gil Bartlett had come into the woods, and built his
house on the bank of the Saranac River, between the Upper Saranac and
Round Lake. It was then the only dwelling within a circle of many miles.
The deer and bear were in the majority. At night one could sometimes
hear the scream of the panther or the howling of wolves. But soon the
wilderness began to wear the traces of a conventional smile. The desert
blossomed a little--if not as the rose, at least as the gilly-flower.
Fields were cleared, gardens planted; half a dozen log cabins were
scattered along the river; and the old house, having grown slowly and
somewhat irregularly for twenty years, came out, just before the time of
which I write, in a modest coat of paint and a broad-brimmed piazza.
But Virgil himself, the creator of the oasis--well known of hunters and
fishermen, dreaded of lazy guides and quarrelsome lumbermen,--"Virge,"
the irascible, kind-hearted, indefatigable, was there no longer. He had
made his last clearing, and fought his last fight; done his last favour
to a friend, and thrown his last adversary out of the tavern door. His
last log had gone down the river. His camp-fire had burned out. Peace
to his ashes. His wife, who had often played the part of Abigail toward
travellers who had unconsciously incurred the old man's mistrust, now
reigned in his stead; and there was great abundance of maple-syrup on
every man's flapjack.

The charm of Bartlett's for the angler was the stretch of rapid water
in front of the house. The Saranac River, breaking from its first
resting-place in the Upper Lake, plunged down through a great bed of
rocks, making a chain of short falls and pools and rapids, about half
a mile in length. Here, in the spring and early summer, the speckled
trout--brightest and daintiest of all fish that swim--used to be found
in great numbers. As the season advanced, they moved away into the deep
water of the lakes. But there were always a few stragglers left, and I
have taken them in the rapids at the very end of August. What could be
more delightful than to spend an hour or two, in the early morning or
evening of a hot day, in wading this rushing stream, and casting the fly
on its clear waters? The wind blows softly down the narrow valley, and
the trees nod from the rocks above you. The noise of the falls makes
constant music in your ears. The river hurries past you, and yet it is
never gone.

The same foam-flakes seem to be always gliding d