436 
Mashpee* 
South Sandwich, Massachusetts.— £c?j7or Forest and 
Stream: A new edition of the correspondence of Daniel 
Webster will soon be published in Boston. Through 
the kindness of the editor and publishers, I am permit- 
ted to send to Forest and Stream two letters hitherto 
unpublished, which I think will be interesting to your 
readers. 
The first one, which was written shortly before Mi: 
Webster's death, was sent to Benj. C. Clark, Esq., re- 
cently president of our Massachusetts Fish and Game 
Protective Association, and may explain in part why 
Mr. Clark has continued to this day to be an enthusiast 
on the subject of tautog fishing, as well as a sturdy 
all-round sportsman. 
To B. C. Clark, Jr. 
Mr. Paige's, Nahant, Friday Morning, July 23rd, 1852. 
My young FrienDj — I propose joining you this morn- 
ing, to pay our respects to the Tautog, but fear we shall 
hardly be able to tempt them from their lurking-holes, 
under this bright sun. They are naturally shy of hght. 
"Tautog" means simply the "black fishes," "og" being 
a common termination of plural nouns in the language 
of our Eastern Indians. I believe the fish is not known in 
Europe. Its principal habitat originally seems to have 
been Long Island Sound, Buzzard's Bay, and the Eliza- 
beth Islands. Seventy years ago the Hon'ble Stephen 
Gorham, father of the Hon'ble Benjamin Gorham, now 
of Boston, brought some of these fish alive from New 
Bedford and put them into the sea at Boston. They are 
now found as far East as the mouth of the Merrimac. 
They abound, as you know, on the south side, as well as 
on the north side of our Bay. Indeed, it is thought that 
by their own progress north they doubled Cape Cod, not 
long after Mr. Gorham's deposit, at Boston. 
Thirty j^ears ago, Mrs. Perkins, the wife of the late 
Samuel G. Perkins, a lady whose health led her to pass 
her summers on the sea-coast, and who had a true love 
for fishing, caught a Tautog, with a hand-line, off these 
rocks, which weighed 20 lbs. 
It will suit me quite as well to go off again, in the 
beautiful "Raven," if we can obtain plenty of bait, and 
especially if your Father will accompany us. 
Yours truly, 
Dan'l Webster. 
Although Mr. Clark has recently celebrated the fiftieth 
anniversary of his graduation from Harvard, he is still 
alert and vigorous, and only last Aveek told me that this 
season he had taken the largest tautog of his life. 
The second letter was written from this town to Henry 
Cabot, grandfather of our present U. S. Senator, Hon. 
Henry Cabot Lodge; the year is not 
mentioned in the date, but Senator Lodge 
thinks it was written between 1830 and 
1840. 
To Henry Cabot. 
Sandwich, June 4, 
Saturday Morn'g, 6 o'clock. 
Dear Sir, — -I send you eight or nine 
trout, which I took yesterday, in that chief 
of all brooks, Mashpee. I made a long 
day of it, & with good success, for me. 
John was with me, full of good advice, but 
did not fish, nor carry a rod. 
I took 26 trout, all weighing 17 lb. 12 
[oz] 
The largest (you have him) weighed at 
Crocker's 2' — 4 oz 
The five largest 8 — 5 oz 
the eight largest 1 1 — 8 oz 
I got them by following your advice; 
that is, by careful & thorough fishing of the 
difficult places which others do not so fish. 
The brook is fished, nearly every day. I 
entered it, not so high up as we some- 
times do, between 7 & 8 o'clock, & at 12 
was hardly more than half way down to 
the meeting house path. You see I did 
not hurry. The day did not hold out to 
fish the whole brook properly. The 
largest trout I took at 3 p. m. (you see I am pre- 
cise) below the meeting house, under a bush, on the 
right bank, two or three rods below the large beeches. 
It is singular, that in the whole day, I did not take two 
trouts out of the same hole. I found both ends, or parts 
of the brook about equahy productive. Small fish not 
plenty in either. So many hooks get everything which 
is not hid away, in this manner large trout take care of 
themselves. I hooked one, which I suppose to be larger 
than any which I took, as he broke my line, by fair pull- 
ing, after I had pulled him out of his den — I was playing 
him in fair open water. 
Of what I send you, I pray you keep what you wish 
yourself, send three to Mr. Ticknor, and three to Dr. 
Warren ; or two of the larger ones, to each, will perhaps 
be enough, and if there be any left, there is Mr. Callen- 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
der & Mr. Blake and Mir. Davis, either of them not 
"averse to fish." 
Pray let Mr. Davis see them, especially the large one. 
As he promised to come, and fell back, I desire to excite 
his regrets. I hope you will have the large one on your 
table. 
The day was fine — not another hook in the brook. 
John Ffealey as a judge and everything else exactly right. 
[Dec. 5, 1903. 
AN ANGI-ER of the MASHPEE. 
I never, on the whole, had so agreeable a day's fishing, 
tho' the result, in pounds or numbers is not great; nor 
ever expect such another. 
Please preserve this letter ; but rehearse not these par- 
ticulars to the uninitiated. 
I think the Limerick not the best hook. Whether it 
pricks too soon, or for what other reason, I found, or 
thought I found, the fish more likely to let go his hold, 
from this, than from the old-fashioned hook. 
Yrs D. Webster. 
If they hold give Callender a taste. 
THE SOURCE OF THE MASHPEE. 
It has long been a tradition among our Cape Cod trout 
fishermen that whenever possible Mr. Webster came to 
these streams for a bit of fishing just prior to the de- 
livery of one of his great addresses. In his oration at 
the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, one sen- 
tence directed to the survivors of the Revolutionary War 
there present was, by his own statement, first addressed 
to two large Mashpee trout lying in his basket. "Vener- 
able men, you have come down to us from a former gen- 
eration, and a merciful Providence has bounteously 
lengthened out your lives to behold the glory of this 
day." 
When I first fished Mashpee, some twenty-five years 
ago, I was shown a beautiful bubbling spring by the side 
of the road near the lower bridge. "This," said my in- 
formant, "is what we call Daniel Webster's spring. 
Daniel Webster always took a drink here when he fisl 
Mashpee. I calculate there has been more good Medfoiu 
rum mixed with the water from this spring than from 
any other spring in Massachusetts." Needless to say, I 
at once mixed some for two, and never since have I 
failed to observe the same religious ceremony at the • 
spot. Tradition also says that Mr. Webster was a. cus- 
tomed to fish in the salt water near the mouth of the 
river for the early April trout ; the Indians had a habit 
of making a celebration on the beach, clams, oysters, etc., 
each year on Fast Day. Mr. Webster would take with 
him a gallon of rum, perhaps not of the same quality 
he used himself, and give it to the squaws; the skirt 
dancing that followed would put Loie Fuller or Car- 
mencita to the blush. 
Mashpee has its source in a beautiful lake of the same 
name about three miles long, situated partly in our town 
of Sandwich, but mainly in Mashpee town. The brook 
flows for a short distance through open fields and a few 
small cranberry bogs, then for some five miles through a 
heavily wooded, narrow valley, where there are many 
springs along the banks, then there is about one mile of 
fairly open, boggy meadow, where, though the water is 
fresh, it can only be fished at low tide, as the high tide 
backs up the water too deep for wading; then comes 
about two miles of regular tidal stream, and the river 
empties into Poponessett Bay, an arm of Vineyard Sound. 
During its fresh-water course it will average about 15 
feet in width, and is fished only by wading; the salt- 
water part is much wider, and is fished from boats. The 
entire stream has been preserved for private fishing for 
many years, but Poponessett Bay and the lake are free 
and every season give occasional yields of fine fish ; the 
trout, like those in all our tidal streams, are much heavier 
in proportion to their length than those of the mountain 
or North Woods streams, very silvery and with very red 
tlesh ; as they leave the salt water and go up stream the 
coloring rapidly becomes more vivid. 
Mashpee still flows as clear as ever, unvexed by dam 
from source to mouth ; the wild deer still drink its 
waters daily. Many a good man has fished it since the 
day of the "Immortal Daniel," and many a good story 
could be told thereof if there were space in your paper, 
The fishing, which for many years was better than in his 
time, has lately been poorer because the half-breed 
poachers set gill-nets near the mouth and catch many of 
the large fish for the market. Now that Massachusetts 
has passed a law forbidding the sale of all trout except 
those artificially propagated, let us hope that the old 
glory of Mashpee will return, and that it will again be 
come, as Mr. Webster calls it, "The chief of all brooks." 
James Russell Reed. 
'•A 
We take it that the artist who painted 
the portrait of Webster could have had no 
thought that he was furnishing material for 
the illustration of an angling paper; but 
we may be sure that if the distinguished 
angler of the Mashpee could have come 
down to us from a former generation, he 
would have been nothing loth to lend his 
portrait to go with Mr. Reed's happy cele- 
bration of the charms of his favorite 
stream. The time has long ago gone by 
w"hen an angler or a shooter, whatever may 
be his station in life, need feel any qualms • 
about being identified in the public mind 
with his chosen recreation. If a man is 
a good lawyer and a good fisherman as 
well, the combination of accomplishments 
is accepted as something highly tO' his ■ 
credit; and he need not fear to lose clients 
thereby. 
There is something very appropriate in 
a portrait of President Roosevelt in his 
office to accompany a sketch of Mr. Roose- 
velt as a sportsman. In this country, at 
least, it is for the most part true that the 
man who follows with enthusiasm the' 
sports of the rod and the gun, pursues with 
corresponding energy some branch of work. 
We have a leisure class to be sure, but the' 
typical American sportsman — the only one, by the way, 
for whom it is worth while to endeavor to save the fish 
and the game — is the man who, whether with hand or 
head, has some part in the world's work. Most of the 
contributors, whose signatures, whether real names or 
pseudonyms, are familiar to the readers of these columns, | 
belong to this class. They make of sport not a profession^ 
but a diversion. They play that they may work — or, shall 
we say, work that they may play? Their letterheads are 
representative of the varied industries and professions 
which make up modern society. 
For the original print from which the quaint picture 
of a seventeenth century angler has been reproduced w£« 
are indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Russell WJ 
Woodward, 
