Vol. XCIII 
MAY, 1923 
No. 5 
■ 
THE SHADOW OF MOOSILAUKE 
THOSE FISHERMEN WHO FOLLOW DOWN BROOKS AND 
LITTLE RIVERS KNOW NO OTHER LOVE NOR NONE GREATER 
HOSE fishermen who follow down 
brooks and little rivers are men 
jL apart. They seem beyond the 
ordinary and standardized horde 
of lovers of the gentle art ; they belong 
to the breed of men who are born to a 
chosen avocation. There arc fishermen, 
and fishermen. Like leaves and ants, 
men are different in their playing, for 
! some angle, many fish for a purpose, 
: while others fish for the pleasure of fish¬ 
ing. Many men prefer to be killers, 
some men want the love of the sport 
I without *the beauties of nature and- 
poetry, and others fish for the true love 
• ff it with all its poetry of sport and 
nature and landscapes. Once a brook 
Tsherman, always a brook fisherman. 
I he leopard cannot change its spots. 
1 he inveterate prowler of brooks and 
t ittle rivers knows no other love nor 
j lone greater. He may fish larger 
raters, wild waters for salmon and sea 
rout, lakes for togue and the pike 
; amily, ponds and placid rivers for the 
owly horde of fishes, but when he wants 
he sting drawn from the ills and wor- 
I ies of life he turns to the brooks as 
1 ountless men turn and travel to Mecca. 
Brooks, talking streams, little rivers 
eeking chosen haunts of the landscapes 
ave an intimacy and friendship for man. 
heir lures and beauty lay close to the 
°d of earth; they have not the wide 
weep and magnitude of great distance 
nd majesty. On the banks overlooking 
By EDWIN C. HOBSON 
“’Tis not a grand desire oj mine — 
/ ask for nothing superfine; 
No heavy weight, 
No salmon great, 
To break the record, or my line. 
Only an idle little stream, 
Whose amber waters softly gleam 
Where / may wade 
Through woodland shade. 
And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream.” 
great, wide, rolling river is not a master¬ 
piece, what is it? 
There are rivers, and rivers—as men 
and men, as anglers and fishermen. 
They have personality, temperament, 
even instinctiveness. They are symbols 
of vast and irresistible things and their 
lure is ultramontane. There is untold 
fascination in their distance, power in 
their movement, poetry in their ge¬ 
ography. I know of rivers which are 
austere and deep, rivers which brood 
without a tremor in their current, rivers 
which gamut and run amuck over peace¬ 
ful landscapes, rivers which act and dis¬ 
play duality in the course of a night’s 
camp. Under the night’s bivouac of 
stars I have slept beside many rivers, 
from the log-burdened Allaguash to the 
muddy Missouri. Listening to the roll 
of waters in the lethal hours of the night, 
their melodies aching and sighing in the 
silence were as strange and different 
'ie length and the breadth and the miles the interval beauty of the day’s journey, 
f a great river I realize how small is None sang the same song. With more 
j ian; I am a lilliputian; I seem a pariah 
mid mighty forces and extreme dis- 
mces, an atom in the reconnaissance 
f an august presence. Therefore I ap- 
roach rivers cautiously, in awe and in- 
lition, and with the same feeling, as 
arlyle once said, that all great works 
' roduce an unpleasant impression on 
rst acquaintance. Carlyle spoke of 
j lastcrpieces, of works of art. If a 
age 229 
. O ..* ~ 
than a Podding acquaintance I have 
listened to the Connecticut, the Susque¬ 
hanna, the Savannah, the Chattahoochee, 
and as I dropped into slumber my ears 
heard grand music that was strange, dif¬ 
ferent, aloof. The music of rolling 
waters was royal, but the flight down 
the valleys of landscapes where I was 
a passing stranger and at the time of 
changing seasons created wonderful 
voices without a . tinge of similarity. 
They sang the song of ages and spoke 
a various language I understood, they 
met my mood as man to river, but not 
as man to friend. 1 hey did not inspire 
friendship, even confidence; they held me 
at a distance, gave me of their beauty, 
but not of the adventure and romance 
of intimacy. Big rivers are omnipotent. 
Puny man needs a life-time to know 
them, to win their secrets, to become a 
part of them. 
Little rivers and brooks remind me of 
common men—you gain a chance ac¬ 
quaintance at first meeting and win open 
friendship. They do not frighten an 
interloper, an invader of their territory: 
rather, they meet him halfway or hail 
with sunlit waters along the edge of a 
hard trail. The glisten of waters is an 
invitation, an appeal to rest, to light a 
contemplative pipe, to indulge in gentle 
phantasy and commune with the waters 
and soul. Their greeting is that of the 
country-side, of the open road—wide and 
free as the winds off the piny foothills. 
Give me of the Nashua, the Greenbrier, 
the Pee Dee, the Congaree, the Alta- 
maha, the Black Water—rivers I know, 
rivers of open friendships. Little streams 
await a proselyte endeavor; they mingle 
pleasantly in work and play, and the 
seeker after beauty and poetry, intimacy 
and the romance of wild life, rejoices 
silently in having found one companion 
in all the wide landscape. 
Biologically I like a little river or a 
brook to study and analyze. Recrea- 
tively I like them to fish and loaf and 
dream. Birds and the ground hosts of 
insects, reptiles, and animals seek the 
shores, or rather they slip windinglv into 
odd corners of the landscapes where wild 
life abounds. Big rivers flow as though 
under orders, while their smaller and 
more feeble brothers seem to wander 
errantly, indifferently, unfettered at 
caprice of their waters. 
Contents Copyrighted by Forest and /Stream Fub. Co. 
