NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JULY 15, 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



Answers to Correspondents ±73 



ArOhbrt :— 



Nov York Archery Club; Consecutive York Hounds; Orl- 

 taui Archers ; Michigan Scores 473 



EniToniAL:— 

 The Dittrnar Powder; A Word about. Gun Makers ; The New 



York Ilojr Pound; Dr. Carver; The Tileaton Memorial 

 Fund....: 471 



a wew ttunpowaer; mat Luitmar rowaor Acoiaent 

 kansas Game Prospects ; Pennsylvania; Shooting Matches 



The Kknnki.;— 

 Jack ; Imported English Fox-Hounds : Importation; Ken- 



06] Notes 172 



MlSCEr,LANY : 



Kc 



of English Rivets 46" 



N-iTurtAL, riiSTORT:— 

 Woodcock Carrying Their Young; Ornithological Notes 

 from Monroe Conusv; iTivelliyene^ of a Spaniel ; More 

 Peaceable Sparrows; When Do Bears Bring Forth? Sub- 

 limity of Faith ; Pet Siruirrels 



Publishers' Department 



The ROTES r- 



Sea and River Fishtng:— 



Fl.v '-Fishing for Black Bass; Black Bass iv. Trout; CanailiHn 

 Salmon Angling: Thunder Bav Trout; Vermont; Tim 

 Pond; Was He Mixed? Bass Fishing: Fly-Casting; A Re- 

 covered Hook 469 



Yachting and Canoeing:— 

 Yachting News; Boston City Regatta; Lake Yachting; 

 Cleveland Yacht Club; <5:i! . I". ■' : I u i 



ftmirwscqncBS of English fivers. 



give him a lead at the one and wipe his eye at the other 

 is quite forgotten in the conscious superiority of the mo- 

 ment. But this is a phase of English life more conducive 

 to cynicism than description, and would, to most of my 

 readers, be meaningless. Perhaps in the dim future — in 

 the days of the " coming crown " — when time-killing as 

 an art has become necessary on this side of the Atlantic, 

 besides the army of men that sport as now for their own 

 amusement and improvement, there will be another army 

 entering the Held bent, at whatever risk of discomfort to 

 themselves, on doing the " correct thing." I hope go, It 

 is infinitely better than the course of life pursued by the 

 jeunesse doree of Continental Europe. 



But enough. Let us take the map of Britain and 

 glance over it with the eye of a trout fisherman. 



Run a straight line from Berwick-upon-Tweed to the 

 Isle of Wight, and the country left upon the east of that 

 line, speaking generally, may bye said to be the non- 

 trouting portion of the British isles. By this I do not 

 mean to say that it is entirely devoid of waters holding 

 that most desirable of fish, but as it differs widely in its 

 physical formation from the rest of the kingdom, the 

 very features that form that difference are decidedly of 

 an anti-trout order. Fens and level plains are, of course, 

 with the sluggish winding rivers, ill adapted for such a 

 purpose, though there are occasional exceptions. Nor- 

 folk has, I believe, one stream holding trout. Suffolk 

 and Essex have one, I think, between them, while the 

 group of counties that center around Camoridge are, as 

 far as my personal knowledge and supposition go, en- 

 tirely banren of this fish, There probably are some arti- 

 ficial, and possibly an occasional natural exception to 

 these statements, but none in any way to affect the ar- 

 gument. The Isle of "Wight, with its beautiful hills and 

 valleys, has only one miserable little ditch holding trout, 

 while from the '' dun wolds" of Lincolnshire all readers 

 of Tennyson know at least one stream pours, where 

 "Here and there a lusty trout, and here and there a 

 grayling," is to be found. From my own knowledge of 

 the stream in question, though I am bound to add it is a 

 very cursory one, I should say the " Laureate's " phrase 

 of " Here and there" was not an inapt one. 



Admirers of Charles Kingsley might be apt to suppose 

 that the chalk downs of England were very paradises f or 



(' trout fishermen. I was going to say the very opposite is 

 the case, but that would be too strong. A deep-rooted 

 ™ prejudice against that (to me) objectionable geological 

 formation nearly betrayed me into an inaccuracy, which, 



sports of England that is entirely free from the 

 stain of what, for want of a better word, I shall call 

 flunkeyism. The stupid lad, with more money than 

 brains, who yearns to be, or be thought to be, a sports- 

 man, finds in the showy and impressive externals of the 

 chase, with the responsibility appertaining to its pursuit, 

 an easier road, in the eyes of the gaping masses, to the 

 coveted title than in the quiet, unostentatious and self- 

 dependant science of Father Isaac. Hundreds again toil 

 through shooting season after shooting season under the 

 command of a keeper till their hair is gray, without an 

 idea in their heads beyond blazing away at everything 

 that rises within shot. But, unless it may be an occasional 

 noodle who thinks it adds to his importance to be seen 

 swinging a salmon rod, no one fishes "for effect." It 

 would not pay at all. The gentle art has, to be sure, 

 thousands of enthusiastic devotees of all classes, but each 

 one of them goes to the river side, impelled thither solely 

 by his own genuine love of the sport, and the most skill- 

 ful performer commands no admiration outside his craft. 

 There is no glitter and show about the business — not 

 enough exclusiveuess about it to dazzle the eyes of tho 

 vulgar. It is supposed to be slow by fancy youths, who 

 might, with some difficulty, distinguish a pointer from a 

 setter, but imagine they are "shooting men." It is 

 voted unworthy of some wooden-headed, uncultivated 

 plutocrats, who can sit on a horse just well enough to 

 watch, at a very respectful distance, the handling of the 

 pack they are proud to subscribe to, and who call them- 

 selves "fox hunters." 



It is possible the comparative ease with which angling 

 can be indulged in by the unpriviledged classes may help 

 to rob it of that peculiar prestige (inexplicable to any 

 one who does not know England thoroughly) that hangs 

 around the sister sports. 



You will almost invariably find that the non-fisherman, 

 unless he be a thorough sportsman, speaks of his aversion 

 to, or his want of skill in, the art with a ludicrous kind of 

 conscious pride, as much as to say, "You can't expect a 

 dashing blade like me to care about such a slow business 

 as that? No, indeed ; give me a good day'B hunting or 

 grouse shooting," The fact that his angling friend has to 



considering I first learnt the art on one of Kingsley 's i 

 mortalized chalk rivers, would have been, to say the least 

 of it, ungracious. Americans, on reading so constantly 

 of the English downs in prose and verse, often evince a 

 natural curiosty to know what manner of hills they are 

 that seem to leave such deep impress on the minds of so 

 many writers. I will try and explain, though it makes 

 me feel very thirsty : They are round and smooth ; hare, 

 with the exception of a clump of fir trees sometimes on 

 their summits ; nowhere high enough to be imposing 

 (the highest chalk in England is only 900 feet above the 

 sea), always steep enough to make traveling slow, 

 parched up and brown as to their stunted grasses in dry 

 weather, and dusty beyond compare as to their glaring 

 highways. The white thirsty chalk cropping out every 

 here and there upon their bony ridges, abounding in 

 deep valleys down to which the stranger from other dis- 

 tricts and other lands w T ould hasten in vain as he jour- 

 neyed on summer days to slake his thirst ; but a continu- 

 ation of unpleasant surprises would meet him peculiar to 

 these unwatered uplands; valleys, down which on any 

 other formation would leap clear and brawling streams, 

 here are guiltless of even the course of one. Some few 

 famous trout rivers manage, however, to struggle out of 

 these thirsty ranges — famous rather for the size of their 

 trout than for their gameness and edible dualities, No- 

 tably the Keimet, and the Itchen (Mr. Francis' favorite 

 river), while old Father Thames himself ranks all along 

 his course as a trout river, or rather he receives a good 

 many small streams, all famous for the size of their fish, 

 and a certain number of patriarchs of fabulous dimen- 

 sions known as Thames trout find their way into the 

 baskets of a few fortunate anglers yearly, and are gener- 

 ally considered by the brethren, iu that part of England 

 at any rate, as the very elite among their order of fishes. 

 One is reported this week of seventeen pounds. Of these 

 rivers I may have something to say another time, but 

 must now. having dismissed all the non-trouting coun- 

 ties of the Eastern Division, hasten northward, pass up 

 the coast of Yorkshire, which is broken by the egress of 

 no trout stream of note, unless it is the Duffield water, 

 once famous for its club of skillful anglers, till I place 

 my reader on those high table lands where Yorkshire 

 and Dunham meet, and where with Scott's traveler in 

 "Rokeby" he may quote as he looks down over the 

 scenes of that romance :— 



" Nor Tees atone in dawning bright 

 Shall rush upon the ravished sight ; 



Kach from its own dark glen shall gleam." 



The Tees, which rises among the bleak, heathery moors 



where Yorkshire, Durham and Westmoreland comes, and 



divides the two former counties from one another, has 

 been, in the days of yore, a famous trouting stream ; but 

 alas 1 we are in the. black country of the North, and min- 

 ing and trout fishing don't agree. Ten years ago Tees- 

 dale anglers were getting despondent ; how things are 

 now I can't say. For several years in succession — visit- 

 ing friends in the neighborhood— I made a two days' pil- 

 grimage to the headwaters of that romantic stream — not 

 so much on account of the attractions of the fishing ; for, 

 though everything to the eye bade fair for success, and 

 artificial pollution had not reached so far up ; though ac- 

 companied on each occasion by the best fly fisherman I 

 ever knew, persistent fadure attended my efforts. Yet 

 there was a charm about the stern wtlduess of the sur- 

 roundings ; a solemn weirdness about the bleak, waste 

 uplands, that carried the same party of us there summer 

 after summer, to the cozy little thatched inn with its 

 swinging signboard, that welcomed our steps at night as 

 we returned with light baskets, and worn-out with 

 floundering over the roundest and most slippery boulders 

 that have ever .been anathematized by anglers. 



To realize that this bed of polished boulders, with 

 peaty-colored water trickling down between them, was 

 the same river that reflected on its surface the lights and 

 glare, the flames and furnaces of Middlesborough and 

 Stockton was, of itself, somewhat difficult. One had 

 also the pleasure of casting a line upon the same day at 

 the foot of two of the highest waterfalls in England, and 

 our principal hopes used to be centered on the dark-col- 

 ored, seething pools, which churned and boiled beneath 

 each cataract, the one about forty, and the other about 

 eighty feet high. 



I must hasten in a northeasterly direction, however, over 

 the wild stretch of moorland famous for its immense 

 stock of grouse, that in the breeding season resounds 

 with their clucking and crowing, and all through the 

 summer with the plaintive cries of the curlews and pe- 

 wits, till the valley of the Wear, or Weardale, lies be- 

 neath, noted for its stalwart men, its fat church endow- 

 ments and its charming scenery, M inin g villages are 

 scattered at pretty regular intervals all the way from its 

 headwaters to Bishop Auckland, where the massive walls 

 and turrets of the palace of the bishops of Durham, with 

 its niediawal memories, look down over that dirty, thriv- 

 ing town. 



I don't think there is a river in the world that has so 

 many and such skillful anglers in a given space as the 

 upper waters of the Wear, with its scant supply of wary 

 little trout. In the days of old, before the fatal lead 

 "hush" discolored its then bright waters, when the bish- 

 ops of Durham compounded their fluctuating mineral 

 tithes for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year 

 and thought themselves hardly used, or long oven before 

 that, when they ranked as princes, and the country was 

 preserved for their hunting grounds, splendid trout darted 

 in myriads through its long, shelving pools and gently rip- 

 pling rapids, what fishing these reverend lordships might 

 have had then ! Now the miner, the schoolmaster, or 

 the parson, with their home made rods, which they swear 

 by (and they certainly surpass anything I have ever seen 

 turned out by a tackle maker), with their single strands 

 of horsehair and flies tied by themselves on horsehair, 

 with long. handled and antique landing nets peculiar to 

 the Wear, wade deep into the water and throw yards and 

 yards of line, dropping their Hies, like gossamer, in far 

 off holes and under distant banks, carrying more art, 

 more care and more perseverance into the craft than any 

 class of anglers I have ever met, and with certainly less 

 possibility of a corresponding reward ; for a few small 

 trout, running six or seven to the pound, are all that the 

 most successful could hope for. But the glory of the 

 capture is enough, and these mueh-fished-for troutlings 

 are certainly possessed of a very different order of intel- 

 lect to their cousins in a West Virginia brook. In the 

 days when as a schoolboy and an undergraduate I used 

 to haunt the. banks of the Wear. 1 used to ''fancy" my- 

 self on the strength of Southern and Western perform- 

 ances not a little, but my conceit used to get most effec- 

 tually removed as every summer found me ttu-ning out 

 my basket with my Wear friends, and my catch in a 

 lamentable minority to theirs. Their heaviest baskets 

 were such as in more favored rivers would have been the 

 work of an hour ; but to make a basket at all on that 

 water required a master workman. They were a terribly 

 b'goted lot, though, those anglers of Upper Weardale. 

 Nothing was good pertaining to fishing tackle that was 

 made out of Weardale. A "Farlowe" or "Armstrong" 

 rod thev looked on with the most supreme contempt. 

 ;, in : visit I ever made to the Wear was to the house 

 of an intimate friend, a great piscatorial light in the lo- 

 cality. On arranging tackle the next day for a fishing 

 excursion he asked to see my rod, which he supposed, 

 with contempt in his voice, "was one of those infernal 

 cockney blobbing affairs," Now I was rather proud, as 

 a youngster, of my rod, which outside of Weardale 

 wotdd have been called a good one. He put it together, 

 anathematizing the ferules as ridiculous inventions, and 

 having felt Hie play of it for a moment gave Vent to a 

 huge guffaw, took it to pieces, pulled out his knife and 

 proceeded very deliberately to cut what looked like little 



