COPYRIGHT. 1883, BY CHARLES F. ORVIS. PRESS OF J. J. LITTLE & CO., CONTENTS. PAGE 66 "Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield.” -Pope. Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you. I confess my discourse is like to prove suitable to my recreation, calm and quiet. So much for the prologue of what I mean to say."-Izaak Walton. FISHING WITH THE FLY. ETCHINGS ON A SALMON STREAM. BY CHARLES HALLOCK. I SUPPOSE that all that can be instructively written of the salmon has already been said. The processes of natural and artificial propagation have become familiar to all who desire to learn; the secrets of their periodical migrations-their advents and their absences--have been fathomed from the depths of ocean; their form and beauty have been lined by the artist's brush, and their flavor (in cans) is known to all the world where commerce spreads her wings. And yet, the subject always carries with it a perennial freshness and piquancy, which is renewed with each recurring spring, and enlivened by every utterance which attempts to make it vocal; just as the heavenly choirs repeat the anthem of the constructed universe intoned to the music of the assenting spheres! The enthusiasm which constantly invests it like a halo has not been dissipated or abated by the persistent pursuit of many centuries, albeit the sentiments of to-day are but the rehearsal of the orig inal inspiration, and present knowledge the hereditary outcome of ancient germs. All down the ages echo has answered echo, and the sounding forks have transmitted orally the accented annals wherever the lordly salmon swims. Now, hold rhapsody, and let us look to the river! Do you mark the regal presence in yonder glinting pool, upon which the sun flashes with an intensity which reveals the smallest pebble on the bottom? Nay? You cannot see that salmon, just there at the curl of the rapid? Nor his knightly retinue drawn up there abreast just behind him in supporting position? Then, my friend, you are indeed a novice on the river, and the refraction of the solar rays upon its surface blinds your unaccustomed eyes. Well, they do certainly look but shadows in the quiet pool, so motionless and inanimate, or but counterfeiting the swaying of the pensile rock-weeds of the middle stream. What comfortable satisfaction or foreboding premonitions do you imagine possess the noble lord while he is taking his recuperative rest in the middle chamber, after passing from his matriculation in the sea? Faith! you can almost read his emotions in the slow pulsations of his pectoral fins, and the inflection of his throbbing tail! Perhaps he shrinks from the barricade of rock and foam before him; or hesitates to essay the royal arch above the gorge, which reflects in prismatic hues of emblematic glory the mist and mysteries of the unattempted passage. |