AtiGFST 18, 1881.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



45 



above this city one can stand upon the bank of the Ban Anto- 

 nio River, ami see Us crystal waters as they well up twelvcfeet 

 below the .surface from a rocky cavern in the bank. The 

 stream flows swifllv, and widens until just a few rods be- 

 low this immense "spring. Its width is one hundred feet, 

 while its depth is only two. Its course through the city 

 forms the letter S, and it is spanned by raany tine bridges. 



Just one mile above the city is San Pedro Park, enclosing 

 a large spring of the same name, and numerous smaller ones, 

 which send forth little purling streams that finally unite and 

 form the San Pedro Creek that also Hows through the city. 



Attempts have been made to introduce new fish into these 

 waters, with what success I hardly know. At the head of 

 the river is a fish hatchery for stocking the river with sal- 

 mon, while carp have been put in the lakes in the park. I 

 have caught different kinds of fish from the streams that 

 flow from" these hikes. One was so large that several guests 

 enjoyed it with us, and while we did not take up twelvo 

 full yet, all were bountifully supplied. 



I will not attempt a pen-picture to you of the strangely 

 wonderful old missions in and ;near this place of which so 

 much bus already been written, and volumes might be. 



If travelers fail to see these and other interesting surround- 

 ings of San Antonio they will miss the Mecca of their pil- 

 grimage. A. G. S. 



DREAMING UNDER THE PINE. 

 By Xii, Yobeis. 



rTlIIfi father of Vivian St. Clair lives near the banks of 

 I Cheat River, where it, flows through a broad, beautiful 

 valley near the base of the wild mountains. Formerly a 

 professor of natural history and botany in the university of 

 his uative State, he suddenly acquired a princely fortune by 

 the sale of mountain lands, a little lime before considered 

 comparatively worthless. He would come out to this wilder- 

 ness during the summer vacations to angle for the speckled 

 trout and study the wild flora of the mountains. The estate 

 consisted only of barren Bands covered with dark pine forests. 

 Great cliffs, moss-covered and pierced with caverns — the 

 borne of the lynx and the rattlesnake— were piled up on the 

 river banks, their bases hidden by the rhododendron and 

 azalia. But oil was found floating on the waters of spring 

 and pool, for under these rugged rocks, barren sands ami 

 dark pine wood was a great petroleum lake. So the place 

 was sold, the chair in the university given up, a beautiful 

 farm purchased on the banks of the Cheat and an elegant 

 villa erected by the crystal river at the foot of the great 

 mountains. 



Prof. St. Clair was a lover of nature, and everywhere 

 about, his farm and home were objects curious, beautiful and 

 rare. On a table under a great bell glass were two little 

 trees of coral, one white as snow and the other red as blood. 

 Around them were shells that had been dyed in the colors of 

 the rainbow, and stained with the glories of the sunset. They 

 were filled with the music of the sea, and murmured all day 

 long the songs of the ocean in voices sweet and low. Over 

 a bookcase were the antlers of deer, and on them was sitting, 

 with half-opened wings, a great Virginia owl, whose big eyes 

 seemed always watching one. When Vivian was a little 

 child he woidd forget that they were only glass and some- 

 times feared that the cruel bird would swoop from his perch 

 upon the beautiful canaries that sang for him every day from 

 their cage in the ivied windows. In wardian cases were 

 growing miniature forests, feathery ferns, silver green and 

 gold, waved their delicate fronds over little mountains ami 

 grottoes formed of mingled moss and crystals, mirrors half- 

 hidden among vines looked like the lakes on the mountains 

 fringed with the rhododendron, and white pebbles were built 

 up like the river crags. Li aquaria were banded sunfish, 

 silver dace and graceful eels ; and little islands of cork, 

 edged with ocean shells and covered with aquatic plants, 

 floated about on the water beautiful as the river gardens of 

 the East. Birds of brilliant plumage from the far South- 

 lands were grouped in their houses of glass, some looking as 

 it they were about to warble a love song, others seemingly 

 ready to mount on beautiful wings to heaven. Showcases 

 were filled with their nests, some simple aud coarse, others 

 wonderfully wrought, and with eggs white as snow, blue as 

 the sky, or painted like the autumn leaves, and polished like 

 the ocean pearl. In rosewood cabinets were minerals from 

 every land ; the Amazon stone and rhe ruby, silvers gleaming 

 among masses of opal, amethyst and beryl. On the lawn 

 were growing the rarest trees and the most beautiful flowers. 

 The evergreens and lilies of Japan, the shrubs and roses of 

 China, wore mingled with the bulbs of Holland and the ivies 

 of England, and down by the river the balsam fir and the 

 holly tree were growing in their native Bands. The con- 

 servatories were filled with the rarest plants of the tropics, 

 and the marble fountains played all day long in the summer. 

 Surrounded thus from his earliest years by the beautiful in 

 nature, the boy learned to love the great book whose pictured 

 pages are mountains and meadows, woodlands and prairies, 

 lakes and oceans, planets and suns. Every summer when he 

 came home to spend his college vacation he would wander 

 alone through the forest, learning the secrets of the squirrels 

 and studying the language of the birds. He saw the father 

 collecting the material, and the mother weaving it into the 

 nest. This U\ig is too large, this hair too long, and both are 

 rejected. "I see," he said, "birds are careful builders ; 

 everything must be perfectly adapted to the place it is to 

 fill." He wondered why tho female never warbled a song. 

 " Is not music," he said, " the language of" love, and was 

 not the art of song acquired by the males in endeavoring to 

 attract the attention of their mates ? Imperfect at fh-3t, it 

 has been cultivated for long, improved and transmitted with 

 all these additional modulations of tone through countless 

 generations, just as our own language has been perfected out 

 of the guttural mutteriugs of savages." He asked himself 

 why one was so richly dressed and the. other in plain attire ? 

 Then he thought that sitting all day long upon her nest, or 

 hovering over her young, brilliant plumage would only serve 

 to attract the glittering eyes of the serpent, or the keener 

 ones of the hawk. 



"If female birds," he said, "have gaudy plumage, they 

 are never seen upon an open nest ; it is covered over with 

 leaves or hidden away in the heart of a hollow tree." He 

 stooped one day to gather a flower, but it rose in the air and 

 flew away— a beautiful butterfly I "Ah. 1 I see," he mused, 

 " your folded wings look like a blossom ; and you are there- 

 4 by concealed from enemies." He accompanied a hunter 

 one day into the dark mountains, heard the howl of the 

 wolf, and found a spotted fawn among the laurel. 

 He wondered why the wolves did not know it was there, 



and he knew that it must be scentless. " The All-Father," he 

 slid, " has given the feeblest creature some protection from 

 its enemies." 



"You are right," replied the hunter, " neither wolf aor 

 hound can scent a fawn while tho spots are on." 



Wandering deeper and deeper among the mountains they 

 came to a shallow stream, whose rocky bed was covered 

 with the footprints of animals. " So the river was not here 

 once," said Vivian, "and these rocks were only a bar of 

 sand ; now they have hardened into a page of stone in the 

 great book, printed, perhaps, thousands of years ago, but 

 easy enough to read. Here are the tracks of a wild deer, 

 and close behind an Indian hunter followed in pursuit. It 

 was wounded, too, and in the right foreleg. See, that, foot 

 has never touched the sand, and leaves no mark ; the others 

 are all quite plain. And it was raining. Here are the fossil 

 drops, and they came from a cloud in the west." 



" You have a flue eye, - ' said the mountaineer, " and would 

 never lose a deer's track in the ferns ; you would make a 

 famous hunter." 



" I would rather be a famous naturalist," replied Vivian, 

 " and he should have an eye far keener than the chaser of 

 the deer." 



When home during the Christmas holidays he would wan- 

 der alone into the forest when the ground was covered with 

 snow, and the little pines were bending under a weight of 

 starry flowers, white and beautiful as his own hydrangeas. 

 The leafless trees were all in bloom— blossoms that would 

 never ripen into fruit — they were only flowers of snow. The 

 impress of little feet are everywhere, aud he knew at a glance 

 what animal bad mdae each one. "Here by this mossy 

 rock," he said, "a squinel has just been digging for the nuts 

 that he buried long ago in the golden autumu. There a hare 

 has danced a merry round in tho moonbeams under tho 

 thorn, and a wood-mouse has gone to its home in the heart 

 of the. hollow pine. A fox crept into this hazel thicket, 

 paused a moment behind the little cedar at Jits edge, then 

 bounded forward. Did he find a supper there spread out 

 before him ou a table-cloth of snow ? No; here are the 

 prints of little feet flying away over the hill. But here on 

 the river bank is blood ; a white hare has dashed wildly 

 through the laurel ; here is scattered fur ; there a spot of 

 blood, now Ted it looks upon the snow ! She staggered 

 here, and her steps have been irregular and slow. Ah 1 here 

 she lies beside the fallen pine, cold and dead. And here are 

 other tracks going away over the windy hill. A mink has 

 ridden the hare a death-race, and the rider's teeth were in 

 the throat of his steed. Murder was done last night in the 

 dark pine wood 1 



" This is a pictured page in the great book, too, only it 

 will never harden into stone ; the bright sun will burn up 

 every letter, for it is only written in the snow. But does 

 not," be continued, " every event transpiring in the universe 

 write its own history in letters of fire that will burn forever? 

 I drop a pebble into a mountain lake, and the waves grow 

 larger and larger until they have covered all the water ; so it 

 is with the waves of light, and if the subterranean fires 

 should burst the solid crust of the earth into fragments and 

 scatter them in space, this moonlit forest picture — the leap- 

 ing fox, the dying liare, the footprints in the snow— would 

 remain spread out forever before the eyes of the Heaven- 

 Father ! Light will travel seven times round the earth in a 

 second, yet if our planet could be seen from the most dis- 

 tant star from us it would appear to dwellers there not as it 

 now is, but as it was millions of years ago. There would be 

 seen no man, or bird, or flower upon its surface ; only the 

 tree ferns waving their feathery crowns in the moist and 

 heated air, and the club mosses, tall as mountain pines. 

 Everywhere frightful reptiles are battling with monsters as 

 hideous as themselves, and all the seas and lakes and reedy 

 pools are dyed in blood. There has been war upon the earth 

 from the first appearance of life upon its surface ,- the strong 

 and cunning destroy the weak and foolish. The history of 

 the earth is written in the sunbeams. Every bird, every 

 flower, every ocean shell that ever saw the sunlight ; every 

 city, every battle, every individual action Sh painted there 

 forever. The universe is the encyclopaedia of the Eternal 

 Mind j everything is printed there — the leaves are never 

 closed, the history never finished, the drama never ended ; 

 but the pictured pages containing your heart's history and 

 mine are open before the All-Seeing Eye forever and forever." 



In the happy summer time Vivian, the lover of nature, 

 would lie down upon the mossy carpet spread out like a 

 fairy garden under the the pines, and the song of the mock- 

 ing-bird and the oriole would lull him to Bleep, and the 

 Queen of the Fairies would come to him in his dreams, and 

 he would ride away in her chariot, all of gold and gems, over 

 the earth and under the sea. Now it is sunset, and he is in 

 the wild Northland. The snow-clad mountains are tinged 

 with ail the glory of color, and the clouds are painted over 

 with flowers of gold. The brilliant moon will circle round 

 the dreamy horizon for days, never setting until the sun has 

 run her bright course under the stars. The aurora bursts 

 forth with magical splendor ; the sky seems changed into a 

 phosphorescent sea, and the snow is sometimes red as blood 

 and the ice is as green as forest leaves. A broad band spans 

 the horizon, more brilliant than a thousand rainbows; 

 streams of many-colored light burst from it, filling all the 

 heavens, passing through all the intermediate shades, from 

 violet and bluish white to green and purple red. The stars 

 Bhine dimly through the golden haze, aud all seems like the 

 unreal world of dreams. It is winter in the trackless waste, 

 and the silence is broken only by the hooting of the snowy 

 owl, or the yelping of the Arctic fox. Most of the animals 

 have followed the sea birds southward, or are sleeping in 

 their burrows under the snow. The icebergs are beautiful 

 as palaces of Parian marble besprinkled with rubies and 

 emeralds and flooded with golden Are. 



But the fairy chariot flies through the air like a meteor, 

 and all changes into new forms of beauty. The dreamer 

 is in 



" That land wliere the lemon trees bloom, 

 Where Uie gold orange glows In the deep thickets gloom, 

 Where a w tail ever soit tram the blue heaven blows, 

 Ami the grove, aie or myrtle ami laurel and rose— 

 Knowesttlioultv" 

 Birds and butterflies are everywhere ; some seem only 

 flowers, so like are they to blossoms, and many flowers seem 

 ready to soar on snowy wings to Cloudland, so like are they 

 to doves. Serpents, beautiful in color as any ocean shell or 

 mountain gem, wind slowly among the tangled reeds with 

 motions graceful as the sunlit waters of a rivulet. The ever- 

 green trees are covered with giant creepers, binding together 

 all the forest, and throwing over it a drapery of many- 



colored flowers, filling all the woodland with perfume. 

 Beetles, glittering with metallic brilliancy, and beautiful as 

 any gem, illuminate the fragrant forest all the night, aud 

 fill the air with drowsy music. Trees taller than our 

 Northern pines bear flowers beautiful as lilies, or furnish 

 man with all that be requires — milk, wine, butter, honey, 

 wax, oil, bread, cabbage, manna, candles, beds, ropes aud 

 clothing! The 'magnificent Victoria Regia, yellow, violet 

 and white— queen of the floral world — Boats on the waves of 

 sunny rivers, sinking at night into her conch of waters. The. 

 great vault of heaven is spread out before him with all its 

 wealth of moons aDd suns and constellations, from pole to 

 pole. 



But again the fairy-chariot bears him onward over many 

 radiant lands, and sets him down at last, in the gardens 

 under the sea. The liquid crystal of the Indian Ocean is 

 gleaming over him, and the sea anemones cover the rocks 

 with their waving crowns, beautiful as beds of mingled lily 

 and roae, and the medusae, and the microscopic crustaceans 

 shine in the obscurity like fairy stars. The humming birds 

 of -the ocean, small, gleaming fishes, some bright with a 

 metallic splendor of azure or vermilion, s^me gilded green 

 or dazzling silver lustre, play around the coral bushes, light 

 as spirits of the abyss. As the day declines and the darkness 

 of night, sinks into the depths, this radiant garden kindles 

 with new splendors. The white or blue bells of the medusae 

 float through this enchanted world, and every angle beams 

 and shines with living light. All things, wlreh in their 

 livery of brown or gray are uuilluuiined in daytime in the 

 universal radiation of bright colors, now shine with the most 

 charming red, yellow or emerald lustre ; and to complete the 

 marvels of the"enchauted night, the large silver disk of tho 

 sea moon gentle moves through the whirl of tiny stirs. The 

 luxuriant vegetation of the tropics has no such richness 

 of forms or glory of color as these animal gardens under the 

 sea. The fishes are covered with jewels and sparkle like 

 gems, and the ocean floor is strewed with silver sand and 

 paved with radiant shells. 



But what hideous monster is this clinging to the rocks ! It 

 reaches out its serpent arms and touches ids face. A thrill 

 of horror passes along his nerves and he awakens with a 

 start — it was only the cold nttse of his dog pressed against 

 his cheek, and the mocking-bird and the oriole were still 

 singing in the pine. "How rapidly," be said, "the mind 

 lliea over the earth in our dreams I I have only slept for a 

 moment and yet I seem to have traveled through radiant 

 lands for years. 



"The lower animals drcaui and reason too," he continued, 

 musingly ; " my hounds chase the wild deer over the snow 

 in their dreams, and niauy animals have the gift of language 

 —utter sounds of warning, delight and pain, and are dumb 

 only to the ignorant and the unobserving. The joyful bark 

 of our faithful dog as he welcomes us home we understand — 

 the thoughts that illuminate his countenance and glorify his 

 eyes we cannot always read, and yet bis busy mind is ever 

 planning, thinking, dreaming. 



" Inferior animals differ greatly from each other in mental 

 power. Some are possessed of marvelous talents, others of 

 the Bauie family are intellectually feeble. Some are idiotic 

 or insane. Like ourselves, they have their kings, queens, 

 soldiers, masons, carpenters, farmers, hunters and sailors. 

 And the agricultural ant of Texas cultivates the soil, sows 

 the seed aud reaps the harvest ; owns slaves and milks its 

 cows." 



TROUT FISHING IN NEW MEXICO. 



Santa. Fb, N. M. 



SO many people are now coming West into this new coun-' 

 try, among whom are doubtless many lovers of the 

 "gentle art," that a few remarks on sport to be obtained 

 with the trout here, according to my own experience, may 

 be read with interest by some of your numerous subscribers. 

 Immediately in the vicinity of Santa Fe there is little or no 

 sport to be had, owing to the absence of streams, but by 

 g-ing some twenty miles northeast or west fair trouting is 

 obtainable. On the north side the various streams from the 

 main range of mountains are get-at-able, as also the Rio 

 Grande, Chama, etc.; on the west another point of the Rio 

 Grande, and on the east the Pecos. The mountains are filled 

 with small trout streams, where with worm or grasshopper a 

 large number of small fish may be had at most times. Thus 

 it may be seen that, although the popular cry is that water is 

 a scarce article in New Mexico, by traveling & pied a few 

 miles some fun is within our reach, provided we know a 

 little of the country. To give a good idea of what one may 

 expect to meet with, 1 will relate how a friend and I spent 

 two very pleasant days on the Pecos. 



To commence with, 1 am from the Old Country, where I 

 was initiated into the mysteries of fly fishing some fifteen 

 years ago, which fascinating sport I have followed whenever 

 I had time and opportunity in rivers, streams aud lakes of 

 England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, etc., so 

 that, young in years, without egotism I may call myself an 

 elderly fisherman. On coming to America and settling for a 

 time in the Eastern States, I found I had not sufficient time 

 to pursue my favorite sport, so that there my experience has 

 been limited to a few off-days. 



Very different ideas are held by English and American 

 fishermen with regard to tackle, especially with regard to 

 size of fly. My slock of two well filled books was unani- 

 mously voted much too small, of no use at all by the Eastern 

 fishermen ; and also here I was told I must tie them on 

 larger hooks to meet with success. In spite of these warn- 

 ings, however. I persevered with the little "uus" and had 

 no cause to repent doing so. I certainly am an advocate of 

 small flies aud fine tackle. In the almost virgin streams of 

 America I do not think the matter is of such vital import- 

 ance, but in rivers where the water is whipped from the be- 

 ginning to the end of the season several times daily, as in a 

 large number of English rivers, the trout, without doubt, be- 

 come educated and can discern between a real aud artificial 

 fly pretty readily. Now, the natural insects one wishes to 

 represent are, as a rule, small j so it seems to stand to reason 

 that by tying them small we more nearly approach nature in 

 our imitations, consequently are more, likely to lure the trout. 

 If any one doubts the soundness of this argument let him try, 

 if he has the opportunity, the large-sized flies on some thor- 

 oughly fished water in England, and he will find that at 

 every throw he will see the fish making off in all directions, 

 and " divil a fish " will rise. Or else lot him give the small 

 ones a fair trial on American streams. Now, I do not wish 

 to be misunderstood. I do not maintain that small flies are 

 invariably BUpertor— lot in lakes, by way of example, a 

 larger fly is required — my remarks having special reference 

 to streams not exceeding twenty-five yards in width— in fag 



