388 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[MIay i6, 1903. 
ON THE DELAWARE NEAR NARROWSBURG. 
the knife is run down along the backbone to the tail. 
Keeping a firm hold on the head, with thumb and knife - 
blade you start the skin on the right side of the back 
just back of the head, and the skin conies off nicely, dis- 
closing the fine white meat. Turn your fish and do the 
same with the left side, and cut off the head and all comes 
away, leaving the fish ready for the pan after a little rinse 
in the clean water. George had the "spider" ready — I 
never heard the word "skillet" until later in life; there 
was some hot pork sizzling in the pan just to show that 
there was no coldness, and the heap of sweet meat was 
piled in and covered just long enough to get hot, when 
off came the cover and the perch were allowed to brown. 
After our feast and a good nap, we went about with 
the guns, but had no luck, and went home finally as 
happy as two young boys ever were in this beautiful 
world with our baskets full of lilies for the fair friends 
in New Haven. 
George pointed out the old church, painted white as 
I remember, with green blinds, in true New England 
fashion of the time, and we landed and peered cautiously 
into the darkened interior, and George said that they had a 
choir there on Sunday led by a man with a big double- 
bass viol instead of an organ, which made me very 
anxious to attend services there on Sunday; but, of 
course, that was not to be thought of, because the faculty 
would report me absent from college chapel to my loving 
parents, who, by the way, would not have cared to what 
church I went on Sunday, and I should have received 
twenty marks and a "Warning," with a big W for my 
indiscretion. How strange such things seem when one 
looks back from the point of view of manhood's freedom. 
Peter Flint. 
Canoe and Camp Life Along the 
Delaware River. 
Vn. — Running Water. 
"The foam-flecked globes on the eddies ride, 
Thick as the schemes of human pride 
That down life's current drift amain, 
As frail, as frothy, and as vain." 
—Scott. 
"Water swiftly flowing, 
But stationary waves! 
Water gaily going 
O'er the rocks it laves! 
Bounding like a puma, 
Full of curves and light — 
Laughter, foam and fume! A 
Winding rush of light!" 
— Milaspara. 
The most casual observation of ' earth's contours, 
even those of one small section of any country, brings 
conviction that the elevation of the land was ordained ; 
for its foliage, fruits and flowers are the result of growth 
as they feed upon water. The uprearing of hills and 
mountains was by divine will, to give motion to water. 
Forest, garden, orchard and meadow are fed by it as it 
flows on and through the land, quite as much as by the 
direct rains from clouds. It goes itJ prepared paths. 
AN EVE HARVEST ON A CLOUDY DAY. 
whose margins are winding lines of deeper green and 
special beauty. It has power to cleave mountains (as 
at Delaware Water Gap), as well as to circle gently 
among the sedges, and cherish the huge roots and snowy 
blooms of its lilies. 
The moss-tapestried dell, the clusters on the grape- 
trellis, the greensward sweetly starred with squirrelcups 
and adder-tongues, the wooded, fair valleys and upland 
meadows, all owe their beauty to flowing water, hasten- 
ing toward and yearning for the sea— unresting, benign 
as all vegetable life drinks it, and as it sings and croons 
to tree and plant, like a loving mother. To use the 
couplet of Izzet Molla: 
"It purls and murmurs as it moves 
In circles round the tree it loves." 
Green under tree canopies, its depths a sun-.shafted 
fantasia, we owe to it the fragrance and blessing of every 
blossom, the plowing and harvesting, the dripping, 
moss-covered old well-buckets near a countless host of 
happy homes where the vine clambers, and the lilacs 
bloom. 
Try to recall the very happiest hours of all your life — 
some morning of the long ago whose joys lie fair and 
sweet in memory, some moonlit evening or starlighted 
night far off, but hallowed in recollection. Almost cer- 
tainly you will be led back to a brook or river that you 
loved in childhood, and left with it to joy again over the 
impalpable but vivid treasure. The music of a stream, the 
song of a wild bird, the sight and scent of a country 
flower. In how many hearts have they not only arrested 
but turned back the flight of time, and left men boys 
again, "just for to-night!" 
There is no inorganic substance so remarkable as 
water. Perpetually changing, always smiling-earnest, 
steadfa.st, joyous, sleeplessly unwearied! We have set for 
ourselves the task of studying it as it flows in the Dela- 
ware. A diflScult task and sure to be badly performed, 
for it is "like trying to paint a soul 1" 
We have reached the upper Westcolang Rift, and have 
even been down as far as Narrowsburg — fishing, loafing, 
eating our bread in midsummer laziness ; but always try- 
ing to see the hues and curvature and to hear the music 
of the flowing water. 
It is "only the Delaware;" but this river is quite as 
lovely for a hundred miles as any like reach of the Rhone. 
Search through the Scotch hills or the Bernese Oberland, 
and you will find no sweeter water-music, and no fairer 
scenes. 
Of course the Delaware is seen most distinctly in the 
gray light of cloudy days, for then its fire is largely lim- 
ited to its own foam; it is not drowned in golden mist 
caused by strong sunlight, and the shift and dance of its 
radiance and lights are not so complex and bewildering. 
It is water gathered in mass, flowing rapidly. We lack 
time and space here to tell of its rise in mist from the 
ocean, its propulsion by kind winds, its descent over and 
upon the land while it is often seamed with lines of fire 
and shaken by bellowing thunder ; or how it dwells as in- 
visible moisture in clear air, or forms clouds that drift 
as ranges. Besides, something of this will be told when 
I come to write of clouds. 
Filtering threads of rain and dew have massed on the 
slopes, hills and bottoms, and have waked to a musical 
life of their own tinkling as rivulets and rills beneath 
the plumy spires of ferns and the tangle of birch roots, 
their lyres bursting forth as springs welling to form 
brooks that, in turn, join in the loving work of feeding 
and swelling the volume of a large stream. 
Here is a pitifully inadequate picture of the Delaware 
about two miles from Narrowsburg, and of an angler 
there, happy under his old straw hat. 
Grant to him the power of blotting from his perception 
all that wondrous beauty of the far-foliaged vista up the 
river, with its soft gloom, mystery, and play of shadows. 
Take from him all consciousness of the blue fire of the 
sky, throbbing with faintest mantlings and quiverings of 
change, and of the exquisite finish and curvature of the 
water-sculptured rocks. Close his ears to the silver bell 
of the thrush, the jangled chimes of the bobolink, the 
boom at the end of the long air-dive of the early-flying 
nighthawk, and the resounding banjos of the bullfrogs 
back in the moist, rush-guarded nooks of the bank. Let 
no haunting odors that live along the riverside distract 
his attention with smells of thorn-blossom, crab-apple, 
leek or sedge. Banish all capacity to do aught but behold 
the motion and light in that water. What does he see? 
Far up the stream broods the mystery. Out of the hills 
emerges the river, advancing in a placid reach which is 
so often miscalled an eddy. It is a view faintly seen 
through mists that rise above its first little plunge and 
foam at the head of the rift, where the hesitating current 
has poised for its first leap, and the water breaks into an 
irregular line, like the links of a horizontal but loosely 
held and shaken chain. 
What next ? 
The pen falters. I seek refuge in the following descrip- 
tion of a master at whose feet I have sat for twenty years, 
and who was probably the keenest-eyed student of Nature 
that the last century produced : 
"When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky 
bed much interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every 
now and then in a pool as it goes along, it does not 
acquire a continuous velocity of motion. It pauses after 
every leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then 
goes on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil and 
rational state of mind it meets with an obstacle, as a 
rock or stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bub- 
bling foam, and goes round; if it comes to a step in its 
bed, it leaps it lightly, and then after a little plashing at 
the bottom, stops again to take breath. But if its bed be 
on a continuous slope, not much interrupted by hollows, 
so that it cannot rest, or if its own mass be so increased 
by flood that its usual resting places are not sufficient for 
it, but that it. is perpetually pushed out of them by the fol- 
lowing current, before it has had time to tranquilize itself, 
it of course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the 
impetus got at one leap is carried to the credit of the 
next, until the whole stream becomes one mass of un- 
checked, accelerating motion. Now, when water in this 
state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears 
it, like a race-horse ; and when it comes to a hollow, it does 
not fill it up and run out leisurely at the other side, but it 
rushes down into it and comes up again on the other side, as 
a ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence the whole appear- 
ance of the bed of the stream is changed, and all the lines 
of the water altered in their nature. The quiet stream 
is a succession of leaps and pools ; the leaps are light and 
springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing 
when they tumble into the pool ; then we have a space of 
quiet curdling water, and another similar leap below. But 
the stream when it has gained an impetus takes the shape 
of its bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift 
everywhere, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, 
but with a swing, not foaming, nor splashing, but in the 
bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again 
on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a 
bounding leopard ; if it meet a rock three or four feet 
above the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, 
nor express any concern about the matter, but clear it in 
a smooth dome of water,* without apparent exertion, com- 
every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating 
grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps 
the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature 
can possibly produce ; * * every motion of the torrent 
ing down again as smoothly on the other side; the whole 
surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its 
extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the 
form of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to 
such a line of fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole 
river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with 
this only difference, that the torrent-waves always break 
backwards, and sea-waves forwards. Thus, then, in the 
water which has gained an impetus, we have the most 
exquisite arrangement of curved lines, perpetually chang- 
ing from convex to concave, and vice versa, following 
A RAINBOW EFFECT. 
is united, and all its curves are modifications of beautiful 
line"t 
Yet, as we mentioned when writing of mere hues and 
motion of clouds, all this motion and curvature are gov- 
erned by sternest laws, even through all their change, 
haste, seeming confusion and chaos ! 
Just below the scene shown in the picture, the water is 
less rapid, and the bottom more rocky; and if the angler 
stands on the shore where the stream curves, and with 
the sun low behin dhim, he sees the water breaking in 
foam-bells, and tossing beryls and pearls ; and through the 
mist rising over each rock and the foam just below it, 
hover tiny sections of rainbows waving and dancing in 
witchery of motion, the length and width of the rapids 
alive with not only the water-motion, but with the form- 
less ghost-brilliance of water-born butterflies poised above 
the seething caldrons where tormented masses of foam-fire 
make the water brightly opaque, water not only alive, but 
all crowned with iris-children that dance in a thousand 
mad and merry waltzes atong the rocky floor. In those 
pools the bass, buttress-guarded by the rocks above them, 
seek safety when the grinding ice-gorges of winter 
threaten them. 
And this is but one aspect of the river, in what may be 
(inaccurately) ealled one light. But wait till the twilight 
deepens ! 
Up from the horizon rises a disk of dull gold, faintly 
starring the flood with fairy glints, until it widens to a 
long-flaming ribbon of radiance, golden-fringed, but dotted 
with innumerable points of transient black, the whole 
boiling fire-line full of gracefullest motion. And .-is 
clouds gather and the night-pall shuts out the view with 
its veil, the stream changes to only a field where dim, 
fantastic foam-sprites reign like ghosts, and the tired eye 
is glad to be released from the stress of looking. But we 
•There- is a rock abreast of the uppermost of the Three .Sislcr 
Islands at Niagara, over which the water leaps smooilily in a 
dome six feet above the stream when sliglitly above nonnul flood, 
and without the slightest pamse or foam.— L. F. E. 
tRwkia, 
