164 
THE WHITE ROVER. 
T HEY called the little schooner the White Rover, 
When they lightly launched her on the brimming tide; 
Staunch and trim she was to sail the broad seas over, 
An d with cheers they spread her snowy canvas wide. 
And a thing of beauty forth she fared to wrestle 
With the wild, uncertain ocean far and near, 
And no evil thing befell the graceful vessel, 
And she sailed in storm and sunshine many a year. 
But at last a rumor grew that she was haunted, 
That up her slender masts her sails had flown 
Unhelped by human hands, as if enchanted, 
As she rocked upon her moorings all alone. 
Howe’er that be—one day in winter weather, 
When the bitter north was raging at its worst, 
And wind and cold vexed the roused sea together, 
Till Dante’s frozen hell seemed less accurst. 
Two fishermen, to draw their trawls essaying, 
Seized by the hurricane that plowed the bay, 
Were swept across the waste; and hardly weighing 
Death’s chance, the Rover reefed and bore away 
To'save them—reached them, shuddering where they waited 
Their quick destruction, tossing white and dumb, 
And caught them from perdition; then, belated, 
Strove to return the rough way she had come. 
But there was no returning! Fierce as lightning 
The eager cold grew keener, more intense. 
Across her homeward track the billows whitening, 
In crested mountains rolling, drove her thence. 
Till her brave crew, benumbed, gave up the battle, 
Clad in a mail of ice that weighed like lead; 
They heard the crusted blocks and rigging rattle, 
They saw the sails like sheets of iron spread; 
And powerless before the gale they drifted, 
Till swiftly dropped the black and hopeless night, 
The wild tornado nev^r lulled nor shifted, 
But drove them toward the coast upon their right, 
And flung the frozen schooner, all sail standing, 
Stiff as an iceberg on the icy shore; 
And half alive her torpid people, landing, 
Crept to the light-house, and were safe onee more. 
But what befell the vessel, standing solemn 
Through that tremendous night of cold and storm, 
Upon the frost-locked land, a frigid column, 
That glittered ’neath the stars a ghostly form? 
/ 
None ever saw her more! The tide upbore her, 
Released her fastened keel, and ere the day, 
Without a guide and all the world before her, 
The sad, forsaken Rover sailed away. 
Yet sometimes, when in summer twilight blending, 
Sunset and moonrise mingle their rich light, 
Or when on noonday mists the sun is spending 
His glory, till they glimmer thin and white, 
Upon the dim horizon melting, gleaming, 
Slender, ethereal, like a lovely ghost 
Soft looming in the hazy distance dreaming, 
I seem to see the vessel that was lost. 
Mrs. C. Thaxter— Atlantic Monthly. 
<$nUui[e. 
This Journal is the Official Organ of the Fish Cultur- 
ists’ Association. 
THE MICHIGAN GRAYLING AND ITS 
HABITAT. 
I SEND you herewith as promised a full account of our 
investigations in Michigan, after the grayling. Our 
party, consisting of D. H. Fitzhugh, Jr., his nephew Frank 
Fitzhugh, his faithful guide, philosopher and friend, Leon¬ 
ard Jewell, and your correspondent left Bay City by rail at 
IP. M., with five whiskey barrels, tent and camping outfit 
for Crawford, 93 miles northwest, which we reached at 
6 P. M. This road at present only runs one train, which 
goes up one day and down the next; it is an ascending 
grade nearty the whole way up, gradually attaining an alti¬ 
tude at Crawford, or “Grayling” as I will hereafter call it, 
of 750 feet above the level of Lake Huron, nearly the high, 
est point on this peninsula. Here the railroad crosses the 
Au Sable about twenty miles from its extreme source, a 
beautiful spring stream twenty yards wide, with water so 
cool and clear that it reminds one of Caledonia Creek; at 
this point it never freezes, and rarely rises above a foot. 
Within a hundred yards of the crossing is the railroad sta¬ 
tion and the “Grayling House,” kept by M. S. Hartwick, a 
new frame house where most excellent accommodations are 
furnished at very reasonable rates. The town also contains 
seven or eight dwellings mostly occupied by railroad men; 
the trains stop here for meals. 
Four miles west is Portage Lake, the head of the Manis¬ 
tee, whose waters empty into Lake Michigan, where it is 
said you can launch your boat and float to the lake, 150 
miles by river, with capital fishing for grayling a great part 
of the way. The surrounding country is sandy pine plains, 
with patches of pine timber, and ten miles north is the 
“hard wood country.” There are no settlements except an 
occasional railroad station, and the nearest lumber camp 
forty miles down the river by its course, or twenty miles as 
the crow flies. If what pine there is in the immediate vic¬ 
inity of the river is cut off there is nothing to invite the per¬ 
manent settler, as it leaves a country attractive only to the 
trapper and the sportsman, and it is possible that the gray¬ 
ling may find safe spawning and feeding ground here for 
many years to come. Thirty miles north, the line of rail¬ 
road, (not yet completed,) will strike the source of the 
Cheboygan River, which flows north and empties into Lake 
Huron, twenty miles east of Macinaw. This river has trout 
Porest and stream. 
at its mouth where there are settlements, and it is said that 
all its tributaries have them, but I could not learn that it 
has grayling. It drains a large and wild portion of the 
State where the angler will find a field for many years 
to come. Trout are said to be plenty in the Oqueoc and 
streams emptying into Hammond’s Bay, * but my inquiries 
failed to prove that there were also grayling there, and from 
what I could learn from men who have been on the differ¬ 
ent streams, the grayling in Michigan is confined on the 
east side to the country bounded on the north by Thunder 
Bay River and on the south by the west branch of the Rifle, 
while on the west side it is contained between the Mainstee 
and the Muskeegan and its branches. The questions nat¬ 
urally arise, How came this fish here in this confined lo¬ 
cality? and why after becoming established and living here 
for perhaps ages, have they not become more widely dis¬ 
seminated? The trout are supposed to have stocked all 
streams emptying into a lake or river by means of strag¬ 
glers, but if the grayling strayed from one side of this pen¬ 
insula to the other, then why do they not occur in the 
streams flowing north to the straits? Or did they go over 
the ridge of land four miles from the Au Sable to Portage 
Lake? These may be classed with Dundreary’s “things 
that no fellow can find out.” 
Saturday morning, the 28th, we found it snowing and the 
thermometer seventeen degrees; we put our whiskey barrels 
in the river to soak; if the reader thought they were full 
he over-rated our capacity. We then brought our boats 
from the station house and launched them, one a scow four¬ 
teen feet long and two and a half feet wide, the other a 
canoe, both provided with wells to keep fish alive; into 
these we loaded our camp equipage, Mr. Fitzhugh kindly 
giving the novice his best boat and his powerful adjutant 
“Len” to pole him, while he and his nephew followed in 
the scow. 
The navigation for two miles down is difficult, as the 
stream is full of fallen cedars often reaching from one side 
to the other, which have probably laid there from time im¬ 
memorial; some can be floated over or run under, while 
others require the boat to be lifted over them, or all hands 
to climb over and drift the boat under. The Indians have 
cut a trail in some places just wide enough for a canoe, and 
fly fishing in this part is therefore almost an impossibility, 
as the overhanging brush invites the artificial insect to linger 
in its branches. The river here is two to four feet deep, 
and the current is strong as in all parts where I saw it; the 
banks are higher than farther below, with pine, cedar, bal¬ 
sam, and birch; the temperature of the water was about 
thirty-five, and the bottom was a black loamy deposit near 
the shore, changing to bars of sand and clean gravel in the 
centre of the stream where the current swept. Two miles 
down the river receives two tributaries which double its 
size; its banks are lower, nearly flat, and many small islands 
occur; there are few logs and a boat can be poled steadily. 
About 4 P. M we hauled ashore five miles from Grayling, 
(the town not the fish, for we had seen many schools of 
them,) and selected a camp site within fifty feet of the river 
among the underbrush, Leonard having been influenced more 
by the number of dry birch trees for firewood within easy 
distance than anything else; but tent pitched, woodcut and 
supper eaten, we made our bed of cedar boughs on top of 
the snow, spread our blankets on them, christened our 
abiding place “Camp Hallock,” and holding aloft.a copy of 
Forest and Stream claimed the surrounding country in 
its name, therefore this paper has full power for all future 
time to levy contributions from it. Thermometer at sun 
down four degrees, and when Leonard replenished the fire 
at midnight it was ten degrees below zero. The next day 
being Sunday we staid in camp and talked about fishing, 
and Mr. Fitzhugh now told me that he should not fish until 
Wednesday the first of April, that as he had been active in 
getting the law passed making this date the opening of the 
season he should of course respect it. Then, as his guest, I 
could do no less than do the same, no matter what desire 
and fever of expectation I was in to catch and examine this 
new fish that I had traveled nearly six hundred miles to be¬ 
hold and a large school of them within a stone’s throw ! I 
could however have a better chance to examine the stream 
than if occupied with fishing and I could learn many things 
perhaps concerning food, habits, spawning beds, &c. 
Thermometer—to-day, fifteen degrees at 6 A. M.; twenty- 
nine degrees at noon and twenty-four degrees at sun down. 
Monday 30th, nearly noon, the weather was mild enough 
and we went exploring. The banks here are covered with 
cedar, birch and tamaraek; the edges of the stream lined 
with alder, red willow and cranberry, (high bush;) the bot¬ 
tom is as above, sand gravel and a loamy deposit; the sandy 
portions are shallow, perhaps two to three feet; current 
swift and the sand is bright and beautifully “shingled,” with 
sometimes a deep channel near one bank where the bottom 
is black; here the fish feed. The river is very crooked, 
Camp Hallock being in a bend where it lay both before and 
behind, being only a few rods across, but a mile around. 
Saw a few places that had been swept for spawning, and so 
many good spawning places everywhere that it must puzzle 
a fish to choose. We did not see any fish on the beds, they 
were in schools of fifty to several hundred; noticed many 
yearlings, three to four inches, generally by themselves, but 
often with large ones; saw many fish that would weigh 
nearly two pounds; fish not rising to-day. Thermometer— 
6 A. M., seven degrees; noon, thirty-six degrees; sun down, 
twenty-eight degrees; midnight, eight degrees. Saw a liz¬ 
ard a foot long on a pile of gravel; took him in landing 
net; saw a raven and many birds that my Mentor Leonard 
called “venison-hawks;” he said they would eat a deer 
hung in the woods in a few days, and was something like a 
blue jay; it was not that bird of which there are plenty on 
the river, and as we had no gun I had no opportunity of 
seeing it. Coming back a mink ran along ahead of us 
and disappeared in the woods; saw several suckers in the 
stream. 
Tuesday 31st, exploring as yesterday, little or no food on 
the sand shingle, if any, it is moving; the black bottom 
showed fine leaves of cedar and pine; in shallow water I 
noticed larvae of ephemerae with their two long filaments 
in their tails, quite plenty; great quantities of caddis with 
their soft bodies enbased in a house made of sticks which 
they slowly drag in search of food, while the bottom in 
many places was dotted with the little boat-fly who was 
often seen rowing with his one pair of oars. The little 
beetle known as a “whirligig,” (Gryrinis natator ,) was also 
noticed as well as one “Gigantic water beetle,” (. Belos - 
loma grandis,) whose head I pinch cn every opportunity; 
but best of all, unless it be the caddis, I saw our fresii- 
water shrimp, ( Gtcmmarus ,) upon which the trout get so fat. 
It has often been said that the common earth, or angle 
worm, did not exist in this country; but I saw one in the 
rrr 
stream; water was too deep to get it; but I am tolerablv 
familiar with the “animal” and do not think there is a 
chance of a mistake in this matter; saw a spotted wood 
pecker. I give the scientific names of many things above 
mentioned where I knew them; there are some things which 
have no other, and they not only help wonderfullv to es 
tablish the identity of a fish, insect,, &c., but do so show off 
a man’s learning that I regret not being able to give the true 
appellation of the angle worm, but perhaps my readers may 
know him. I remember a writer from the woods once 
speaking of a mosquito and giving its scientific cognomen 
for fear that it might be confounded with something else 
There were sometimes near the shores the roots and dead 
leaves of the yellow water-lily. My trusty guide Leonard 
whose vigorous arm poled me up and down all day, says, 
that down the stream, farther than we went, the watercress! 
is found, and he has known the stream for twenty years! 
and can tell to a foot where the next school of grayling will 
be seen. He knew this fish twenty years ago as the “Jack 
salmon.” Thermometer—6 A. M., 0 degrees; nooh, twenty- 
eight degrees; sun down, twenty-two degrees. 
Wednesday April 1st, the opening of the grayling season 
for which we had waited three days; and if, as it afterward 
proved, it was too early to capture for the table, it was at 
least in accordance with the law, and for this we had wait¬ 
ed, although it was not for the table we were here so early 
but to secure live fish for breeders to stock other and less 
favored waters, and we did not know if their capture were 
allowable in March even for this. The weather being so 
extremely cold prevented any early fishing, and in fact Mr. 
Fitzhugh informs me that in summer he has never had any 
success in early morning, and we staid in camp until nine 
and watched the thermometer, at this time it got up to 
twenty-eight degrees and we went forth. My friend had a 
fine Judson rod w T ith click reel while I had a rather stiff 
one, made by nobody in particular, with one of Fowler’s 
rubber reels. Mr. F. arranged a cast for himself and me 
as follows:—first bobber, a brown hackle; second, a stone¬ 
wing with yellow body, and a red ibis for a dropper, at the 
same time telling me that the stone-wing had always been 
the most killing fly. Leonard and I w T ent down stream half 
an hour ahead of the other boat and when he took his posi¬ 
tion I took a fish. I will not attempt a description of the 
“high art” with which he was landed for I don’t remember 
it, being intent only on getting him; but when he lay along 
side of the boat I felt with the Queen of Sheba that “the 
half had not been told me.” 
I have read a dry scientific description of the grayilng, 
and if the reader can tell a sucker from a quohaug clam by 
such description he can beat the writer. We fishermen 
compare a strange fish to some well known variety, and if 
we can’t make it intelligible, why we give it up. The only 
description that I have ever seen that conveyed anything 
like an idea of the fish will be found on page 280, last vol. 
of Forest and Stream from the pen of Prof. James W. 
Milner, of the Smithsonian Institute, whom the writer has 
long known as a man of science, and more recently as in¬ 
terested in fish culture, but never until this article did. I 
know that he had all the degrees. I must quote him: 
“There is no species sought for by anglers that surpasses 
the grayling in beauty. They are more elegantly formed 
than the trout, and their great dorsal fin is a superb mark 
of beauty. When the well-lids were lifted, and the sun- 
rays admitted, lighting up the delicate olive-brown tints of 
the back and sides, the blueish wdiite of the abdomen and 
the mingling of tints of rose, pale blue, and purplish pink 
on the tins, it displayed a combination of living colors that 
is equalled by no fish outside of the tropies.” I have been 
tempted to italicise the last ten words, for they are tine; 
but the writer of them would not so describe the beauties 
to the Savans. 
“Why should a man whose blood is within warm 
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?” 
And now'I will try my prentice hand at a description of 
the fish for the benefit of my brother angler only. I had 
been deceived by descriptions, told that they resembled a 
scisco; but when I first saw the fish with his magnificent 
dorsal fin spread I felt that those who had described it had 
never seen it alive. 
The grayling has all the fins of a trout; his pectorals are 
olive brown with a blueish cast at the end; (lam describing 
him in the water as I saw him in my ponds an hour ago,) 
the ventrals are large and beautifully striped with alternate 
streaks of brown and pink; the anal is plain brown; the 
candal is very forked and plain, while the crowning glory 
is its immense dorsal; this fin rises forward of the middle 
of its back, and in a fish a foot long it will be nearly three 
inches in length by two high, having a graceful curved out¬ 
line, and from eighteen to twenty rays dotted, with large 
red or bluish purple spots which in life are brilliant, and 
are surrounded with a splendid emerald green which fades 
after death; it does not seem as if this green could be re¬ 
presented by the painters’ art; it is that changeable shade 
seen in the tail of the peacock. 
In shape the fish is like a trout, a trifle slimmer perhaps 
and not so thick near the tail, but the fin on the back of a 
trout, looks so small and square, so deficient in outline, and 
color after beholding the graceful curve of a grayling’s 
dorsal. The scale is large, silvery, with sometimes a copper 
tinge; near the shoulders there are black spots sometimes 
triangular, and at others Y shaped; in some fish these ex¬ 
tend nearly to the tail near the back; they are in lines which 
gradually shorten towards the belly; the mouth is small, 
nearly square when opened, and the teeth are merely a slight 
roughness on the lips, none on the tongue; but you want to 
see him come in on a line with his fins all standing and 
your eye will then give you a better idea than all the cold¬ 
blooded descriptions could ever do. 
We took this day seventy-five fish, with the lines frozen 
in the loop, so that the reel was useless most of the time; 
often would Leonard take the end of my rod and break the 
ice from the eye by pulling the line through it when the 
reel could again be used for a few minutes until the wet 
line came to the rod again. 
The fish we put in a lath crate firmly anchored in the 
stream. I saw no signs of their spawning soon, and at 
night I looked the fish over again, and took out a few that 
were badly hooked for supper. I found the eggs quite 
large; the membrane enclosing them had its veins but 
slightly filled with blood, and I gave it as my opinion, 
which I still adhere to, that but few if any of these fish will 
spawn before the 25th of April or 1st of May this year. 
All authorities on the subject have said about the first ot 
March was the time of spawning, and although I had ac¬ 
cepted it as truth, I now wonder where and how they got 
their information. 
