nd the fish in it appear deceptively near. It is rare to find
even a trout stream that is not a little "off color," as they say of
diamonds, but the waters in the section of which I am writing have the
genuine ray; it is the undimmed and untarnished diamond.

If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream till I found the
Rondout. It is the ideal brook. What homes these fish have, what
retreats under the rocks, what paved or flagged courts and areas, what
crystal depths where no net or snare can reach them!--no mud, no
sediment, but here and there in the clefts and seams of the rock
patches of white gravel,--spawning-beds ready-made.

The finishing touch is given by the moss with which the rock is
everywhere carpeted. Even in the narrow grooves or channels where the
water runs the swiftest, the green lining is unbroken. It sweeps down
under the stream and up again on the other side, like some firmly woven
texture. It softens every outline and cushions every stone. At a
certain depth in the great basins and wells it of course ceases, and
only the smooth-swept flagging of the place-rock is visible.

The trees are kept well back from the margin of the stream by the want
of soil, and the large ones unite their branches far above it, thus
forming a high winding gallery, along which the fisherman passes and
makes his long casts with scarcely an interruption from branch or twig.
In a few places he makes no cast, but sees from his rocky perch the
water twenty feet below him, and drops his hook into it as into a well.

We made camp at a bend in the creek where there was a large surface
of mossy rock uncovered by the shrunken stream,--a clean, free space
left for us in the wilderness that was faultless as a kitchen and
dining-room, and a marvel of beauty as a lounging-room, or an open
court, or what you will. An obsolete wood or bark road conducted us
to it, and disappeared up the hill in the woods beyond. A loose
boulder lay in the middle, and on the edge next the stream were three
or four large natural wash-basins scooped out of the rock, and ever
filled ready for use. Our lair we carved out of the thick brush under
a large birch on the bank. Here we planted our flag of smoke and
feathered our nest with balsam and hemlock boughs and ferns, and
laughed at your four walls and pillows of down.

Wherever one encamps in the woods, there is home, and every object and
feature about the place take on a new interest and assume a ne