s of Elk, with charming
camping-grounds, where neighboring hospitality abounds, and chickens,
eggs, milk, corn, and bacon are abundant and cheap, and the finest
bass-and other fishing possible, from Queen's Shoal--four miles away--to
the old dam above Charleston. Above Queen's Shoal the region increases
in wildness and attractiveness for traveller or sportsman. Trout in
plenty find homes in the mountain-tributaries of Upper Elk; deer abound,
and all manner of smaller game. Where nature does her best work, man is
apt to do but little. Nature farms the Elk country.

Bright moonlight, the early morning after the sun is up, and from a
couple of hours after mid-day until the mountain-shadows strike the
water in the evening, are the best times to troll for bass. If so
minded, they will rise to a fly at such times in the rapids; but no
allurement excepting the troll will bring them to the surface in still
water. When the river is rising, or the water is clouded with mud or
drift, bass scorn all surface-diet; but the live minnow or crawfish,
hellgramite or fish-worm, will capture them on trout-line or hook
attached to the soul-absorbing bob. A clothes-line wire cable, furnished
with well-assorted hooks baited with cotton, dough, and cheese well
mixed together, and stretched in eddy-water when the river is muddy,
will give fine reward in carp, white perch, catfish, turtles, garfish,
and sweet revenge on the bait-stealing guana.

After nooning, lunch, and a quiet loaf, the party sped homeward with the
current, handling rods and trolls as salmon and bass demanded lively
attention. Shooting a rapid, and out into a deep pool at its foot, the
Doctor's boat struck a snag, and he, having a resisting power equal to
that of a billiard-ball, put his heels where his head had been, and
disappeared under the water, to pop up again instantly, sputtering and
spitting, like a jug full of yeast with a corn-cob stopper.

"Oh, Hickey! Whoop!" exclaimed Martha, as she went off in wild screams
of laughter. "Kin you swim?" she asked, with the coolness of the
mountain-maiden she was.

"No, no," sputtered the Doctor.

"I reckon you'll tow good. Jest gimme your han', an' keep your feet
down, an' me an' Alec 'ill tow you ashore to dreen. Hit's like you're
purty wet."

He was soon landed by the stalwart Martha and Alec, and, while he
attitudinized for draining, the Professor amused himself with taking an
instantaneous photograph.

"By gum! he mou