House and Garden 
you are able to distinguish a bad fish from a good one 
by a glance at the pile; in fact you may have to study 
the subject some time, hut to one who can handle 
and sort five thousand pounds in a day, judgment 
becomes skill, and skill second nature; however, if 
you are observing, you will soon learn to know which 
boat is bringing in the most fish the moment she 
pushes her nose over the horizon line; for as 
are drawn and others set, the 
and immediately begins to sort; 
haul g e n e r- 
wh ich 
these 
they 
soon as the nets 
crew puts about 
the boat having the largest 
ally has the most bruised 
are unfit for market and 
are thrown overboard 
have scarcely time to touch 
the water before great flocks 
of gulls which hover about, 
devour them; therefore, 
when we see a cloud of birds 
around Bill Hennessy’s 
craft, “The Nora D,” we 
are able to deduce that she 
is bringing in some fish. 
I don’t know what is con¬ 
sidered a good catch, but 
I was once informed that 
“nine hoonder’ poun’ 
be dom baad louck.” 
If we go only a little 
way to westward from 
the town we shall have 
an agreeable change of 
scene for a short walk 
brings us to the mouth of 
the little creek that comes 
rollicking down from the hills; 
to follow it to its source would 
be only a day’s tramp, but since 
many places along its route are in¬ 
accessible to human foot, much of 
its wild and poetic beauty cannot be 
known; however, one may easily reach 
many charming nooks and corners among the 
Imposing beeches and firs that still grace the 
wanderings of this impetuous rivulet. If it is 
in June you may sit against the blue-gray lichen- 
painted bole of a great beech in the depths of 
the canon and with the help of the muse of history 
it will be a pleasing day-dream to repeople this 
natural amphitheatre with those whose trails are 
covered with the fallen leaves of a century. In your 
imagination you will see in the deep green shadows, 
many a redskin quietly mending an arrow or gliding 
noiselessly from tree to tree looking for game—or an 
Englishman. If romance be to your liking here is a 
place above others to lay the plot; but you must 
make it fit the seventeenth century for those were the 
times beginning to be full of Interesting uncertainties; 
surely many legends, as rich and rare as old tap¬ 
estries, must be forever lost to us, for the past is a 
book that’s sealed and dead men tell no tales; 
romance and tragedy were inseparable companions 
in those days of virgin forests and hostile tribes, and 
no doubt a pretty volume might be made wherein the 
brown-red maiden would play a most fascinating role. 
It was in these early days that the Indian began the 
fight for the lands and waters that were his—the 
glorious country for which we can show no clear 
title save that which bears the seal. The survival of 
the unfitted. 
While Nature, in the spring and summer months, 
seems to have almost expended her energies in per¬ 
fecting the scenery along this picturesque ravine, yet 
when autumn comes one quite forgets that there has 
been a day in May when the robins opened up their 
summer homes and the violets peeped out from under 
their coverlets of last year’s stems and mosses. 
In October Nature rivals herself; the trees put 
on new gowns between the days, each more 
gorgeous than the one before; the gray- 
greens and browns of ripening grasses 
and ferns add the deeper notes to 
the melody; even the air is lumi¬ 
nous with refracted 
lights of the year that is 
growing sleepy; one 
breathes deeply and 
would sleep, too, if 
we were not the one 
note out of tune with 
all creation. 
The creek is more 
than pictorially attrac¬ 
tive because of the fact 
that the old portage 
road was laid out by 
the French along its 
course; this road, 
’’ although scarcely more than 
1 dozen miles long, served as 
connecting link between the traffic 
of the lower lakes, the colonies 
beyond, and the region to south¬ 
ward of the Great Divide. On one side of this 
old portage road the wall of sandstone rises, its 
surface smoothed by the action of the elements, and 
each seam or division in the stratification is plainly 
evident, while from many of these lines of demarka- 
tion spring pines and other trees, their roots finding 
lodgment in the small deposits of alluvial soil that 
may be present. From its general form and its 
markings, this cliff has been named “ The Hog’s 
Back.” Evidently the appellation has been given it 
by one whose memory reverted to the typical “Razor- 
back” of Virginia, and not to the more rotund 
and prized breed of Berkshires, In the occupation 
CAUGHT IN A TAKE ERIE ZEPHYR 
52 
