Au&. 21, 1897.] 
this route. The Newfoundland Governtnent are certainly to 
be congratulated on their pluck in this matter, and it is sin- 
cerelj to be hoped that success may attend their policy. 
The scenery on the west coast of JSTewfoimdland is mag- 
nificent, and compares well with the fiords of Norway, 
which are well known to me, and which people travel from 
the ends of the earth to see. The neighborhoods of Bay of 
Islands and Bonne Biy are especially line. The people are 
hospitality personified as far as 1 have found them; they are 
always ready to place at a visitor's disposal themselves and 
anything they have. They remind one largely of the unso- 
phisticated days of Norway, when every countrvman took 
his hat off to every visitor, and did not expect 10 cents in 
return. There is a charming simplicity about these children 
of the sea — the race who for centuries have "done all their 
business on great Avaters and have gone down to the sea in 
ships." It is a refreshment, if not a revelation in itself, to 
the wearied and worried brain of a city man to spend a few 
weeks among these delightful people." 
MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 
Lll.— Dr. Spencer M. Nash. 
Thk storm had begun before sundown and raged through- 
out tbe long winter night. It was still raging as we looked 
out on the great snowdrifts on Christmas morning, 1866, and 
as we gathered at breakfasi each remarked, "It was a fear- 
ful night," and father rejoiced that no cattle trains were due 
that day, for he had charge of the live stock department at 
the eastern end of the New York Central Railroad, and 
would not have enjoyed having several stock trains stuck in 
the snow. His men had shoveled a path from the office to 
the house, and as we finished breakfast one announced that 
a passenger train had been stuck in the snow half a mile 
above and the passengers had neither fire nor food. Every- 
thing eatable in tbe house was put in baskets, pails of milk 
and of coffee were prepared, and half a dcz-m men were sent 
wallowing through the drifts to the relief of the passengers. 
Many of the men on the train came down to the West Albany 
Hotel, and left the provisions for the women and children. 
Two of tbem were acquainted with one of our family and 
slopped with us for two days until the roads were opened. We 
improvised a cribbage board, and put in Ihe time as well as 
we could; for there was no stock coming through, and, 
therefore, nothing to keep us clerks and bookkeepers busy. 
Seventeen years later, in 1883, at Blackford's annual trout 
opening in Fulton Market, New York, I was introduced to 
many gentlemen by the late Frank Endicott, who then knew 
every angler worthy of the name, in the city. Among them 
was Dr. Nash, who, after some conversation, remarked: 
'1 know some people of your name in Albany. Have you 
relatives there?" 
"Yes, that was my boyhood home." 
' Is Capt. .Juseph' Mather, of West Albany, a relative of 
yours?'' 
" YfcS, we are slightly related ; he's my father." 
"You don't say so!" 
"1 do say so." 
"Well," said tbe Doctor, "I have a pleasant memory of a 
couple of days in your father's hospitable home years ago, 
when I was snowbound on the Central road, coming East; 
we played cribbage, and after the old folks went to bed we 
went down in the ofiice, where we sat by a roaiing fire and 
told stories. A brother of yours had a 'banjo in the office 
and played all the old time songs and jigs, that 1 thought 
had long since been forgotten. What has become of him? 
Is he living?" 
"What was his front name?" 
"1 forget jast now, but I'd know it if I heard it." 
"Was it Fred ? He was there then." 
"Yes, yes; Fred; that's it. I'd like to meet him again. 
Is he living?" 
"Wait a mooient, till I feel my pulse — yes, I'm alive." 
"You don't mean it I" 
"1 do mean it. I made a cribbage board, played the banjo 
and sang: 
Ole Mister Coon's a cunnin' t'lug, 
He ramble In de dark; 
Noffia seam to 'aiurb he's min' 
Till be bear ole Ringo bark. 
"Does that sound familiar? If it doesn't, I'll give you a 
dozen or more verses of it until your memory gets wide 
awake." 
I wish I had a photo Of the genial Doctor with the sur- 
prised look he wore when he put out his hand and said: 
"Well. I'll be durned !" 
As I took the proffered digits I merely replied: "And so 
Willi;" and we have never forgotten each other since. He 
Jias several times basely deceived me by saying: "Hold still, 
now, it won't hurt," while he was preparing to run some 
abominable device up a hollow tooth and drag a quivering 
nerve from away up behind my eyeball. The vengeance 
which 1 then vowed could now be repaid (for is not tue pen 
mightier than the forceps ?), but when 1 look back from a 
more pleasant chair in my den and try to borrow some of the 
enchantment which distance is said to lend — without collat- 
eral security — I relent. Perhaps he meant that his instru- 
ments of torture would not hurt— him. That's a dentist's 
view of the case. 
As an item of interest concerning the feeding of the soft- 
finned mckerel on the spiny black bass, I will quote from a 
letter from Dr. Nash, written May 20, 1885: "I caught 
several pickerel {fS. reHcuIatus) on the aitificia) fly and one 
had a little black bass in its throat, still alive. I placed 
forty bass, small and big-mouth, in the lake two years ago, 
and this is the first evidence 1 have had that they have bred. 
The size puzzles me. The young bass seems too small for a 
yearling and too large for fry of this year, for the fish was 
nearly 2in. long." 
Once he wrote me a critique on my monograph, entitled 
"Adirondack Fishes," and among other thing's said: "I was 
surprised at your saying that you preferred bullheads to 
l)took trout for the table, but on' reflection must agree with 
you. Every summer I have tired of trout but have never 
had a sufficiency of bullheads. To be sure 1 have never 
tried to eat so many of the catties as 1 have of trout, and 
have never been confined to them as a steady diet as we are 
to trout in the woods. And this reminds me of a story. 
While making a (rip throu£rh the Adirondacks with a friend 
and two guides we stopped at Ike Kenwell's, on Raquette 
Lake, for dinner. My guide, Ike Stone, and 1 were standing 
on the wharf anxious to get away when a boat came to the 
landing. A gentleman seated in the stern, said to be a 
clergyman, remarked to one standing near us: 'Come, 
brother, get your tackle ready, I have found where we can 
get splendid fishing, for my guide thinks we can get some 
FOREST AN3D STREAM. 
bullheads to-day.' My guide never gol over it, and he 
speaks ot the 'splendid fishing' at Raquette Lake every year 
when we meet." 
There may be no moral to this story, but it points to the 
fact that the flesh of all fishes of the salmon tribe, not 
family, for I only mean the salmon and the different trout?, 
is very cloying after a .short time. A man will tire of 
salmon after a few meals, yet an occasional dinner of it is 
an ichthyophagian treat, and the same is true of trout in a 
lesser degree, for its flesh is not so rich in oils as that of the 
salmon. 
As one of Fish Committee of IheBloomingGrrove Park Asso- 
ciation, Dr. Nash arranged with me for professional advice in 
locating and arranpiog a trout hatchery for the Association, 
and I vi'sited that famous park in 1883 and afterward had their 
hatching troughs made on Long Island, sent by rail to New 
York, where they went to their journey's end 'by canal and 
wagon over the mountains, and 1 was surprised to learn 
that they were watertight on arrival. I saw quite a little of 
the park then and was impressed with its wild, rugged char- 
acter, which fitted it for a grand game preserve, and for lit- 
tle else. Its 17,000 acres, with 4,000 more leased, contains 
eight mountain lakes and over twenty-five miles of trout 
streams. This, and a square mile fenced in for a breeding 
park for deer and other game, made it a sportsman's para- 
dise, surrounded as it is by a wild, mountainous country in 
Pike county, Pa., only 140 miles from New York City. 
A year or two after this first visit Dr. Nash invited me to 
fish in the park with him. The trout season was poor just 
then, because the streams were swollen, and the only fishing 
at the time was for black bass. We left the handsome club 
house in the morning in a two-seated carryall drawn by two 
sturdy and stubborn little mules, named Or and Tor. When 
Bob, the driver, took up the lines and started his team he 
lighted his pipe and polluted the air behind him. Nash did 
not seem to mind it, and I, being a guest, pretended not to 
notice it. In no other country that I know of would such a 
thing be tolerated, even if a- driver should so far forget him- 
self as to attempt it, but it is an everyday occurrence among 
our free-born American drivers of stages and other vehicles 
in the rural districts. We were bound for Lake Laura, 
which is about six miles in a direct line from the club house, 
but fully nine by the mountain roads. The trees were gor- 
geously tinted with all the varied greens of early summer, 
for the leaves of the hard woods were still quite young, and 
when Bob's pipe was replaced in his pocket the air was 
glorious. 
There was a little house and stable at Lake Laura, and I 
was glad to get from the wagon into a boat. The lake is 
nearly square and is almost a mile across in both directions, 
with a shelving, rocky shore, which was washed clean of 
mud or vegetation as far out as one could see the bottom. It 
was now nearly 9 A. M., and an occasional bass was break- 
ing here and there. Their nests were plentiful and plain to 
be seen, and many schools of baby bass that had just risen, 
but had not scattered to seek their individual fortunes, were 
also to be seen. 
"What flies do you propose to use?" asked the Doctor, 
"Just what I was about to ask you, because this is strange 
water to me and you've fished it before. Tell me what you 
think best to start in with?" 
The Doctor cast his weather eye aloft, sniffed at the wind 
and said : "The morning is fairly bright and there is suffi- 
cient breeze to make a ripple and hide the fall of the line and 
leader. 1 think that rather sober-colored flies should take, 
don't you?" 
"That's the theory, a dull fly for a bright day and bright 
colors for an overcast sky, but I've often found exceptions to 
the rule." 
"Naturally," said the Doctor, "the exceptions prove the 
rule; if there was no rule there could be no exception." 
"Well, here's a gijiger-hackle and a March-brown," I re- 
plied, "and if they don't suit I'll give 'em something else, 
and reserve any tilt at your philosophy until we adjourn to 
take a rise out of the luncheon," and I was so jn caaimg. 
Nash selected a stone-fly and a brown-palmer, and then he 
put the boat to the western side of the lake and let it drift 
back as we fished. We had a rise or two, but no strike, and 
contrary to all expectation the bass were rising about the 
lake more freely than when we started to fish, for we gener- 
ally look for them to stop feeding as midday approaches. I 
said something to this effect, to which the Doctor replied: 
"All black bass rules are violated by the bass in Bloom- 
ingrove Park. There's that fine lake just in front of the 
club house, Lake Giles; it's about the size of this lake and 
contains thousands of large bass, but they refuse to rise to 
fly or bite at bait, durn 'em, and we don't know what to 
think of them. We can see dozens of them swimming by, 
great fellows, of four, six, and nobody knows how many 
pounds, but they decline all offers. What do you think of 
that?" 
"The bass are a recent importation, for they are not 
natives of the eastarn parts of New York and Pennsylvania, 
and they are at present finding all the food they want in the 
native suckers, shiners and other fish, but when they clean 
this food up they will then have appetites for what you have 
to offer. Now, when we start again from the western shore 
I'm going to try brighter flies. Here's a red ibis and a 
queen-of-the-water all ready. Let me take the oars while 
you change your cast." 
A coachman and a yellow ^ally was the Doctor's choice, 
and we did quite well with these, even if the day was 
bright We had eleven fish in the next drift across the lake, 
most of them taken on the yellow-sally and the red-ibis. 
The bass were small, none going above lib , but they were 
lively and strong fighters. Nash said that they did not grow 
larger in Lake Laura. That was another strange thing. 
One more drift with a like result and it was time to go 
ashore. 
We had appetites befitting anglers on a mountain lake. 
We had a wealth of appetite that would have been of rare 
value to men who are chained to business, but we had ac- 
quired it easily, and we squandered it so thoroughly that 
none of our wealth was available to take home. 
* * * A voice said : "Come, wake up if you want to do 
some fishing this afternoon," and as the "dull dense sensa- 
tion of recuriing sense" rolled Lack, I gradually got a grip on 
life and became conscious that Lake Laura was the place on 
this planet where 1 was "at," and fish once more seemed 
worth the fishing. 
The same flies served for the afternoon fishing, although 
the sky was not so bright and nothing unusual occurred ex- 
cept that a bass took one of my flies below and the other fly 
became entangled in somt'thing that was stronger than my 
leader. The bass was lost and my other hook broke; on 
reeUng in I found that the broken hook was one of those 
side-bent "sneck" hooks which are my abomination, and 
149 
bow I ever came into possession of a queen of-the-water tied 
on a sneck hook is more than I can say. I don't know of 
any fly-maker or dealer who sends out or sells flies tied on 
these hooks, and I was surprised to find that I had such, a 
fly. 
Before we quit fishing I told the Doctor that I would like 
to lake a hundred Or two of tbe baby bass to Long Island, 
for by the way, all the bass in Lake Laura were of the small- 
mouth persuasion, and we got a quart fruit jar from the 
house and put some baby bass in it. They were less than 
half an inch long and blacker than they would ever be again. 
We started. Bob lighted his pipe and a hind wheel col- 
lapsed and he went over the dashboard among an indis- 
tinguishable mess of mule's heels, while his young life was 
saddened by the loss of his pipe, which suffered a compound 
fracture. I was sitting over the wheel whose spokes, with- 
out a request from one of its felloes, let the hub fall on the 
ground, to the great surprise of the men and mules. As 
Nash sailed over me, after the manner of a flying squirrel, 
there was a momentaiy glimpse of a fruit jar following him, 
and then we arose and saw hundreds of baby bass struggling 
for life in the road. "And forty miles from a wagon 
maker," said the Doctor, as we shook hands and assured 
each other that we were unhurt. "I don't mind the walk 
back," said I, "but 1 am so sorry about the driver's pipe." 
That driver crawled out from under the mules and looked 
at tbe wreck of wagon and of pipe. Which was the great- 
est calamity, from his point of view, he did not say; but he 
looked dazed, until Nash said to him: "Come, wake up; go 
to the house and get an axe, and we'll fix the wagon and go 
on." He went, brought an axe, and the Doctor cut a long 
pole, put it under the hind axle and lashed it fast to an iron 
on the front of the wagon body; and so, trailing on the 
ground like the lodge poles of a Sioux, that pole sustained 
the axle, and we put our rods and fish in the wagon and 
started over the mountain on foot, while Bob, seated over the 
front wheels, drove on without his pipe. 
As we started ahead of the team, Nash advised that we 
cut some good strong gads in case of meeting rattlesnakes, 
and we did. They were chestnut sprouts, tough, and about 
loft, long and perhaps l^in. at the butt — most formidable 
things for a snake to meet while enjoying life in a sun-bath 
on an unfrequented road, "Now bring on your snakes," 
said my companion, and "There's one,". said I, as we made 
a short turn and a rattler came into view while taking his 
siesta in the middle of the road. There was a rush, a yell, 
and the gads went whack, whack, on the vertebra) of that 
snake just as he threw himself into a hollow coil to resist the 
charge. It was no use, our artillery was too heavy for him. 
Some one said that Providence was always on the side of the 
heaviest artillery, thereby either paraphrasing or antedating 
a similar remai-k ascribed to Napoleon regarding the best 
disciplined troops. Be that as it may, we had the heaviest 
artillery and were the best disciplined troops, because we 
acted in concert, and our whacks reduced the enemy to such 
an extremity that he was quiescent, merely wiggling his tall 
to show how glad he was lo see us. 
"Seven rattles and a button," remarked my companion 
snake-killer, "and this fellow is eight years old, at least. 
No one can say that some rattles have not been lost, and that 
he may be a hundred years old. What do you think. of 
that?" 
"I think that I don't know the first thing about it. There 
are men who deny that the snake produces only one rattle a 
year, and others who assert that the rings on a cow's horn 
may indicate age, but not necessarily her exact age; and other 
men claim that in favorable years a tree will make several 
rings in a season, if the growth is checked and proceeds 
again, according as the months may be alternately dry or 
wet." 
"You don't believe in these things, I take it," said my 
friend, in a manner that denoted a question. 
"They may be so; I don't deny them," I answered, "but 
the question seems to be an open one, one in which the evi- 
dence is not all in, and as either a judge or a juryman I be- 
lieve nothing until it has been proved. I have counted over 
a dozen wrinkles on the horn of a cow that I once bred and 
knew to be only four years old, and I've seen rings of 
growth on clam and oyster shells that would make them 
appear to be octogenarians when their size belied the 
wrinkles. I once hatched oysters from the egg, and under 
the microscope caw them fasten on shells, and then sus- 
pended them where there was plenty of food in tide water. 
In the fall those oysters were as large as a quarter of a 
dollar, and showed sharp rings of growth, I can't say how 
many, perhaps twenty. That is as far as my positive knowl- 
edge goes. What are you carrying that snake on your gad 
for?" 
"For no reason that I can give," said the Doctor, "but 
you must know that a man does many things for which he 
can give no good reason — I mean a sound commercial reason; 
this thing is a trophy; only this and nothing more. It may 
serve to scare the mules into greater activity if they ever 
catch up with us, or it will serve to feed the ants if we ever 
find a hill of pismires." 
We soon found what had been a hill, but which had been 
leveled by a bear, who provoked the inhabitants to attack 
him and then devoured them as they swarmed on his tongue. 
The trouble had occurred so long before that the pismires 
had partly rebuilt the mound, and when Nash dropped the 
snake across it with a thud, it was fun to see the hordes 
swarm up from below to resent any attack upon their out- 
works. They came by battalions, biigades and divisions of 
army corps, and they emitted a peculiar odor, which cannot 
be described. They covered the snake lin. deep, and any 
man who has ever aroused the ire of a colony of this kind by 
disturbing their mounds, and has had the experience of only 
one of these wingless insects up his trouser's leg, will know 
just how they nipped that dead snake. "If you come along 
nere to-morrow," said the Doctor, "you will find the skeleton 
of that rattler picked clean enough to set up in a museum; 
there will not be a bit of flesh or skin left; the few scales 
and the skeleton will remain because the ants can't eat 
them." 
The mules came up while we were watching the legions 
attacking the dead snake, and the driver said that since the 
pole had replaced a wheel the mules had refused to go faster 
than a walk, and showed his whip worn to a stump, in evi- 
dence that he had used all his powers of persuasion. Then 
we tried our arguments, one to each mule, but those gads 
which had maae a rattlesnake look as though he had been 
run through a threshing machine were shed from the backs 
of those mules a ; a duck's back sheds water. They squirmed 
as we yelled and whaled, but our arguments had nu effect. 
It was not fear of Mr. Bergh that made us desist, but that 
muscular incapacity which accompanies severe laughter. 
The mules were the best disciplined troops in this engage- 
