FOREST AND STREAM. 
277 
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brise at first. One does not expect to meet 
he poet and idealist in a book on hunting and 
ashing. It is at the outstart that Mr. Hammond 
hows that while one eye may have been always 
ntent on bird and dog, the other was seeing 
lature and drinking in the freedom and beauty 
jf the woods. Chapters are devoted to the 
-uffed grouse as a game bird, its local name 
tnd its tricks and subterfuges, and all start with 
nuch information, but before you realize it you 
ire dreaming over some incident of queer hap- 
yening in a cover to prove some point. It is 
/ery well done. 
Mr. Hammond tells something of shooting 
cartridges from trees and owns up to having 
filled a few in that way himself. He says that 
n all his experience he has never seen a man 
.vho wouldn’t. Yet here it is only just to say 
:hat the writer has seen Stephen Hammond 
-efuse to shoot at a sitting grouse a dozen 
imes, and never once to even point a gun at 
cne in a tree or on the ground. The chapter 
m “The Crazy Season” is of particular interest 
in that it advances the theory that the birds 
H'run amuck” by a law of nature which demands 
that the broods be separated in order that in- 
breeding be avoided. The food and enemies of 
the bird are well treated and some pretty 
stories told of the mating time. The early days 
take up a few pages and then a number of 
chapters are given of strange hunting experi¬ 
ences. One little story is left untold, it shows 
the nature of the man. George Ashmun was 
Mr. Hammond’s greatest hunting companion 
and a very dear friend. He was with Mr. 
Ashmun when the latter killed his last bird. 
On that spot now stands a great pile of stones. 
Never does Stephen Hammond pass near that 
cover without adding a single rock to the cairn 
he long ago’Started.—Springfield Republican. 
CONFESSIONS OF AN ARDENT FISHER¬ 
MAN. 
I awoke one morning in a tent pitched in a 
rose-garden, outside Sheikapur Dak Bungalow. 
After twenty-two years in the army my long 
long holiday had begun. I have retired. No 
commissioned officer could now send for me 
and tell me my company cook-house was dirty. 
Bugle-calls have no reference to me any longer. 
Twenty yards from my bed the river Jhelum 
flowed placidly past, glistening like a sabre 
blade in the morning sun. Shrieking parrots of 
emerald green chased sky-blue jays from 
sheshum to mangotree. There was a scent of 
| orange-blossoms in the air, and through the 
bushes I could see a blind-folded buffalo walk- 
i ing slowly round and round as he turned the 
wheel of a well, and the creaking sound he made 
was somehow suggestive of drowsy summer 
warmth. There was nothing to do now but fish. 
Fishing—I had made up my mind—was to be 
my chief pursuit. Now I have cast my sword for 
ever I had laid myself out to make a bit of a 
name as a mahseer fisher. The Canteen- 
Sergeant of my late regiment had been a past 
master in the gentle craft; at least he had 
caught a 46-pound mahseer, and the good fellow 
I used to come daily to my bungalow, just before 
I retired, for the greater part of a week, and 
; solemnly instruct me in fishing. He made me 
a list of everything I should require—spoons, 
casts, baiting-needles, atta hooks, thread, spare 
rings, cobbler’s wax. 
He took me into the" garden and showed me 
1 how to cast with a piece of lead attached to the 
end of the line instead of a spoon, and watched 
me, quite respectfully, when I nearly bruised 
myself in my endeavors, to imitate his master¬ 
ly casts. He gave me his own particular tip 
for giving a frog a natural and confortable ap¬ 
pearance when impaled on a hook, and told me 
of the baneful effect of .fishing in snow water; 
he taught me the best month for fishing and the 
best time of the day. and, by placing the tips of 
his fingers under his jaw-bones, and pretend- 
1 ing he was a fish, he showed me how the mah¬ 
seer should be landed when hooked. I thought, 
in fact, there was not much left for me to learn 
about fishing. 
‘ The first day of my retirement my wife and I 
arrived at Jhelum station, intending to go to 
Tangrot, where there is popularly supposed to 
be the cream of Indian fishing. On the plat¬ 
form was a Sahib, who was, we discovered, an 
official of the district. This gentleman was 
hurrying out of the station when my wife ac¬ 
costed him. 
“Do you know anything about fishing?” She 
asked, going straight to the point as is her 
wont. 
“Yes, I know a good deal about fishing.” He 
replied a little stiffly. 
“Well, is there any chance of my husband 
getting good fishing at Tangrot?” 
“Not the ghost of a chance,” replied he un¬ 
hesitatingly. “The water is as thick as peasoup 
after all this rain. Besides there are seven men 
down there for the fishing already.” 
“I thought I might do something with dead 
bait.” I put in with a knowing air, remember¬ 
ing what the Canteen-Sergeant had told me. 
“Oh, out of the question,” he replied. He 
was rather abrupt and dictatorial in his man¬ 
ner. “Out of the question.” He jumped into 
a carriage that was waiting for him. “Atta is 
your only chance,” he shouted back to me as a 
pair of horses whirled him away at a violent 
pace. 
I could not start my fishing the first morning 
at Sheikapur, as there were many things to be 
unpacked by my wife, of more importance than 
my fishing tackle; but by five o’clock in the 
evening I was standing on the bank, my rod 
put together, my hook baited with atta paste. 
I was no longer a weary old officer, I was a boy 
again by a Welsh stream on a summer’s 
evening. I dropped my line over some bushes 
into a little still pool, and ten minutes after¬ 
ward it was jerked sharply once or twice; I 
struck, and felt that sort of pleasant electric 
shock at my wrist that assured me that I was 
into a fish of sorts. The line cut the water in 
little quick zig-zags, the rod bent—a splash or 
t W o—a gleam of silver! I pulled out of the 
water a half pound fish; my line caught in the 
bushes, the fish dropped back into the river. 
But it was a good beginning; by nature san¬ 
guine, I called out gleefully to my wife who 
was nailing up a box in the tent—“I say, this is 
splendid, my dear, the river is simply all a boil 
with fish.” 
“Then be quick and catch some,” she said. 
“And don’t talk so much about it! There’s 
nothing for dinner but chicken.” 
The woman for the hearth, the husband for 
the field. I must supply the table with fish. I 
like the idea. But the fish left me severely alone 
all the rest of the evening. 
Next morning as soon as breakfast was over, 
I was off down the dusty lane, under the mul¬ 
berry trees and through the whispering green 
wheat to a place where the river ran deep and 
slow, its surface pitted with little oily eddies. 
The bites were fierce and frequent, but hook a 
fish I could not. As I drew up my line, fishless, 
and baitless, after the first bite I heard a slight 
noise, rather like a laugh on the high bank 
above me. I looked up and saw a lean Pathan 
clad in a dark blue waistcloth, a young man 
with a curved nose and long, handsome eyes. 
“Bagh gia” (he is gone), I remarked to him, 
alluding to the departed fish. 
“Bagh gai Hazoor” (he is gone, Sir), he re¬ 
plied, with a slow, pitying smile. All that 
morning the fish bit and I failed to land them 
and at each failure I looked up at my Pathan 
and remarked. “Bagh gia.” 
“Bagh gia, Hazoor.” And that night as I 
fell asleep, I thought some one murmured 
“Bagh gia, Hazoor” with a pitying smile. 
But next morning, allowing the current to 
wash my atta along under the bank I felt I was 
firm in a fish that fought pretty gamely for the 
half-minute between hooking and landing. 
When I had him out bounding and tossing on 
the shingle I saw he was a pound fish, neither 
a mahseer or a rohu, but possibly a fish called 
a chiroo. 
My thoughts now turn to perfect November 
weather in' the Punjab—on the banks of the 
Sutlej at a place called Guza Nangal. Beneath 
a perfectly cloudless sky the Sutlej ran blue, 
like the blue on a peacock’s neck. I had 
worked away with atta fruitlessly for two days; 
and, one morning, I tried with a spoon. It was 
about 11 o’clock, the sunshine brilliant, but not 
too hot; standing on a spit of land, I cast into 
the very heart of water that ran tumultuously 
out from small thatched atta mills. I had just 
made a shocking bad cast—the spoon falling in 
the water almost at my feet; I was thinking 
what a hopeless game fishing was, when I was 
suddenly aware that I had a fish on! There 
was such a foam and fuss of water about my 
line that I never felt the fish seize the spoon, 
yet he seemed to be a good fish. Every now 
and then he rolled out of the water a great side 
of brilliant bronze, and flapped a broad tail. He 
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