Sept. 9, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
415 
chapter's wand ever had more potent influence 
over the dreadful ogre of fairy legend than did 
that breath from the woods over me. Forgot¬ 
ten were the cold and slush; forgotten the 
banana peel and the tough steak of my restau¬ 
rant dinner. My mind slipped back a half dozen 
years, and I saw, as clearly as if it had been 
yesterday, a scene which I hope never to forget. 
It was in the northern Catskills, on one of 
those glorious June days, when the atmosphere 
is so clear that distant objects stand out with 
almost dazzling sharpness, and there seems to 
be no limit to the distance one can see. A friend 
and I had spent the morning and early after¬ 
noon scrambling laboriously through swamps and 
windfalls toward the summit of a big mountain, 
and reaching the top about 3 o’clock we emerged 
suddenly from a tangle of dwarfed balsams 
on to a great bare rock in the full sweep of the 
breeze that streamed out of the northwest so 
pure and cool that we could almost see it. 
Words cannot adequately describe the view 
which spread out before us, and coming upon 
it as we did so unexpectedly, the first sensation 
was one almost of awe. From the huge boulder 
where we stood the ground dropped down, down 
for hundreds of feet to a broad valley dotted 
here and there with little specks of houses and 
squares of brown plowed land. A silvery thread 
far to the westward proclaimed the stream we 
would fish next day, and beyond that, stretching 
away for miles and miles, were the mountains—- 
great masses of them tumbled and tossed to¬ 
gether in confusion, growing bluer and bluer in 
the distance to where the big cumulus clouds 
seemed to settle down to meet them. 
Long we gazed in silent admiration, till finally, 
with the sweet smell of the balsams still in our 
nostrils, we turned regretfully down the moun¬ 
tainside toward the farmhouse where we were 
to spend the night. And the next day—but this 
is not a fishing story. 
I have spoken of the fragrance of a flower 
causing more or less temporary pleasure in the 
one who inhales it. But there are exceptions 
to this; the perfume of some flowers has all the 
power of the balsam tang to stir up memories 
of the past and arouse bright anticipations of 
the future. One of these is the arbutus—that 
lowly little plant with its delicate pink-white 
blossoms, the natural inhabitant of a real trout 
country. What visions its perfume calls up! 
A friend comes into the office on a showery 
April day and hands you a spray of arbutus. 
You take one good, long sniff of it and in a 
flash your trout fever, which for weeks has been 
slumbering in a more or less harmless condition, 
takes a sudden turn for the worse and becomes 
dangerously violent. 
You see the pools and riffies of that favorite 
brook up at -, and wonder if the ice did 
much damage when it went out in March. The 
water must be running almost clear now, espe¬ 
cially in the rocky part of the stream before it 
enters the big meadow. The leaves, too, are 
beginning to come out on the alders, and—yes, 
this is just the sort of day you raised that old 
“he whale’’ last season in the pool by the dead 
hemlock. What a row he made in the ten 
crowded minutes before he was safely in the 
net and upon the bank well away from the 
water! 
When you go out to lunch, the warm moist 
air seems to have an unusual feeling in it, so 
that you consult your watch to see if there is 
time to go up to Blank’s and buy some new 
leaders. Probably you decide there is, so you 
get the leaders, some flies, a new leader box, 
a dozen or so snelled hooks, a new style of fly- 
book which the conversational salesman shows 
you, some more flies, and finally have to break 
away in desperation lest you spend the whole 
afternoon there as well the entire contents of 
your pocket book. Back in the office again the 
time drags on with unwonted slowness. You 
catch yourself day-dreaming, and those dreams 
always seem to have water in them with a back¬ 
ground of mountain or woodland or meadow 
filled with the soft, misty sweetness of “the 
tassel-time of spring.” And sooner or later the 
feelings aroused to active life by that single little 
piece of arbutus become so strong that some¬ 
thing radical has to be done to relieve them, so 
that you disappear from business for a day or 
two and return strangely silent as to where you 
have been. 
Then, for the lover of the gun, there is the 
spicy, indescribable scent which comes from the 
fallen autumn leaves as the frost is dried from 
them by the morning sun. There, if anywhere, 
is a perfume fit to bring to mind memories of 
days passed in the open, days when it was good 
just to be alive and out-of-doors. The twitter 
of the woodcock springing from the white birch 
thicket on the hillside; the bomb-like explosion 
of a covey of quail from the ragweed and their 
whirring flight toward the shelter of the swamp 
in the smoky distance; the crouching point of 
the old dog among the hemlocks and laurels, 
and the sudden breaking of the tense stillness 
as a lusty cock roars up on thunderous wings; 
the long drive home through the fragrant chill 
of evening, past the comforting yellow lights 
from farmhouse windows, the corn shocks vague 
in the dusk, the sweetness of wayside orchards 
—all these visions and many more are ever 
ready to respond to the breath of the dead 
leaves. 
Even the unpoetic smell of broad mud flats 
exposed by the ebbing tide has its power over 
the imagination of an old duck hunter, while 
the odor of frying trout and bacon which is 
wafted to you as you approach the circle of light 
around the camp-fire after the evening fishing 
fills your soul with the pleasantest anticipations. 
Yes, I for one am grateful for these imaginary 
pictures which flash so suddenly upon the mind 
at the bidding of some chance scent. Much, in¬ 
deed, would be lost without them, and for those 
who are chained to city offices for fifty weeks 
in the year, their value is perhaps greater than 
is generally realized, for often will they afford 
the brain that relaxation so necessary in these 
days of high pressure and rush. 
The Upper Mississippi River. 
Rock Island, Ill., Sept. 2 .— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The recent contributions in Forest and 
Stream on the small-mouth bass fishing of the 
upper Mississippi River by both Robert Page 
Lincoln and Amos Burhans should lend interest 
to the accompanying photographs of the region 
around Alma, Wis. The cliff above A'ma is one 
of the most picturesque along the entire river 
and is typical of much of the upper river scenery. 
The picture of the wing dams is also in the 
neighborhood of Alma and will convey a good 
idea of the construction work done all along the 
river from Minneapolis southward by the Gov¬ 
ernment and which has furnished at the proper 
stage of water the best fly-fishing ground for 
small-mouth bass in the country. 
Alma is perhaps the most popular location for 
fly-fishermen along the upper river, and the views 
shown will doubtless be familiar to many of 
your readers. Willard A. Schaeffer. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
A Pennsylvania boy recently stumbled in 
crossing a culvert over a drain, and in falling 
his hand came in contact with a copperhead 
snake lying there. He was bitten in the hand, 
but prompt action by a physician, who happened 
to be near at hand, probably saved him from 
serious if not fatal consequences. 
A similar thing came under my own observa¬ 
tion several years ago. A young man, one of 
a party of hill climbers, was descending a steep 
place when his foot slipped and he fell either 
on or just beside a copperhead. The snake 
struck him squarely in the small of the back, 
in the muscles, where it was difficult both to 
lance the wound and to suck the poison out. 
There was nothing in our camp that would have 
served to a’leviate his physical and mental suf¬ 
fering, but he was dosed with black coffee and 
hurried to the nearest physician. Whether he 
recovered or not I do not know. He was plucky, 
for he killed the snake before he informed his 
companions of the mishap, and tried hard to 
make light of it, though his face was ashen and 
cold perspiration oozed from every pore. It is 
not so easy to keep up one’s courage under cir¬ 
cumstances like that. 
* * * 
It is good policy to keep away from places 
which are known to be infested with copperhead 
snakes. They are friendly to no man, and as 
they often lie motionless until one approaches 
within striking distance, even if seen, it is not 
a’vvays possible to avoid them. Not long ago 
I passed a rocky hill shaded by o'd hemlocks, 
and a companion said that that particular place, 
less than an acre in extent, was known among 
snake collectors as the most prolific copperhead 
resort in a State more or less noted for them. 
As it was a favorite resort of mine, too, during 
many years, it struck me as strange that I had 
not seen many snakes there. Afterward I re¬ 
called that the young man I have previously 
mentioned was bitten on that hill, and on the 
opposite slope I shot two of the largest copper¬ 
heads I have ever seen in their native state. 
These three copperheads, however, are all that 
I have seen in that place, and it serves to prove 
how careful one should be in tramping about 
places where these reptiles are abundant, albeit 
seldom seen. Grizzly King. 
