urpose in their breasts, but baffled by the
protecting smoke. In the water to the leeward plays a school of speckled
trout, feeding on the minnows that hang around the sunken ledges of
rock. As a larger wave than usual passes over the ledges, it lifts the
fish up, and you can see the big fellows, three, and four, and even five
pounds apiece, poising themselves in the clear brown water. A long cast
will send the fly over one of them. Let it sink a foot. Draw it up with
a fluttering motion. Now the fish sees it, and turns to catch it. There
is a yellow gleam in the depth, a sudden swirl on the surface; you
strike sharply, and the trout is matching his strength against the
spring of your four ounces of split bamboo.

You can guess at his size, as he breaks water, by the breadth of his
tail: a pound of weight to an inch of tail,--that is the traditional
measure, and it usually comes pretty close to the mark, at least in the
case of large fish. But it is never safe to record the weight until the
trout is in the canoe. As the Canadian hunters say, "Sell not the skin
of the bear while he carries it."

Now the breeze that blows over Green Island drops away, and the smoke
of the eight smudge-kettles falls like a thick curtain. The canoes, the
dark shores of Norcross Point, the twin peaks of Spencer Mountain, the
dim blue summit of Katahdin, the dazzling sapphire sky, the flocks of
fleece-white clouds shepherded on high by the western wind, all have
vanished. With closed eyes I see another vision, still framed in
smoke,--a vision of yesterday.

It is a wild river flowing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the COTE
NORD, far down towards Labrador. There is a long, narrow, swift pool
between two parallel ridges of rock. Over the ridge on the right pours
a cataract of pale yellow foam. At the bottom of the pool, the water
slides down into a furious rapid, and dashes straight through an
impassable gorge half a mile to the sea. The pool is full of salmon,
leaping merrily in their delight at coming into their native stream. The
air is full of black-flies, rejoicing in the warmth of the July sun. On
a slippery point of rock, below the fall, are two anglers, tempting the
fish and enduring the flies. Behind them is an old HABITANT raising a
mighty column of smoke.

Through the cloudy pillar which keeps back the Egyptian host, you see
the waving of a long rod. A silver-gray fly with a barbed tail darts out
across the pool, swings around