March g , 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
299 
The Little Miami 
By C. A. V. 
Our first fish we carried into the harbor of 
Block Island and sold—for we could not eat 
122 pounds—in a most prosaic manner to a dealer 
who already had twenty fish in his icehouse. 
The price was $9.90 and a dime was added from 
somebody’s pocket to enable us to pin a ten 
dollar bill to the cabin wall. But at Kittery 
Point there was no fishdealer and we spent a 
day in humorous chaffering with a Yankee who 
wanted the fish, but wanted also to be sure that 
he was getting it at the lowest possible price. 
Three visits to the yacht, much telephoning to 
York and Portsmouth, and many guesses—all 
too low—as to weight were necessary before we 
agreed upon seven cents a pound. My bargain¬ 
ing friend very honestly reminded me, before we 
came to terms, of the peculiar but quite custom¬ 
ary deductions that dealers make from the 
dressed weight, and these are odd enough to 
deserve special mention. When the fish is 
cleaned and the head and fins are cut off, the 
tailfin is left to make it easier to hoist the fish 
with a tackle. For this a deduction is made by 
guess, and a further deduction for the bones of 
the neck if the dealer thinks that the head has 
been cut with too sparing a hand. Over this 
point an earnest but good-natured difference of 
opinion arose between the purchaser and the 
skipper, the latter maintaining that his years of 
dealing in the Boston market enabled him to 
iudge with accuracy where the head of a sword¬ 
fish ends and the body begins. With the reck¬ 
lessness of the amateur, who desires results and 
is indifferent to principles, I cut in with an esti¬ 
mate of fifteen pounds for neck and tail. I his 
was accepted as fair, and then the final de¬ 
duction of 10 per cent, for ‘‘waste” was made. 
And with due allowance for the producer's 
traditional suspicion of the middleman, it is 
clear that the fisherman is in some peculiar 
respects at the mercy of the dealer. I have my¬ 
self been a producer of another sort and was not 
so much dismayed by the terms as delighted by 
the likeness between the fish dealer and my own 
middleman, the publisher. As the dealer offers 
the hardy fisherman “seven cents on 90 per cent, 
of the dressed weight, not including neck and 
tail,” so the bland publisher offers to the be¬ 
fogged and simple-minded maker of books a 
royalty of “5 per cent, on the list price of 85 
per cent, of all copies sold, not including those 
sold for introduction.” But the fish dealer is the 
gentler in that he brings in no bill for proof cor¬ 
rections. The discovery of this interesting 
analogy gave me such joy that I became indif¬ 
ferent to all considerations of money and ac¬ 
cepted with composure the figures presented to 
me on the back of an envelope: total weight, 502 
pounds; minus 15 pounds for neck and tail, 487; 
minus 10 per cent., 438; at seven cents, $30.66. 
I closed my season as a fisherman, therefore, 
with gross receipts of $40.56; the net profit I 
have not figured out. Nor shall I add to this 
the sum of $1.10, received by the two boys from 
a fish dealer in Cutler, Me., for 220 pounds of 
pollock at half a cent a pound. As I paid $2.50 
to the fisherman who took them out, and as the 
boys divided the $1.10 between them, I consider 
that my accounts will be clearer if this trans¬ 
action is omitted. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any nezvsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
I NSIGNIFICANT it seems; flowing silently 
among high hills, overhung and almost 
hidden at places by great sycamore trees, 
yet the Little Miami has its place in Indian his¬ 
tory and legend. The red man loved it, and on 
it banks, not far from the present town of Xenia, 
Ohio, the war-like Shawnee established his 
headquarters—the large but squalid village of 
Old Chillicothe. This village is frequently men¬ 
tioned in frontier annals. From it to the Ken¬ 
tucky settlements ran the famous war trail, 
along which were dragged, to fates too horrible 
to mention, many a poor captive. Boone and 
Kenton passed over this trait as captives, but 
the fates were kinder to them than to so many 
others, and they escaped the fagot and stake. 
Retaliatory expeditions from Kentucky also 
used the Little Miami trail on their missions of 
rescue or revenge. 
Traces of the old road are still visible in 
places, it is said. At Fort Ancient are extensive 
fortifications, reared centuries ago by unknown 
hands. These earthworks stand on a plain, 
nearly horizontal, 236 feet above the level of the 
river which it commands. The embankments 
are steep and are pierced by no less than fifty- 
eight gateways. Grand old forest trees cover 
the walls, furnishing the vandal tourist an op¬ 
portunity to carve his or her name and place 
of residence for the edification of the next 
visitor. If memory serves me, there may be 
found, among many others, the initials C. A. V., 
which, when a schoolboy, I carved upon a large 
beech. The habit of carving names on con¬ 
spicuous objects is an old one and many men 
of note were guilty of the practice. The names 
of. pioneers and explorers are often met with 
in out of the way places. Capt. Clark could no 
more resist the temptation to inscribe his name 
on an inviting cliff away out in the Northern 
Rockies than his Spanish predecessors could re¬ 
frain from scribbling over the rocks of New 
Mexico and Arizona. 
In tbe old days the country along the Little 
Miami was a hunter’s paradise, while the waters 
swarmed with fish. It was for this reason that 
the Indian fought so hard and long for its pos¬ 
session. Quail and squirrels are still found in 
the neighboring hills; an occasional pair of 
snipe may be started along the thickly wooded 
banks, while the bass fisherman has a red letter 
day now and then with his chosen fish. At 
some places the mud-loving carp and catfish 
abound as well as several varieties of turtles. 
Among the many happy outings of my life, a 
two weeks’ visit with my brother at Oregonia 
stands prominently fourth. Oregonia was, and 
is, a tiny village, nestling among the high hills 
which begin at the river banks. It then boasted 
of a flour mill and bridge factory. The former 
has since “gone up in smoke” and the latter has 
transferred operations to the larger town of 
Lebanon. 
My brother’s house stood on the brow of a 
high hill, from the foot of which a rugged 
ravine led down to the river. The sides of this 
ravine were covered with a dense forest of oak, 
walnut, hickory and small growth, which were 
fairly alive with squirrels. Every morning when 
not fishing, I would take my gun and wander 
down the ravine and in sjAte of inexperience, 
there was always meat in my game bag when 
I returned. How I loved the solitude of that 
big thicket! What a splendid place it was to 
build air castles and dream day dreams. Alas! 
most of those castles have long since crumbled 
to dust and the balance are tottering. The 
work of castle building was often rudely inter¬ 
rupted by the falling of a nut or the barking 
of a saucy squirrel. The density of the thickets 
and the steepness of the hillsides frequently 
made the stalking of a wary squirrel no easy 
