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A Salmon Stream. 
It makes one start to see for the first time 
salmon jumping out of the cold waters of the 
North, but to feel the sensation of catching this 
gamesome fish is a benediction. The sport has 
always been considered fit for kings, and the 
rich secure the rights and privileges of salmon 
streams in order to land fish that cost five hun¬ 
dred dollars a piece. But in Newfoundland 
thirty feet on each side of brook, river, lake 
or pond belongs to the sportsman, and there is 
“a land where every prospect pleaseth” and only 
the fly is vile. 
The flies do not leave, as they do at all sum¬ 
mer resorts, in a week or ten days, but remain 
until frost comes, about the middle of Septem¬ 
ber. They are no respecter of persons, taking 
toll from priest, native, sportsman or stranger, 
and leaving marks of their depravity on both 
hands and face. The mother of two clean chil¬ 
dren on the Humber River bathed and scoured 
them every night in a tub of cold water and 
vinegar. It was gall and wormwood to the flies, 
and the glint of their faces in the sunshine with 
none to annoy or to make them afraid was a 
comfort to the beholder. The bitter things when 
fishing amount to nothing, and I did not know 
I was a victim until I was thirty marine leagues 
from the shores of Newfoundland, where there 
are no snakes. Ope man told me that he for¬ 
got his dog for three weeks while fishing there, 
which proves to my mind that he had begun to 
think, not like a cod, but a salmon. The trout 
is a gentleman of the Col. Carter, of Carters- 
ville, school, while to catch a salmon is more 
like the Knight of the Doleful Countenance cov¬ 
ering himself with glory, and the guide who 
helps him is Sancho Panza. Anybody can smell 
the pine, and “without an actual hump on his 
shoulders and fair opportunities” can catch a 
salmon. Izaak Walton says fishermen, like poets, 
are born, but the love of the brook, the river, 
the lake or the pond is found in the castle and 
the hut, and the full realization of their beau¬ 
ties and contents open to all who persistently 
follow their beds or paddle their shadowy shores. 
One can go to St. Johns or Port-Aux-Basques 
and there is little difference, as one end of both 
routes is bad, but as Robert Louis Stevenson 
said on shipboard about the coffee and tea, they 
both tasted alike to him, but he had forgotten 
which one of them kept him awake and which 
one put him to sleep. By a’l means take a rod, 
as you leave a deposit with those who, like 
Matthew, sit at the receipt of customs that you 
will return and take it out of the country with 
you. A friend loaned me a combination split 
bamboo trout and salmon rod about thirteen 
feet long, with three tips, two middle joints and 
a handle, but as I never used it I cannot say 
it is best. When the custom house officer took 
me into the inner sanctum to see about the rod 
I said “Good morning” to that superior official 
who, returning my salute, asked me the value 
of my rod. I told him I did not know, as it 
was a borrowed rod. He then asked me if I 
was going to stay in Newfoundland. I told 
him no; I had a round trip ticket on the Bruce 
—the home boat, as the natives call it. He 
laughed heartily and went to the baggage room 
and put his little chalk mark on my rod, a mark 
which looks like a typographical error. Doubt¬ 
less I am the only sportsman who escaped leav¬ 
ing a deposit with him to be returned sooner or 
later without usury. 
The country is sparsely inhabited and a few 
sheep and cattle and an occasional horse are to 
be seen on the cleared land along the streams, 
but chiefly small pine and birch cover the 
ground to the top of the mountains a thousand 
feet above the sea. These with patches of snow 
on their tops in the middle of July make a pic¬ 
turesque scenery. Upon the summits of these 
hills or mountains are plains or plateaus where 
grows the wild grass upon which the caribou 
feed. Lakes and ponds are frequent upon these 
tablelands from which flow brooks to the salmon 
streams—huge rivers the natives still call brooks. 
At lunch on the train I joined a friend, “a 
native and to the manor born,” who was going 
to Nicholasville on the Humber River. We ar¬ 
rived at Deer Lake in the middle of the after¬ 
noon. The lake or pond was three and a half 
miles wide and the waves were running high, 
so the little boats could not cross from the 
Nicholas place or Nicholasville. With the 
glasses we could see a man coming around the 
head of the lake, which is a part of the Hum¬ 
ber. I proposed going around this lake, a dis¬ 
tance said to be seven miles. One of the chief 
attractions of the country is that no native has 
a correct notion of distance, direction or time. 
We started with the assurance that we could 
cover the ground by dark or io o’clock. It was 
a walk on driftwood seven feet deep and many 
of the brooks that run into the lake or river 
were difficult to cross. I remember one where 
the hulk of a seventy-ton bark had been thrown 
up in the brook cross-wise and made the most 
weird and satisfactory bridge. Finally we took 
to the woods and lost our way. The breath 
of pines was exhilarating and the ground was 
as springy as a machine-mowed meadow before 
the hay is gathered. One can walk on this sur¬ 
face of moss and mold without fatigue. 
At last we crossed a brook sixty feet wide 
on two fallen pines, then through a dense under¬ 
growth almost impenetrable to man for a mile 
to the river. We shouted and two lusty boys in 
a canoe in two minutes crossed the deepest and 
swiftest river I ever saw, welcoming my com¬ 
panion and handing me in at the same time like 
Stygian boatmen. We soon had a glass of but¬ 
termilk and our tea. The two men we left be¬ 
hind came in later, disgusted and unhappy, while 
we told them we had had a fine time, and it 
was true. 
After breakfast the next morning we caught 
trout to feed the raven belonging to old man 
Nicholas. This pet would get up on the old 
man’s shoulder and put its bill around in his 
whiskers and talk and scold, and the old man 
would scold the bird and talk to us. Of course 
we left lots of sand on the trout to aid the 
raven’s digestion. Then we fed the foxes, which 
thrive on speckled trout. They often sell in one 
year from a fox farm Seven hundred dollars’ 
worth of pelts, and a pair of silver foxes bring 
from five to six hundred dollars. The red- 
whiskered son, George Nicholas, a guide and 
the two men left for Johns’ Fall about 9 o’clock. 
It is a day-and-a-half journey in canoes from 
there, or thirty miles, and there is a good pool, 
the only one on the Humber with room for five 
rods. Twelve salmon and twenty-five grilse are 
considered good- sport in a week’s time. Above 
Johns’ Fall the salmon are not found, although 
they make great efforts to get over the falls. 
Old man Nicholas is an old gold miner and has 
lived here for thirty years without roads or 
horses, although he has three horses up at St. 
John’s and is a great lover of horse flesh. He 
calls the Humber an early river and said I might 
come any time from the 15th to the 20th of June, 
next year; and I may go. 
We arrived at Deer Lake station on our re¬ 
turn at noon and found the train three hours, 
late. The population of Deer Lake comprises 
the section man, his wife, the vinegar-bathed, 
children, the telegraph operator and the three 
souls who gave three wayfaring men their 
lunch. The day before I had noticed a one-, 
story cottage above the railroad, and sitting on 
the porch an old man and woman; the woman 
with a clean kerchief and black silk dress, hold¬ 
ing an umbrella over her husband and pointing 
out to him with the other hand the pond, the 
river and the mountain. They were working 
in the rough ground when I came up to them 
the next day, but were soon entertaining me in 
clean clothes and giving me their life’s history 
like true Americans on an Atlantic liner. The 
children were all gone except a girl of nineteen 
years, whose throat suppurated and broke every 
day. I went down to the telegraph office for 
the physician who had joined us at the Nicholas, 
place, and who had been a biannual visitor to 
Newfoundland streams for a decade. He told 
the girl nothing would relieve her except an 
operation, and that Dr. Grenfell, of Labrador, 
was to bring up a throat specialist this fall and 
she could see him at that time. 
I asked for some food. We soon had a white 
table cloth and a pile of thin buttered bread, 
little radishes, cake and tea. It was all delicious 
and we drank several cups of tea apiece. I do 
not know where the bread came from, but it 
was replenished by the girl who said she baked 
it. The old lady brought me a St. John’s cracker,, 
which is the shape and size of a pawpaw, and 
broke it on her knee in true sailor fashion when 
I could not manage it. It is better than the ordi¬ 
nary sea .biscuit and will keep longer. Out of 
these and cod you make “bruise,” the New¬ 
foundland national dish. You take four or five 
of these biscuits and soak them in water over 
night and the next morning boil them in water 
and add the cod or serve them separately. It 
is as good as buckwheat cakes and honey and 
satisfies your hunger in the same way until the 
