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 had that morning for breakfast, and
that was so delectable after four days of fish, linger on my tongue;
nor yet tarry to set down the talk of that