FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Uay 7, 189B. 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac, 
Great Cacapon. 
, One of the wildest, prettiest and most romantic of tlie 
many tributaries of the Potomac is the Great Cacapon, 
sometimes called Capon for short, which empties into 
the main stream between the Pool of Woodmont and 
Sir John's Run, nearly fifty miles above Harper's 
Ferry. 
A fla.g. station taking- its name from the stream is at 
its , month, and here the angler may procure a team 
and drive up the river road as far as desired. 
considerably longer route, requiring much more 
jiinle aHtl labor, hut .which amply repays the extra in- 
vestment, is to stop at Hancock, a couple of stations 
nearer, and take the little spur railroad for three or 
four miles to Berkeley Springs. 
This road winds along the valley of the brook, fed 
by the wonderful warm springs, which break out in a 
bunch at the foot of the mountain, and sustain the little 
settlement, that may be some day a very popular resort. 
One of its drawbacks heretofore has been a tannery 
established not far below the springs, for which the warn'i 
waters were probably very convenient, but whose dis- 
charges of refuse destroyed the beauty of the crystal 
brook, and a stream of tar would be more sightly and 
more savory than that which unwinds to the visitor in 
his ride to the springs. It may be of some slight ad- 
vantage as rendering treatment universally necessary on 
arrival, for the conditions were calculated to make a 
well man ill. 
It is said just now not to be in operation; the pro- 
nrietors own several other plants more advantageously 
situated for necessary materials and markets, and it is 
to be hoped they may continue to find the others more 
profitable and abandon this. 
The industry is one of vast importance and value to 
us; its existence a necessity; but so is cooking — and 
yet we object to its evidences in the proximity of a parlor 
or drawing room. So such a plant at a pleasure resort 
is a blot: its destruction of a beautiful stream a sin; 
casting its refuse in the river to kill the fish and threaten 
the health of the population below who drink the waters 
— a crime, Hopes are reiterated that the proprietors 
may find such abundant profits elsewhere as to spare 
this little vahey. 
The waters of the springs are pleasant enough, and 
said to be w-onderfully effective in the treatment of some 
ailments, but that is a matter of doctors, fashion, wallets 
cind constitutions. 
We einbarked in a substantial ''fix"with a strong team, 
and saded up and over the Warm Springs Mountain, 
and wound down the other side, a devious way. into 
the valley between this and the Cacapon Range; then 
a long climb to the summit of this, and the Valley of 
the Great Cacapon was at our feet, with a background 
of distant hills, and the haze of a summer afternoon soft- 
ening the landscape and veiling the detail of all but 
nearby objects. 
We rapidly descend to the level of the river valley 
and reach a farmhouse some sixteen miles from the 
mouth of the stream, and are glad to "'light" after our 
pounding; and how we do enjoy the supper which comes 
later; then two great easy chairs on the wide porch 
woo us to an evening's enjoyment of curling blue 
smoke, and watching the deepening shadows in the val- 
ley and the waning high lights about the surrounding 
green 'hills; we dream of to-morrow's sport, but an 
early curfew signal sends us to finish bur nap in the 
company bed.. 
The next morning we find the boat in wdiich we are 
to drift doAvn the stream fast at the ford. The team is 
to take a later start, and driving down the river r(3ad, 
which has a habit of losing itself among fallen timber 
and washouts, is to keep as near us as convenient, in 
case of mishap. 
We toon find fish, but most of these first are too 
small to keep. Maybe the residents have caught the 
larger ones here, or educated them to be more wary of 
their natural enemy. 
At some of the little rapids the rocks are so high and 
the water so low that the boat requires assistance to get 
over, and, sometimes we need it for the same purpose. 
My companion is large, the boat is small; he is not 
an" angler, and his enthusiasm on the subject is all an- 
ticipatory; his weight makes such a difference in the 
draught of the little boat; and the cranky skiff keeps 
him in an agony of apprehension concerning the stabil- 
ity of his equilibrium; so he i^refers the road most of 
the time to the boat. 
Fortunately the stream is narrow enough to require 
no rowing, only to keep the nose of the skiff pointed 
down stream, and while this loses lots of good fishing 
water tinere's plenty left, and rises enough to satisfy a 
glutton. 
Little fly-fishing is done on this part of the river, and 
the ambitious angler who makes a trip here has prac- 
tically virgin water. 
The bass are not large, but numerous. There is httle 
vegetation along the banks and few bushes come down 
to the rocky channel; so there is little .shelter but the 
stones, and it is into their shadows most of the casting 
is done. 
The scenery is very fine throughout its course. The 
most striking feature in this section of its panorama is 
a great tower, which "stands four square to all the 
winds" that blow; at least that is the impression from 
tile distance we view it. It stands out from the 
face of the mountain, its green top apparently inac- 
cessible, but once gained, an impregnable stronghold. It 
is called "The Eagle's Nest," and the usual legend is as- 
sociated with it; this one may be true — that during the 
early days a hunter and his two daughters occupied a 
inirnic fort which he had built on its summit, and here 
he could leave thfem in comparative safety while he in- 
spected his -traps or restocked the commissary. One 
sorry day a band of roving Indians surprised him in the 
valley, hut he succeeded in reaching his tower of refuge^ 
and from the advantage of his height and superior weap- 
ons easily kept them under cover. But while they 
showed an appreciation of his advantage, and a realiza- 
tion that their charges were expensive, they manifested 
no disposition to abandon the siege, and soon convinced 
him they meant to keep him wdiere he belonged till star- 
vation did their work. He was a reconcentrado, and 
didn't know it. There is a hiatus in the story as to 
suitable provisions for water on the isolated pinnacle; 
there is room enough for a cistern; he may have had 
a pool or barrels; perhaps its lack led him to the ro- 
mantic and heroic part of the story. Finding the band 
disposed to become at least a temporary permanency in 
his Happy Valley, he became anxious, then desperate, 
and one night when a wild mountain storm had driven 
the besiegers to shelter, and they had relaxed something 
of their customary vigilance, he left his girls, stole down 
his winding stair, up the face of the mountain by a secret 
path, and made his way in safety to the settlements for 
help. The storj' would be incomplete if it did not re- 
count bow each day the girls fired a short or two at 
the skulking Indians among the trees below, just to 
convince them that the old man was still on guard; and 
how the unsuspecting savages were finally surrounded, 
surprised and slain to a man; and the girls never went 
back to their eyrie, for each found a mate among the 
rescuers. 
Though their names are forgotten, their pillar, better 
budded than that of St. Simeon the Syrian, still stands 
to perpetuate the memory of their lives, their peril and 
their rescue. 
It is far below this where we hail our wagon, and with 
a good basket of fish drive home in the gloaming. One's 
lines iriay sometimes be cast in pleasanter places, but not 
often. 
It is said that the bass are appearing at the present 
writing in wonderfully increased numbers in this stream, 
by reason of its waters being free from any contamina- 
tions fiom factoiy or field, and if this be true it will 
prove indeed an Angler's Paradise to those fortunate 
enough to. reach it this season with a fly. 
The Charms of Fly-Fishing, 
Speaking generally, the fly-fisher gains much in en- 
jo3mient over the man with a float. Every muscle is 
brougiit into play, and in these athletic days this is a 
strong recommendation. His hours unfold to him the 
ever shifting beauties of the kaleidoscope. 
Each cast brings him new skies, and hills, and flowers, 
and rocks, and new fish to try for. 
It is not the proverbial patience of the lone fisherman 
which is required here so much as energy. 
Compared with the kindred sport, hunting, the still- 
fisher is like the gunner who has a stand or blind, and 
waits the patient hours for the game to come. The fly- 
fisher more resembles the eager mountain climber who 
stalks liis prey. 
The blind hunter may be strange to his snrrotindings, 
but with ears and eyes open to every sound and move- 
ment, fares quite as well as the native. The stalker must 
know every rock and by-path, every salt-lick and drink- 
ing pool; signs of wind and weather, nay the v^ry habits 
of the animal he seeks, to reward his quest. \ 
So the fisher with a float, if he but have a general 
knowledge of the art, may have as good sport -the first 
day in new^ waters as his last, or as the resident cham- 
pion in whom use hath bred a habit of getting more 
bites than his neighbor. But with the fly-fishcr, every 
trip to any locality increases the coefficient of his effi- 
ciency and enjoyment. He learns the haunt of many a 
fish; knows them by sight and sometimes by name: 
every mossy bairk and sylvan spring; each pleasant 
shade; every stone and stump becomes to him a friend, 
to ignore whose evident greeting would be a rudeness. 
Five miles of streatn ate to him what the float is to 
his colleague. 
He knows where the wild flowers are thickest, whieli 
side of every reach is best; where the fallen trees block 
the path; the briar thickets, wdierc the bramble and the 
blackberry weave their webs for the unwary, and w]kich 
he gives a wide berth. ' 
He knows too where there is a little pool no bigger 
than a tub, but so close to big water that one flirt of 
the tail carries to safety its occupant--a finny Daniel 
Lambert, whose hunting lodge it is, and probably as 
dear to him as is the camp in the w^oods to the man 
who seeks him. 
Our failures are our school, and as we frighten out the 
fish from stone or crevice, each carries with him, se- 
curely fastened to his caudal fin, an imaginary alumimrm 
tag, with which we ornament him, confident that next 
time we will claim our OAvn. 
But the account is not all so out -sided, or all who 
could would soon be fishing with the fly. It is not all 
gain. What is secured of advantage to observation is 
lost to contemplation. 
To watch the sun and wind, and shadows and current, 
and depth; the stones and blossoms beneath your feet; 
the logs in front, the branches overhead, the trees be- 
hind — all more ready to take your fly than the fish— are 
all so many checks to dreaming. 
Walton was not much of a fly-fishcrman, though I 
believe with Marston that he knew all that was going 
at that time on the subject; but he principally watched 
a bob, and had plenty of occasion between bites to 
dream or talk, both of which he did to such good pur- 
pose. If he had fished only with the fly w'e should not 
have had such a book, and he would not have said the 
sport was a contemplative recreation, but rather an ob- 
servant exercise. 
To this extent the exchange i.i a real loss. 
Wisdom's self 
Oft seeks to sweet, retired solitude, 
; Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, 
She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, 
That in the various bustle of resort 
Were all too ruffled and sometimes impaired. 
So said Milton. Yet, take it aU in all, fly-fishing has many 
more charms for the business man of sedentary habits. 
To him his outing becomes a feast. The very attention 
demanded— to his surroundings and his sport — is proof 
against the insidious entrance of carking care, of busi- 
ness worries, which the contemplative float rather in- 
vites. 
There is but one rule, however, by which a man will 
determine which to elect — that which pleases him best. 
Not all waters, nor all weathers, nor all tackle, nor 
all fish, nor all men, are fit for this style of angling; 
but when the combination is complete it is the royal 
flush of sport. 
The gentle craft is sanctified by the daintier methods 
of the willowy withe, the silken thread and feather, while 
geology, botany and entomology attend the angler close 
to minister to his delight. Henry TALBOTt, 
Dry Fly-Fishing. 
BY GEORGE A; B. DEWAR (AUTHd'R OJ" " "T'UE BOOK OF 
THE DRY fly"). 
In Three Parts— Part lU, 
The Charms of the Method. 
English anglers have in the case of many streams 
been driven to the use of the dry fly through sheer ne- 
cessity, the wet fly method being no longer of much 
avail on clear and slow flowing waters where the trout 
are often assailed and have grown very cunning. Some 
day, perhaps, American anglers may be driven to the 
use of the dry fly by similar causes. But though we 
were compelled to take to the dry fly because we could 
not do anything on Test, Itchen and other waters with 
the wet fly, we have soon come to regard the necessity 
as a very agreeable one. The dry fly is indeed an en- 
grossing and almost enthralling pursuit. The number 
of its votaries increases every year. 
Eagerly scanning the likely-looking spots in the stream 
for the ring which tells of a feeding trout; stalking that 
fish with great care and patience; seeing him rise and 
di-aw in your neat little artificial; or seeing him rise, 
follow the lure clown stream for a foot or so, and then 
after evident hesitation decline to have it — these are 
some of the incidents which make the sport so fasci- 
nating. Then the gut casts for dry fly-fishing, out of at 
any rate May fly time, must be of the finest, and the 
hooks on which the beautiful duns and spinners are 
dressed about the smallest procurable; and when a 3 or 
4lb. trout in condition is hooked and has to be played 
with tackle of this description, then interest and excite- 
ment reach a high pitch indeed. The rush of a clean 
run salmon is superb, but personally I know of no sen- 
sation in the world of sport to equal that experienced 
when the twitch of the wrist is given that drives home 
the hook in the mouth of the 3lb. trout in perfect condi- 
tion. It is one that never seems to lose its edge, and 
instead of diminishing in intensity as we grow oMer, I 
really think that it actually increases. Then too the first 
good trout of the season, hooked in one of these hmpid 
streauLs — what a fish that is to the dry fly angler! 
Where fish are not too plentiful — ancl trout I hold 
can be much too plentiful — and where they are very 
hard to "get up" even whh the driest of olive duns at- 
tached to the finest of fine gut, every trout taken by the 
angler will very probably have a little history of its own. 
The angler on such a water has been out perhaps from 
10 in the morning to twilight on a glorious June day, 
and has made a basket of say two or two and a half 
brace — a very good day indeed, mind you — on some of 
our lovehest Sotith Country trout streams. On his way 
home he goes over in his mind the events of the day, and 
is proudly conscious that his five fat trout, all well above 
the limit of three-quarters of a pound or a pound, were 
taken by real skill and patience. 
One took an hour and a half to hook. It was feeding 
on natural fly right underneath an overhanging and very 
awkward bough. It seemed almost impossible to get 
the fly over this fish, and again and again in the attempt 
the angler got hung up in the aggravating willow, or 
in one of the herbs or long grasses which drooped over 
the bank close by where the fish was steadily rising and 
taking every dun sailing doAvn within a foot or so of 
his lair. Once or twice the angler had to lie flat down 
and drag himself along the ground in order to stretch 
out his hand and disentangle the hook without scaring 
and setting down the fish. Another trout was rising 
all but out of range right under the opposite bank, and 
only after many failures, and perhaps one or two cracked- 
off flies, did the angler succeed in getting well and neatly 
over the fish. The third, the fish of the day — a 3-pounder 
in noble condition — rushed instantly into a most dan- 
gerous place, infamous among dry fly anglers by reason 
of its weeds, or stakes, or roots of old, gnarled trees; 
and this trout was only secured through the angler's 
knowledge of the spot and great caution in playing him. 
And so with the other fish; the capture of each is a 
little history in itself, which the angler may recall days 
and even months afterward, when he has a little time 
and the inclination to ponder over fishing days and ways. 
Dry fly-fishing has, of course, its drawbacks, its keen 
disappointments. An ideal-looking day will quite pos- 
sibly produce no natural fly at all, and with no natural 
fly on the water there will be no rising trout, and with 
no rising trout there will be nothing for the dry fly- 
fisherman to cast to. It is indeed hard to find one's 
carefully selected day for a celebrated water turn out 
a fly-less and therefore a trout-less one. The angler 
whose time is all his own, and whose opportunities are 
as thick as May flies on the River Test, need not be 
greatly pitied, but it is different with the busy city man, 
who has been looking forward for weeks to his day on 
some famous water near town, and who has most proba- 
bly promised a brace of trout to every one in his oihce 
and to two or three of his neighbors. Such things are 
known to have occurred even in regard to experienced 
anglers. Yet they are not (Jtiite peculiar to dry fly-fish- 
ing. 
Despite these and other drawbacks, and with trout 
growing apparently more and more difficult in the case 
of many streams to induce to look at the artificial, dry 
fly-fishing when once cultivated by the keen and thor- 
ough angler is sure to remain a favorite pastime. 
"Neither the art of fly-fishing," said Froude, the his- 
torian, "nor the enjoyment of it when once acquired and 
tasted, will leave us except with life." Certainly the art 
and the glamour of the dry fly method, when orjc'e 
