doubtless their food is more abundant there, and, usually, the good
hiding-places are more numerous. As soon as you strike a meadow the
character of the creek changes: it goes slower and lies deeper; it
tarries to enjoy the high, cool banks and to half hide beneath them;
it loves the willows, or rather the willows love it and shelter it
from the sun; its spring runs are kept cool by the overhanging
grass, and the heavy turf that faces its open banks is not cut away
by the sharp hoofs of the grazing cattle. Then there are the
bobolinks and the starlings and the meadowlarks, always interested
spectators of the angler; there are also the marsh marigolds, the
buttercups, or the spotted lilies, and the good angler is always an
interested spectator of them. In fact, the patches of meadow land
that lie in the angler's course are like the happy experiences in
his own life, or like the fine passages in the poem he is reading;
the pasture oftener contains the shallow and monotonous places. In
the small streams the cattle scare the fish, and soil their element
and break down their retreats under the banks. Woodland alternates
the best with meadow: the creek loves to burrow under the roots of a
great tree, to scoop out a pool after leaping over the prostrate
trunk of one, and to pause at the foot of a ledge of moss-covered
rocks, with ice-cold water dripping down. How straight the current
goes for the rock! Note its corrugated, muscular appearance; it
strikes and glances off, but accumulates, deepens with well-defined
eddies above and to one side; on the edge of these the trout lurk
and spring upon their prey.
The angler learns that it is generally some obstacle or hindrance
that makes a deep place in the creek, as in a brave life; and his
ideal brook is one that lies in deep, well-defined banks, yet makes
many a shift from right to left, meets with many rebuffs and
adventures, hurled back upon itself by rocks, waylaid by snags and
trees, tripped up by precipices, but sooner or later reposing under
meadow banks, deepening and eddying beneath bridges, or prosperous
and strong in some level stretch of cultivated land with great elms
shading it here and there.
But I early learned that from almost any stream in a trout country
the true angler could take trout, and that the great secret was
this, that, whatever bait you used, worm, grasshopper, grub, or fly,
there was one thing you must always put upon your hook, namely, your
heart: when you bait your hook with your heart the fish always bite;
they will jump clear from the water after it; they will dispute with
each other over it; it is a morsel they love above everything else.
With such bait I have seen the born angler (my grandfather was one)
take a noble string of trout from the most unpromising waters, and
on the most unpromising day. He used his hook so coyly and tenderly,
he approached the fish with such address and insinuation, he divined
the exact spot where they lay: if they were not eager, he humored
them and seemed to steal by them; if they were playful and
coquettish, he would suit his mood to theirs; if they were frank and
sincere, he met them halfway; he was so patient and considerate, so
entirely devoted to pleasing the critical trout, and so successful
in his efforts,--surely his heart was upon his hook, and it was a
tender, unctuous heart, too, as that of every angler is. How nicely
he would measure the distance! how dexterously he would avoid an
overhanging limb or bush and drop the line exactly in the right
spot! Of course there was a pulse of feeling and sympathy to the
extremity of that line. If your heart is a stone, however, or an
empty husk, there is no use to put it upon your hook; it will not
tempt the fish; the bait must be quick and fresh. Indeed, a certain
quality of youth is indispensable to the successful angler, a
certain unworldliness and readiness to invest yourself in an
enterprise that doesn't pay in the current coin. Not only is the
angler, like the poet, born and not made, as Walton says, but there
is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more
harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how
they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them;
their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My
grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as
eagerly as any boy, and step off with wonderful elasticity toward
the beloved streams; it used to try my young legs a good deal to
follow him, specially on the return trip. And no poet was ever more
innocent of worldly success or ambition. For, to paraphrase
Tennyson,--
"Lusty trout to him were scrip and share,
And babbling waters more than cent for cent."
He laid up treasures, but they were not in this world. In fact,
though the kindest of husbands, I fear he was not what the country
people call a "good provider," except in providing trout in their
season, though it is doubtful if there was always fat in the house
to fry them in. But he could tell you they were worse off than that
at Valley Forge, and that trout, or any other fish, were good
roasted in the ashes under the coals. He had the Walton requisite of
loving quietness and contemplation, and was devout withal. Indeed,
in many ways he was akin to those Galilee fishermen who were called
to be fishers of men. How he read the Book and pored over it, even
at times, I suspect, nodding over it, and laying it down only to
take up his rod, over which, unless the trout were very dilatory and
the journey very fatiguing, he never nodded!
II
The Delaware is one of our minor rivers, but it is a stream beloved
of the trout. Nearly all its remote branches head in mountain
springs, and its collected waters, even when warmed by the summer
sun, are as sweet and wholesome as dew swept from the grass. The
Hudson wins from it two streams that are fathered by the mountains
from whose loins most of its beginnings issue, namely, the Rondout
and the Esopus. These swell a more illustrious current than the
Delaware, but the Rondout, one of the finest trout streams in the
world, makes an uncanny alliance before it reaches its destination,
namely, with the malarious Wallkill.
In the same nest of mountains from which they start are born the
Neversink and the Beaverkill, streams of wondrous beauty that flow
south and west into the Delaware. From my native hills I could
catch glimpses of the mountains in whose laps these creeks were
cradled, but it was not till after many years, and after dwelling in
a country where trout are not found, that I returned to pay my
respects to them as an angler.
My first acquaintance with the Neversink was made in company with
some friends in 1869. We passed up the valley of the Big Ingin,
marveling at its copious ice-cold springs, and its immense sweep of
heavy-timbered mountain-sides. Crossing the range at its head, we
struck the Neversink quite unexpectedly about the middle of the
afternoon, at a point where it was a good-sized trout stream. It
proved to be one of those black mountain brooks born of innumerable
ice-cold springs, nourished in the shade, and shod, as it were, with
thick-matted moss, that every camper-out remembers. The fish are as
black as the stream and very wild. They dart from beneath the
fringed rocks, or dive with the hook into the dusky depths,--an
integral part of the silence and the shadows. The spell of the moss
is over all. The fisherman's tread is noiseless, as he leaps from
stone to stone and from ledge to ledge along the bed of the stream.
How cool it is! He looks up the dark, silent defile, hears the
solitary voice of the water, sees the decayed trunks of fallen trees
bridging the stream, and all he has dreamed, when a boy, of the
haunts of beasts of prey--the crouching feline tribes, especially if
it be near nightfall and the gloom already deepening in the
woods--comes freshly to mind, and he presses on, wary and alert, and
speaking to his companions in low tones.
After an hour or so the trout became less abundant, and with nearly
a hundred of the black sprites in our baskets we turned back. Here
and there I saw the abandoned nests of the pigeons, sometimes half a
dozen in one tree. In a yellow birch which the floods had uprooted,
a number of nests were still in place, little shelves or platforms
of twigs loosely arranged, and affording little or no protection to
the eggs or the young birds against inclement weather.
Before we had reached our companions the rain set in again and
forced us to take shelter under a balsam. When it slackened we moved
on and soon came up with Aaron, who had caught his first trout, and,
considerably drenched, was making his way toward camp, which one of
the party had gone forward to build. After traveling less than a
mile, we saw a smoke struggling up through the dripping trees, and
in a few moments were all standing round a blazing fire. But the
rain now commenced again, and fairly poured down through the trees,
rendering the prospect of cooking and eating our supper there in the
woods, and of passing the night on the ground without tent or cover
of any kind, rather disheartening. We had been told of a bark
shanty a couple of miles farther down the creek, and thitherward we
speedily took up our line of march. When we were on the point of
discontinuing the search, thinking we had been misinformed or had
passed it by, we came in sight of a bark-peeling, in the midst of
which a small log house lifted its naked rafters toward the now
breaking sky. It had neither floor nor roof, and was less inviting
on first sight than the open woods. But a board partition was still
standing, out of which we built a rude porch on the east side of the
house, large enough for us all to sleep under if well packed, and
eat under if we stood up. There was plenty of well-seasoned timber
lying about, and a fire was soon burning in front of our quarters
that made the scene social and picturesque, especially when the
frying-pans were brought into requisition, and the coffee, in charge
of Aaron, who was an artist in this line, mingled its aroma with the
wild-wood air. At dusk a balsam was felled, and the tips of the
branches used to make a bed, which was more fragrant than soft;
hemlock is better, because its needles are finer and its branches
more elastic.
There was a spirt or two of rain during the night, but not enough to
find out the leaks in our roof. It took the shower or series of
showers of the next day to do that. They commenced about two o'clock
in the afternoon. The forenoon had been fine, and we had brought
into camp nearly three hundred trout; but before they were half
dressed, or the first panfuls fried, the rain set in. First came
short, sharp dashes, then a gleam of treacherous sunshine, followed
by more and heavier dashes. The wind was in the southwest, and to
rain seemed the easiest thing in the world. From fitful dashes to a
steady pour the transition was natural. We stood huddled together,
stark and grim, under our cover, like hens under a cart. The fire
fought bravely for a time, and retaliated with sparks and spiteful
tongues of flame; but gradually its spirit was broken, only a heavy
body of coal and half-consumed logs in the centre holding out
against all odds. The simmering fish were soon floating about in a
yellow liquid that did not look in the least appetizing. Point after
point gave way in our cover, till standing between the drops was no
longer possible. The water coursed down the underside of the boards,
and dripped in our necks and formed puddles on our hat-brims. We
shifted our guns and traps and viands, till there was no longer any
choice of position, when the loaves and the fishes, the salt and the
sugar, the pork and the butter, shared the same watery fate. The
fire was gasping its last. Little rivulets coursed about it, and
bore away the quenched but steaming coals on their bosoms. The
spring run in the rear of our camp swelled so rapidly that part of
the trout that had been hastily left lying on its banks again found
themselves quite at home. For over two hours the floods came down.
About four o'clock Orville, who had not yet come from the day's
sport, appeared. To say Orville was wet is not much; he was better
than that,--he had been washed and rinsed in at least half a dozen
waters, and the trout that he bore dangling at the end of a string
hardly knew that they had been out of their proper element.
But he brought welcome news. He had been two or three miles down the
creek, and had seen a log building,--whether house or stable he did
not know, but it had the appearance of having a good roof, which was
inducement enough for us instantly to leave our present quarters.
Our course lay along an old wood-road, and much of the time we were
to our knees in water. The woods were literally flooded everywhere.
Every little rill and springlet ran like a mill-tail, while the main
stream rushed and roared, foaming, leaping, lashing, its volume
increased fifty-fold. The water was not roily, but of a rich
coffee-color, from the leachings of the woods. No more trout for the
next three days! we thought, as we looked upon the rampant stream.
After we had labored and floundered along for about an hour, the
road turned to the left, and in a little stumpy clearing near the
creek a gable uprose on our view. It did not prove to be just such a
place as poets love to contemplate. It required a greater effort of
the imagination than any of us were then capable of to believe it
had ever been a favorite resort of wood-nymphs or sylvan deities.
It savored rather of the equine and the bovine. The bark-men had
kept their teams there, horses on the one side and oxen on the
other, and no Hercules had ever done duty in cleansing the stables.
But there was a dry loft overhead with some straw, where we might
get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer
of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the
former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a
smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And
then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate
maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke,
and, rolling the logs in front of the shanty, had kindled a fire,
which, getting the better of the dampness, soon cast a bright glow
over all, shedding warmth and light even into the dingy stable, I
consented to unsling my knapsack and accept the situation. The rain
had ceased, and the sun shone out behind the woods. We had trout
sufficient for present needs; and after my first meal in an
ox-stall, I strolled out on the rude log bridge to watch the angry
Neversink rush by. Its waters fell quite as rapidly as they rose,
and before sundown it looked as if we might have fishing again on
the morrow. We had better sleep that night than either night before,
though there were two disturbing causes,--the smoke in the early
part of it, and the cold in the latter. The "no-see-ems" left in
disgust; and, though disgusted myself, I swallowed the smoke as best
I could, and hugged my pallet of straw the closer. But the day
dawned bright, and a plunge in the Neversink set me all right again.
The creek, to our surprise and gratification, was only a little
higher than before the rain, and some of the finest trout we had yet
seen we caught that morning near camp.
We tarried yet another day and night at the old stable, but taking
our meals outside squatted on the ground, which had now become quite
dry. Part of the day I spent strolling about the woods, looking up
old acquaintances among the birds, and, as always, half expectant of
making some new ones. Curiously enough, the most abundant species
were among those I had found rare in most other localities, namely,
the small water-wagtail, the mourning ground warbler, and the
yellow-bellied woodpecker. The latter seems to be the prevailing
woodpecker through the woods of this region.
That night the midges, those motes that sting, held high carnival.
We learned afterward, in the settlement below and from the
barkpeelers, that it was the worst night ever experienced in that
valley. We had done no fishing during the day, but had anticipated
some fine sport about sundown. Accordingly Aaron and I started off
between six and seven o'clock, one going upstream and the other
down. The scene was charming. The sun shot up great spokes of light
from behind the woods, and beauty, like a presence, pervaded the
atmosphere. But torment, multiplied as the sands of the seashore,
lurked in every tangle and thicket. In a thoughtless moment I
removed my shoes and socks, and waded in the water to secure a fine
trout that had accidentally slipped from my string and was
helplessly floating with the current. This caused some delay and
gave the gnats time to accumulate. Before I had got one foot half
dressed I was enveloped in a black mist that settled upon my hands
and neck and face, filling my ears with infinitesimal pipings and
covering my flesh with infinitesimal bitings. I thought I should
have to flee to the friendly fumes of the old stable, with "one
stocking off and one stocking on;" but I got my shoe on at last,
though not without many amusing interruptions and digressions.
In a few moments after this adventure I was in rapid retreat toward
camp. Just as I reached the path leading from the shanty to the
creek, my companion in the same ignoble flight reached it also, his
hat broken and rumpled, and his sanguine countenance looking more
sanguinary than I had ever before seen it, and his speech, also, in
the highest degree inflammatory. His face and forehead were as
blotched and swollen as if he had just run his head into a hornets'
nest, and his manner as precipitate as if the whole swarm was still
at his back.
No smoke or smudge which we ourselves could endure was sufficient in
the earlier part of that evening to prevent serious annoyance from
the same cause; but later a respite was granted us.
About ten o'clock, as we stood round our camp-fire, we were startled
by a brief but striking display of the aurora borealis. My
imagination had already been excited by talk of legends and of weird
shapes and appearances, and when, on looking up toward the sky, I
saw those pale, phantasmal waves of magnetic light chasing each
other across the little opening above our heads, and at first sight
seeming barely to clear the treetops, I was as vividly impressed as
if I had caught a glimpse of a veritable spectre of the Neversink.
The sky shook and trembled like a great white curtain.
After we had climbed to our loft and had lain down to sleep, another
adventure befell us. This time a new and uninviting customer
appeared upon the scene, the _genius loci_ of the old stable,
namely, the "fretful porcupine." We had seen the marks and work of
these animals about the shanty, and had been careful each night to
hang our traps, guns, etc., beyond their reach, but of the prickly
night-walker himself we feared we should not get a view.
We had lain down some half hour, and I was just on the threshold of
sleep, ready, as it were, to pass through the open door into the
land of dreams, when I heard outside somewhere that curious
sound,--a sound which I had heard every night I spent in these
woods, not only on this but on former expeditions, and which I had
settled in my mind as proceeding from the porcupine, since I knew
the sounds our other common animals were likely to make,--a sound
that might be either a gnawing on some hard, dry substance, or a
grating of teeth, or a shrill grunting.
Orville heard it also, and, raising up on his elbow, asked, "What is
that?"
"What the hunters call a 'porcupig,'" said I.
"Sure?"
"Entirely so."
"Why does he make that noise?"
"It is a way he has of cursing our fire," I replied. "I heard him
last night also."
"Where do you suppose he is?" inquired my companion, showing a
disposition to look him up.
"Not far off, perhaps fifteen or twenty yards from our fire, where
the shadows begin to deepen."
Orville slipped into his trousers, felt for my gun, and in a moment
had disappeared down through the scuttle hole. I had no disposition
to follow him, but was rather annoyed than otherwise at the
disturbance. Getting the direction of the sound, he went picking his
way over the rough, uneven ground, and, when he got where the light
failed him, poking every doubtful object with the end of his gun.
Presently he poked a light grayish object, like a large round stone,
which surprised him by moving off. On this hint he fired, making an
incurable wound in the "porcupig," which, nevertheless, tried harder
than ever to escape. I lay listening, when, close on the heels of
the report of the gun, came excited shouts for a revolver. Snatching
up my Smith and Wesson, I hastened, shoeless and hatless, to the
scene of action, wondering what was up. I found my companion
struggling to detain, with the end of the gun, an uncertain object
that was trying to crawl off into the darkness. "Look out!" said
Orville, as he saw my bare feet, "the quills are lying thick around
here."
And so they were; he had blown or beaten them nearly all off the
poor creature's back, and was in a fair way completely to disable my
gun, the ramrod of which was already broken and splintered clubbing
his victim. But a couple of shots from the revolver, sighted by a
lighted match, at the head of the animal, quickly settled him.
He proved to be an unusually large Canada porcupine,--an old
patriarch, gray and venerable, with spines three inches long, and
weighing, I should say, twenty pounds. The build of this animal is
much like that of the woodchuck, that is, heavy and pouchy. The nose
is blunter than that of the woodchuck, the limbs stronger, and the
tail broader and heavier. Indeed, the latter appendage is quite
club-like, and the animal can, no doubt, deal a smart blow with it.
An old hunter with whom I talked thought it aided them in climbing.
They are inveterate gnawers, and spend much of their time in trees
gnawing the bark. In winter one will take up its abode in a hemlock,
and continue there till the tree is quite denuded. The carcass
emitted a peculiar, offensive odor, and, though very fat, was not in
the least inviting as game. If it is part of the economy of nature
for one animal to prey upon some other beneath it, then the poor
devil has indeed a mouthful that makes a meal off the porcupine.
Panthers and lynxes have essayed it, but have invariably left off at
the first course, and have afterwards been found dead, or nearly so,
with their heads puffed up like a pincushion, and the quills
protruding on all sides. A dog that understands the business will
manoeuvre round the porcupine till he gets an opportunity to throw
it over on its back, when he fastens on its quilless underbody.
Aaron was puzzled to know how long-parted friends could embrace,
when it was suggested that the quills could be depressed or elevated
at pleasure.
The next morning boded rain; but we had become thoroughly sated with
the delights of our present quarters, outside and in, and packed up
our traps to leave. Before we had reached the clearing, three miles
below, the rain set in, keeping up a lazy, monotonous drizzle till
the afternoon.
The clearing was quite a recent one, made mostly by barkpeelers, who
followed their calling in the mountains round about in summer, and
worked in their shops making shingle in winter. The Biscuit Brook
came in here from the west,--a fine, rapid trout stream six or eight
miles in length, with plenty of deer in the mountains about its
head. On its banks we found the house of an old woodman, to whom we
had been directed for information about the section we proposed to
traverse.
"Is the way very difficult," we inquired, "across from the Neversink
into the head of the Beaverkill?"
"Not to me; I could go it the darkest night ever was. And I can
direct you so you can find the way without any trouble. You go down
the Neversink about a mile, when you come to Highfall Brook, the
first stream that comes down on the right. Follow up it to Jim
Reed's shanty, about three miles. Then cross the stream, and on the
left bank, pretty well up on the side of the mountain, you will find
a wood-road, which was made by a fellow below here who stole some
ash logs off the top of the ridge last winter and drew them out on
the snow. When the road first begins to tilt over the mountain,
strike down to your left, and you can reach the Beaverkill before
sundown."