118 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March, 1920 
JAMES ALEXANDER HENSHALL 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE APOSTLE OF THE BLACK BASS. 
FATHER OF THE GRAYLING AND DEAN OF AMERICAN ANGLERS 
I N the winter of 1865-6 I removed to 
the city of New York in response to 
the urgent solicitation of my preceptor 
whose surgical practice had become 
somewhat onerous, and he needed an as- 
sociate. During my stay in Gotham oc- 
curred an event of some importance, 
in which I was somewhat concerned, and 
which deserves a passing notice. For 
the accommodation of out-of-town pa- 
tients we had secured a floor in the Wy- 
oming Hotel on Greenwich street. It 
was my custom to visit these patients 
twice a day. One Sunday morning I 
drove from our office on Eighteenth 
street to the hotel, and, while hitching 
my horse, I noticed quantities of broken 
glass in the street, and, looking further, 
I discovered that every pane of glass in 
the windows of the buildings on both 
sides of the street seemed to be shattered, 
and the glass front of the hotel office 
was demolished. 
Going within I saw the guests and 
boarders engaged in picking pieces of 
glass from each other’s heads. I dressed 
the flesh wounds of some of the worst 
cases. It seemed that there had been 
a terrible explosion in front of the hotel, 
and going out again to investigate I saw 
a wrecked milk wagon and a dead horse 
across the street, while a great hole 
yawned in the street large enough to 
bury the horse completely. I searched 
for some evidence of the cause of the 
explosion, but found only a few splint- 
ers of wood and a piece or two of a 
glass jar or bottle. A section of the 
curbstone had been blown out and broken 
into several pieces. 
The whole affair 
was shrouded in 
mystery, for the 
only explosive i n 
common use was 
gunpowder, but this 
could not have 
caused such havoc, 
or have exerted its 
force downward 
■when exploded on 
the surface. 
A month previous 
to the occurrence a 
young man arrived 
from Germany and 
put up at the hotel 
until he could locate 
his relatives or 
friends. When he 
left the hotel he took 
his personal baggage 
with him but left a 
box, about two feet 
square, which he said 
belonged to a man in 
Bremen who, just 
before sailing, gave 
it to him, saying 
ELEVENTH PAPER 
he would send him instructions re- 
garding it when he learned his ad- 
dress in New York. The young 
man gave his address to the hotel clerk, 
and promised to take the box away when 
he heard from the man in Bremen. The 
box remained at the end of the counter 
in the hotel office for a week and was 
then placed in the baggage room. 
On the morning of the explosion a pe- 
culiar odor pervaded the office which 
was traced to the box in the bag'gage 
room from which noxious fumes were 
arising. The clerk ordered two bell boys 
to carry it to the street, who deposited 
it in the gutter. As soon as they re- 
turned to the office the explosion occurred 
as .stated. There was a vacant lot next 
to the hotel, and had the explosion oc- 
curred within the office, the wall would, 
in all probability, have been blown out 
and the building demolished. 
The young man was kept under sur- 
veillance until the man in Bremen could 
be heard from. In due course he replied 
that the young man knew nothing of the 
contents of the box, which he said was 
a new explosive compound called Nitro- 
glycerine, and which he intended to intro- 
duce into the United States commercially. 
This was the first explosion of nitro- 
glycerine in this country. A few years 
later General Newton made good use of it 
in blowing the bedrock from the channel 
of Hell Gate in the New York harbor. 
D URING my stay in New York I took 
up the study of the scientific and 
life history of fishes as a rest and 
recreation from my professional duties. 
I procured such books on the subject as 
were then available in the libraries of the 
city, and spent many pleasant hours with 
those pioneers of ichthyology, Agassiz, 
Storer, Kirtland and Holbrook. Then I 
began, naturally, to tire of the rush and 
bustle of the great metropolis and longed 
for the open country and shining waters. 
I became so obsessed with this feeling 
that I finally left the narrow and crowd- 
ed streets of Gotham for the great West, 
realizing more fully than ever the truth 
of Cowper that “God made the country 
and man made the town.” 
In 1867 I took up my residence in 
Milwaukee where sailing could be en- 
joyed on Lake Michigan, and where the 
finest fishing in the world was accessible 
and within easy reach in Wisconsin, 
Michigan and Minnesota. The black bass 
fishing in the lakes of southern Wiscon- 
sin at that time was famous, and Ocono- 
mowoc was the Mecca for black bass an- 
glers of Milwaukee, St. Louis, Chicago 
and the South. Within a radiu.s of ten 
miles of that popular summer resort 
were more than thirty lakes and lakelets 
abounding in black bass, pike, rock bass, 
calico bass or croppie and yellow perch. 
Some of the lakes were inhabited by the 
small-mouth bass, others by the large- 
mouth bass, and still others by both 
species, so that the choice of the aifgler 
was not far to seek. 
There was hardly a week end in sum- 
mer or fall that I did not find time to re- 
pair to one of these lakes for my favor- 
ite sport. For a pleasant change I would 
The angler’s recital. A triple portrait of Dr. Henshall 
fishing for brook 
trout and grayling, 
both species then be- 
ing very abundant, 
trout in the southern 
and grayling in the 
northern part of the 
.state. The Manistee 
and Ausable teemed 
with the “flower of 
fishes,” but now, O 
Ichabod ! Iehabod ! 
their glory has de- 
parted and the “lady 
of the streams” will 
be known no more 
forever; she has 
been dispossessed by 
the aggressive rain- 
b o w and brown 
trouts. 
I WAS fishing one 
day on Nemahbin 
Lake, near Ocono- 
niowoc, with General 
Q., of Mississippi. 
He was an ard- 
ent angler, and 
