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."

As it was then after two o'clock, and as the distance was six or eight
of these terrible hunters' miles, we concluded to take a whole day to
it, and wait till next morning. The Beaverkill flowed west, the
Neversink south, and I had a mortal dread of getting entangled amid the
mountains and valleys that lie in either angle.

Besides, I was glad of another and final opportunity to pay my respects
to the finny tribes of the Neversink. At this point it was one of the
finest trout streams I had ever beheld. It was so sparkling, its bed so
free from sediment or impurities of any kind, that it had a new look,
as if it had just come from the hand of its Creator. I tramped along
its margin upward of a mile that afternoon, part of the time wading to
my knees, and casting my hook, baited only with a trout's fin, to the
opposite bank. Trout are real cannibals, and make no bones, and break
none either, in lunching on each other. A friend of mine had several in
his spring, when one day a large female trout gulped down one of her
male friends, nearly one third her own size, and went around for two
days with the tail of her liege lord protruding from her mouth! A
fish's eye will do for bait, though the anal fin is better. One of the
natives here told me that when he wished to catch large trout (and I
judged he never fished for any other,--I never do), he used for bait
the bullhead, or dart, a little fish an inch and a half or two inches
long, that rests on the pebbles near shore and darts quickly, when
disturbed, from point to point. "Put that on your hook," said he, "and
if there is a big fish in the creek, he is bound to have it." But the
darts were not easily found; the big fish, I concluded, had cleaned
them all out; and, then, it was easy enough to supply our wants with a
fin.

Declining the hospitable offers of the settlers, we spread our blankets
that night in a dilapidated shingle-shop on the banks of the Biscuit
Brook, first flooring the damp ground with the new shingle that lay
piled in one corner. The place had a great-throated chimney with a
tremendous expanse of fireplace within, that cried "More!" at every
morsel of wood we gave it.

But I must hasten over this part of the ground, nor let the delicious
flavor of the milk we