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FOREST AND STREAM. 



iJUNE 15,1189b. 



"THE TROUT OF THE MOUNTAIN STREAM.' 



(nEVT.SED,) 



Some sing of the bass, with his gUstening mail, 

 Or the giant tarpon, with silver scale, 

 But the anglfr's joy, and the artist's dream 

 Is the spotted trout of the mountain stream! 



AVith his mottled sides and his shapely 7nould, 

 And his crimson stars with their fringe of gold, 

 With his painted fins and his silver gleam, 

 He's the jeweled prince of the mountain stream; 



With wide-spread mouth and gUttering eye, 

 He springs from his lair at the dancing fly, 

 Then, swift as the shaft from tJie bended bow, 

 Shoots down to his home in the depths below. 



When soft from the south the breezes blow, 

 Whw the waters are cleared from the melting snow, 

 When the earth awakens from her wmter's dream, 

 I will seek for the trout in his mountain stream. 



When the apple blossoms are snowy white, 

 And the swamps with the scarlet maple bright. 

 When the silvery birch has donned his sheen. 

 And the marshy meadows are fringed with green, 



When the bobolink on the polk stalk swings, 

 And the hermit thrush in the woodland sings, 

 Then I'll seek for the trout in his mountain home, 

 ^;ithe sparkUng verge of the cataract's foam ! 



^Tis there in the waters' wildest play 



That he lies in wait for his floating prey. 



Or shoots on his course through the swiftest stream, 



With an arrowy rush and a meteor's gleam ! 



When the skies grow warm and the sun rides high, 

 ■"Neath the spreading alder he loves to lie, 

 Or he seeks his lair by some mossy stone, 

 Which the frost from the hanging cliff has thrown. 



Then, angler, if you would his capture try. 

 Choose your finest line and your daintiest fly, 

 Let your step be light and your cast be true, 

 Or the trout will have nothing to say to you ! 



When your fly, like the down from a thistle blown. 

 Drops soft on the ripples around your stone, 

 That silvery bar, which shoots up to an-. 

 Says the starry monarch was lurking there I 



When the bending rod and the ringing reel 

 Give proof that you've fastened the tempered steel, 

 Be sure that the battle is but begun, 

 For not till he's landed is victory won ; 



Pleasant to you is the mimic strife, 

 But the iight with the trout is a fight for life! 

 And not tUl his utmost strength is tried. 

 Will he, fainting, roll on his glistening side! 



Then give me the trout of the mountain stream, 



With liis crimson stars, and his golden gleam. 



When the conquered hero gasping lies. 



The angler has won his fairest prize! Von W. 



IN THE LAND OF THE KALISPELLS. 



I LITTLE thought a year or so ago when reading Mr. 

 Hallock's entertaining letters from this part of the great 

 State of Montana, telUng of the game resources of this 

 region, that in so short time I should be on the spot en- 

 joying the magnificent scenery and Tiewing the gigantic 

 strides made by this new aspirant for fame and prosper- 

 ity, the young city of Kalispell. Where is Kalispell? In 

 the famous valley of the Flathead, the nortii western 

 county of the State, lately set off from Missoula county, 

 which was a county as large as two or three Eastern States 

 (of the proper size) and now large enough to get lost in. 

 Though she has lost a matter of forty or fifty thousand 

 square miles, which is now Flathead county, of which 

 Kalispell is the cotmty seat, situated in the center of the 

 rapidly becoming famous Flathead Valley and about 

 twenty miles north of the beautiful Flathead Lake. Kal- 

 ispell "was platted in April, I8al, when the Great Northern 

 Railroad was being built, and now is reported as having 

 all the way from 1,500 to 3,000 people, depending upon the 

 enthusiasm of your informant. At all events, she is a 

 robust and lively infant, and expects to be arobustergiant 

 ere long. 



This whole region, until the advent of the Great North- 

 ern, was known only to peripatetic miners, and cattlemen 

 whose herds found luxuriant feeding on the widespread- 

 ing prairies where the rich soil now attracts the wheat 

 grower, producing thirty or forty bushels of the finest 

 hard wheat to the acre, more of oats, which run forty and 

 more pounds to the bushel, and fine barley and hay and 

 as a consequence the best lands are rapidly being secured 

 by new blood at good prices. I say new blood because 

 the old settlers are not, as a rule, such as make the most 

 out of the capabilities of tlie soil. Roaming was more to 

 their liking, both as to tlieiuselves and their stock. No 

 irrigation is practiced, which can not be said of any 

 other considerable body of land in the State. This fact 

 is attracting many people to this valley, for irrigation is 

 the bugbear of most Eastern farmers. Yet I think that 

 now and then a season will happen along kind o' careless 

 like, when the farmers will jump up and down and shout 

 for rain. It has been so, they tell me. The vaUev lying 

 between arid lands east and west, naturally would' o-et a 

 whilf of aridity now and then. It is not all open prairie 

 Belts of open prairie timber are interspersed here and 

 there which add to the value and picturesqueness of the 

 valley, besides there being a deer now and then and echo 

 ing to the roU of the grouse. Very fine pine, spruce 

 tamarack and cedar timber is found f tu-ther north and 

 the more valuable claims are all taken up on the sur- 

 veyed part, and being rapidly secured bv squatters on the 

 unsurveyed lands, pending the surveyai and acceptance 

 by the government of the same. 



Demersville, at the head of navigation on the Flathead 

 fom- miles below Kahspell. previous to the founding- of 

 the latter, was the chief town of the valley, the entrepot 

 of the same, and if reports are credible, and I guess thev 

 are, was as tough a place as the West product^s and that 

 is saying all that is necessary. The coimtv seat and the 

 sheriflwere a hundi-ed miles away, and" the latter and 



justice quite unswift. A stage line ran from the N. P. 

 R. R. to the foot of the lake, and small steamers thence to 

 Demersville in those days when the place was filled with 

 saloons, lawlessness rife, and the man handy with a gun 

 as common as dirt. 



The town is almost deserted now, many buildings 

 moved bodily to Kalispell, likewise divers and sundry 

 gamblers, the steamer line discontinued, and ere long 

 the gophers will return unto their own. 



But Demersville will not be forgotten as long as the 

 murder cases continue to be aired in court. Flathead 

 Valley's first court is now in session in Kalispell and at 

 present busy with some shooting and murder cases. One 

 was a murder, wilful and premeditated pure and simple, 

 where a bad man called another bad names and said, in 

 a maudlin state, that he'd shoot him. The other, like 

 Uncle Remas' tar baby, "kep' on sayin' nuthin'," but 

 went over to his house and got a Colts repeating rifle, 

 and not having time to go to the woods for game, crept 

 in at the back door of the saloon without unnecessary 

 noise, and knowing about where his game roosted against 

 a whisky barrel behind the door, potted the other bad 

 man, who passed away in the act of unlimbering his 

 artillery. Self-defense is now set up, and the majority 

 of the busy three score men, who daily hold the benches 

 down in the court room, are with the defense. IZcec 

 fahula docet. Another case of shooting would have been 

 murder had the gun shot straight. As it was, however, 

 two men got leaded in their suburbs, and the third got 

 shot with an axe in the head about three times in a claim 

 jumping interview. But "such things are (were) com- 

 mon, I had a brother onc6," as remarked formerly by 

 O'ReUus or 'Rastus 'Gtistus in the olden time, when men 

 went gunning for each other with cross-bows and fasces 

 and such like. The above instances are not strictly in the 

 line of legitimate sportsmanship, though both come 

 within the shooting pale, and of the two may be perhaps 

 the "legitimate" is the more one-sided. It is hoped now 

 that such christianizing and civilizing influences as the 

 courts and the railroad have come into our midst, that 

 men will think twice or thrice ere they shoot once, when 

 they hunt each other. 



There is in town now a gentleman who is making prep- 

 arations to take a herd of fifty or sixty buifalo belong- 

 ing to, if I mistake not, Mr. Allard, somewhere down the 

 valley, to the Columbian Exposition. May they get thei-e 

 safe and sound. Speaking of buifalo reminds me that at 

 intervals all along the railway across the Great Plains are 

 still to be seen distinctly the trails and wallows made by 

 the innumerable hosts that furrowed the earth for ages in 

 their yearly migrations, and sadness ensues in contempla- 

 tion of the fact that no more forever will the mighty ani- 

 mals darken the jalains in their harmless wanderings, and 

 that we must be content with unsatisfying imagination 

 alone as we gaze upon the silent and deserted trails, mute 

 protests against the rapacity of humanity. 



On the east of Kalispell, 15 miles distant, rise the lower 

 chains of the main Rocky Mountain range, now covered 

 as to the tops with snow, while in deep contrast the lower 

 sides and gorges are clothed in dark evergreen, and look- 

 ing afar up Bad Rock Caiion through which the railroad 

 winds from the summit of the range, alongside the beau- 

 liful and ever widening Middle Fork, the eye catches a 

 single precipitous iDeak, white and glistening, 50 miles away, 

 which rises thousands of feet into the heavens from the 

 far notch of the canon, catching the latest glow of the 

 sinking sun in rosy flush most gloriously beautiful. On 

 the west is the Cabinet Range, of lower altitude. The 

 nortli, middle and south forks of the Flathead join forcts 

 before leaving the mountains, while the Stillwater and 

 Whitefish rivers have their sources far to the nortliward 

 in this valley, mingling their trouty waters just to the 

 east of town, and flowing into the Flathead a couple of 

 miles south, where the latter stream is a large and detp 

 ri%'er, probably 150 or more yards wide, and floatmg 

 steamers which, before the advent of the railroad, fur- 

 nished communication between the upper valley, via the 

 river and the lake and the country to the south. 



Ninety miles to the north of Kalispell runs the interna- 

 tional boundary line, and this valley reaches, in varying 

 width, alternate prau-ie and timber, almost or quite to the 

 line. Cold mountain streams are everywhere, and as a 

 matter of fact trout are likewise. I expected to have 

 some sport with them, but find that they spawn in May 

 and June, unlike well regulated trout elsewhere, and that 

 therefore the Legislature last winter passed laws protect- 

 uig them. So I have been out but three times, and it 

 being rather early in the season and the snow lying late 

 in the mountains, success has not been brilliant, though I 

 have had a taste of it with the black spotted fellows of a 

 pound and a half. They have but just begun to run up 

 ttie rivers and are not ravenously hungry, not taking the 

 fiy, so that meat and spawn have been the only means of 

 taking them. 



The Flathead from here up is a lovely stream, and in 

 the season affords as fine sport as any man could wish, 

 both with the black-spotted and pink-spotted or, as they 

 are called here, salmon trout, which latter run very heavy 

 in the lake and deeper waters of the river. The lake 

 abotmds in whiteti.sh also. As for game, deer are every- 

 where, mule and Virginia, and one does not have far to 

 go for sport in that line. Bear won't trouble you if you 

 let them alone, but they can be found without great 

 hardship. Rulfed grouse, prairie and fool hens and the 

 lirge blue gi-ouse are very numerous, while ducks and 

 geese are plentiful on the streams, sloughs and lakes. 



I find that there is a decided objection to the game law, 

 particularly among the old settlers, which is very natural, 

 but it is to be hoped that time and experience will edu- 

 cate. Elk are numerous in some sections, but the law 

 protects them for six yeai-s, a fact which three or four 

 ladians seem to have been ignorant of, as they were taken 

 red-handed in the act of seUing some heads lately, and 

 now are nicely provided for in the shack with barred 

 windows which they call the jail. The authorities 

 couldn't have suited the noble red men better. They are 

 fed and comfortable now, and don't have to carry a 

 blanket around and walk pigeon-toed. 



I put some breakfast inside and a snack in my pocket 

 a few days ago and wandered out to the ferry across the 

 Flathead, some three miles away, and as I had my rod 

 with me, put in a very enjoyable forenoon along the 

 banks of the beautiful stream, but without returns in the 

 shape of foundation for a very big fish varn. After din- 

 ner, however, the trout began to be interested a little bit, 

 and I was sitting on the bank around a. bend out of sight 

 and ha-dng just dead loads of pleasm-e all alone, when I 



heard the bushes rattle, and looking around there was J. 

 W. Conner, one of the editors and proprietors of the Kal- 

 ispell Gi^apMe, and pioneers here, ^v^hose acquaintance I 

 had made recently, and who had ridden out and hunted 

 me up on purpose to invite me to go down with his edi- 

 torial partner, Mr. H. J. Mock, and Mr. Dixon, an acquaint- 

 ance and new-comer here, to Flathead Lake just to afford 

 us a day's pleasure. Well, do you know, that was just as 

 kind as" it could be; but that is the way with men who 

 love to fifih, especially if it is out in the big West, but how 

 I'm to even up on this thing is what puzzles me. I love 

 to fish, too. Of course I went to town shortly, and at 4 

 o'clock, behind a pair of spanking (why "spanking" I 

 never coifld see. What do they spank?) blacks, in a 

 roomy wagon, we turned our faces southward for a 

 twenty -five-mile drive. Mr. Mock couldn't go, as he was 

 seized with some foi-gotten business, which we much re- 

 gretted. 



The road for the greater part lay across the open plain 

 or prairie, where in one place we came across a flock of 

 wild geese doing something or other — there wasn't any 

 feed there. As we neared the lower end of the open 

 country we found the old roads, which hitherto had led 

 the nearest way, cut ofi: by fences, as land has been taken 

 up, and new roads laid out along the section lines. This 

 made trouble for us, as we had to go a long way around 

 to get anywhere; but we finally came by a new blazed 

 road through a dense piece of timber along the river to 

 the ferry, where was a flatboat abnut as wide as the wagon 

 and not much longer, railed lightly on each side. The 

 ferryman pulled us across by means of a wire rope. Then 

 through more timber, until about 7 o'clock, when we rode 

 out into the open by a ranch, and from a bluff looked afar 

 across the lovely lake, thirty-five by fourteen to fifteen 

 miles in widest part, resting in the shadows of the moun- 

 tains which surround it. 



Soon we crossed Swan River flowing from a lake of 

 same name eight to ten miles distant in the fastnesses of 

 the mountains to the eastward, and ere long drove up to 

 the club house on a bluff 100ft. above the lake, from 

 which the eye took in a charming view, while on either 

 hand and rearward the evening breeze sung a hiUaby 

 among the branches of the pines and spruces. This neatly 

 built log club house and 120 acres of forest adjoining are 

 owned by a number of gentlemen of Helena, and tlie 

 property is cared for by Mr. Wiser, the former owner of 

 the land, who cordially welcomed us and A\ ho soon had a 

 hot supper facing us. Down below the ducks were quack- 

 ing and wheeling here and there, while two or tlii-ee geese 

 were faring back and forth with trumpet cry on busy 

 errands connected with nests which Mr. Wiser had located. 

 There were no swans visible, though there had recently 

 been many, resting on their way to the distant northern 

 breeding grounds. During the night a flock of geese near 

 shore awoke me by their clatter, which they iept up until 

 I was disgusted. 



In the morning after a nicely cooked substantial break- 

 fast prepared by Mr. W. , we took rods and walked back 

 to the Swan to try for ti'out. This is a lovely stream dash- 

 ing, roaring and foaming down its boulder-strewn bed, 

 perhaps 75ft. wide, with swift rapids here and there, and 

 elegant swirls and holes for trout. But they weren't in 

 the humor for business, and a meagre half dozen, fom- of 

 a pound and a half pound each dressed, composing our 

 catch. But the day along that rushing river was enjoy- 

 ment enough. Deer sign was everywhere, down among 

 the rocks by the brink, up on the side hill, through the 

 woods it constantly caught the eye, and I yearned to be 

 there in September and October or later. Mr. W. said 

 that only a day or two previous, three had come to Avithin 

 50yds. of the club house, and that he could without doubt 

 in a half day's time show us two or three dozen, as he was 

 well acquainted with their haunts. 



There were four fishermen on the stream besides our- 

 selves, and they had some nice fish. I htid a little experi- 

 ence on this occasion that was as excitiog as I could wish 

 and that called for strict attention to business for a spell. 

 A huge rock as large as a small house rose from the 

 river's brink almost perpendicularly. From the up stream 

 side a narrow bench ran along the face of this rock about 

 ten feet above the water and just wide enough to stand 

 on. Down along the face of the rock the water ran some 

 feet deep and in swift descent. Out in the stream some 

 eight or ten feet were some large boulders and below the.se 

 was an eddying swirl. I clambered out on the bench from 

 some convenient rocks, and though I saw that there was 

 trouble ahead if I hooked a fish from that spot, yet the 

 water was so tempting that I made a cast, and trouble be- 

 gan sure enough. As the fish struck I f oUowed suit, and 

 the way he made that 8oz. HenshaU work and the retl 

 hum was interesting enough. The second time he came 

 to the surface I saw that he was hooked just back of the 

 pectoral fin, and then I undei-stood what I had cut out 

 for me, and why I couldn't begin to control him. Of 

 course he persisted in keeping broadside to the stream 

 and in the swiftest current, and all I could do was to 

 stand there with my back against the rock, look down on 

 the battle, and hope almost against hope that my rod 

 wouldn't go bo smash, while the enraged fish surged back 

 and forth, doing just about as he pleased. I dare not give 

 him much fine, for tvventy feet below there was a tangle 

 of rocks, and if he reached it the game was up. I don't 

 know how long I played him, but at last I had hirn so 

 nearly exhausted that I towed him up against the swift 

 miU race of a current, with the lancewood bent to a won- 

 der, picked my Avay along the rocks above the bench up 

 stream for thirty feet or more until I found water con- 

 venient and led him ashore, a black-spotted beauty of a 

 pound and three-quarters— and nobody can buy that rod 

 for shekels. 



We slowly worked back down stream, reaching the 

 club house m time for a 3 o'clock dinner; and then hitching 

 up the team rode comfortably and pleasantly homeward. 

 Flathead Lake is very clear," deep and cold, and many 

 and large are the stories of huge trout of 20 to 401bs. 

 caught therein. The outlet is Clark's Fork of the Colum- 

 bia, and there is but one fall, so reported, that prevents 

 salmon coming up into the lake. That may be removed 

 in the future and another source of pleasure and profit 

 added to the many now enjoyed in this region. About 

 thirty miles east of Kalispell on the railroad is the sta- 

 tion of Belton, three or 1 our miles from which lies Lake 

 McDonald, a large and most beautiful sheet of water sur- 

 rounded by lofty mountains and hterally teeming with 

 trout of large size. But the snow yet covers the country 

 there and no fishing can be done for some time, which is 

 fortunate, for there be plenty of fishermen a\ ho have no 



