sound of the waterfall that leaps down those fairy 

 glens on which the black shadows of early morning were 

 Btill resting ; but in the words of Byron, If I do not mis- 

 quote them : — 



Tired of up-gazing still, the 

 Heposes gladly on as smooth 

 As ever spvipg yelml iu arrttSI 

 Where a bold river breaks tl 

 And woods along the banks 

 Whose shadows in thegliiss\ 

 Or with the moonbeams slee 



pearled eye 



i vale 



f dye ; 



! long expanse, 



re waving high, 



waters dance, 



in midnight's solemn tran 



Alas, in our valley there was no sign of rain. The buz- 

 zards soared till they became as specks in the sky. The 

 swallows wheeled far from earth. The wind blew gently 

 and unmeaningly from the South and anglers' hopes were 

 at zero. Soon after breakfast, with feelings anything but 

 enthusiastic, we started with our host, and laden 

 with supplies for two days to our fishing grounds. 

 After a seven mile ride along the banks of a most 

 charming river we arrived at its forks in the angle 

 of which, at the base of the mountains, exactly where 

 the realms of trout and creek fish met, we drew rein in 

 front of a picturesque log house with surroundings very 

 different to those usually found around the rude home- 

 steads of the mountaineers. Here dwelt Zach whose 

 root' tree, has ever been a rendezvous to the few anglers 

 that come from a distance, and who, always a keen trout 

 fisherman, has of late years been enrolled among that 

 best order of piscators— a fly-fisher. 



What might be called the" "rise of fly-fishing" on the 

 two streams that unite their waters at this point is not 

 without interest, and we devoutly hope it is only what 

 has already taken place and what will in some future 

 day take place on mauy another mountain river. 



Some half dozen, or less, years ago an artificial fly or a 

 jointed rod was a thing unknown, and aU the angling 

 that was previous to that time done was confined, or 

 almost entirely so, to the mountaineers, who own or rent 



land from the population for six or seven miles up each 

 fork. 



About 1874 two gentlemen from the nearest city crea- 

 ted some astonishment and raised to a considerable ex- 

 tent the derisive mirth of the local fishermen by wading 

 up the middle of the si ream, rigged out with tackle, etc., 

 from London or New York, and armed with ten foot fly 

 rods, landing nets, and creels. The scorn of the old 

 " boss " fisher of the mountains knew no bounds. I can 

 well picture to myself old Jessie roaring with laughter 

 from beneath bis vast forest of beard and whiskers as he 

 laid the small hook of a black gnat upon hi- rugged palm. 

 "What! catch trout with that 'ar hook and bitof feather? - ' 



However, catch trout they did. and as old > Jessie- in 

 these days now says, "They pinely raked 'em." 



Since that day the superiority of the fly has been un- 

 questioned, and even greatly exaggerated ; too much 

 stress being laid by the mountaineers on the lure itself 

 and too little on the manipulation thereof. 



Other gentlemen from a distance have since sought the 

 spot— a new angling era opened — and now the talk along 

 banks is not of poles and snoods and stick baits and such 

 like barbarous jargon, but of coch-y-bondus and red spin- 

 ners of reels, fly rods, and casting lines, while for a half 

 worn out fly a lad will willingly carry your basket and 

 net all day. Old Jessie confesses that his reign is o'er, 

 and that " 'em 'ar fellahs from the low country can beat 

 us all with their darned flies and fixin's." Jessie occa- 

 sionallv fishes with a fly under protest, but he likes some- 

 how or other to be alone at the time. Whether he designs 

 to play his fish has not been fairly ascertained, but it is 



- i e ii 2j:j... .~:j-u ,.-i,:«l.. it.™ r,,,i- fltoo ti/a 



treatment of his fish is not of a yielding order. 



Twelve o'clock on a bright May day, with low water, is 

 not a cheery time to commence fishing, and in this case 

 the result justified the outlook, for not till 4:30 did any 

 one of us, 1 believe I am correct in saying, even rise a 

 trout. The simmering hours of noon sweltered by, the 

 mocking rays of old Sol pierced even the leafy canopy 

 above our heads, and that bright and hopeless aspect of 

 things piscatorial reigned everywhere that causes the 

 most enthusiastic angler to wind up his line, lay down 

 rod and seek some shady spot, where, if the insects allow 

 him, he may stretch his limbs and wait for better times 

 with all the patience that, as a member of tho brother- 

 hood, he is credited with. 



There is a certain indescribable point, however, even 

 on the warmest afternoon, when a decided change be- 

 comes evident to the keen instincts of the trout fisherman; 

 a change that marks, however faintly, the approach of 

 evening. When the sun has fallen low enough to lose 

 his full force, and his fight rather plays round you broken 

 by mountain tops and woodland trees, than glares as be- 

 fore on the back of your neck, long shadows creep 

 over the pools and quiver in the gentle breeze that so 

 often heralds the close of day. Iu the deep gorges a dark 

 feeling arises that almost makes you shiver, and a gray 

 light steals over the water that tells the angler his time 

 has come. 



A bite of flies comes sailing clown the current between 

 the moss covered recks and down into the long still pool 

 we have so long been sleepily watching, till plash, plash, 

 its long unruffled surface once more breaks into life, and 

 as the circles widen and disappear, our energy and ardor 

 return, and slipping off a woodcock for a coachman we 

 turn our. faces down stream, and try with probable suc- 

 cess the pools and riffles thai had appeared so tenanlless 

 to the morning. Thus it was on the day in question ; the 

 evening feed, and a very short one at that, was our only 

 chance of scoring. At every turn during this short inter- 

 val one met a brother of the angle who had hurried 

 down from his corn patch high above our heads, dragged 

 his ponderous sapling from its hidden corner in some ivy 

 thicket, and was thrashing umnercilully the surface pi a 

 well remembered pet pool with the discarded remnants 

 of a "coachman" or a "miller.'' No unwlnpl stream 

 was this!— no unsophisticated trout were these!— but 

 highly educated specimens of the tinny race, and care- 

 fully instructed day by day. An open water near a Scot- 

 tish border town is not more thickly lined upon a last- 

 day than is this laughing, brawling river at certain times 

 ,,i "the dav and season, but it IB none the worse for that ; 

 in fact since the bed-ticking (*) business was stamped 

 out i't is said the trout have actually increased. Weonly 

 eaueht twenty-five between the three of us that evening, 

 b'ut'wn the oiher hand it must be fairly admitted that 

 ii„.v were twenty-five trout, not. live trout and twenty 



troutletS as is often the case iu Mich si renin*, and weighed 

 exactly eight pounds. On arriving hi dark at. our quar- 

 ters we found Zaoh away at a hole w here a sjeek prejl- 

 ouslvhe had landed a I rout of the astonishing srze (f or 

 the parts] of two and a half pounds. Suae then he luui 

 hung and lost, according to his own account, severaj 

 "thumpers "in the same pool by whose banks he bad 

 resumed his post night after night, where the glancing 



(+)A method the mountaineers had of BiflWusra bed-flcldnir 

 iu *, pool and scooping the lish out previous to the buue- Lbb law. 



