For several miles
back of the lake, and until a few rods of the shore, it is a calm,
deep river. It then rushes down a steep, shelving rock some twenty
feet into a great rocky basin; then down again over a shelving rock in
a fall of twenty feet into another rocky basin; and then again in
another fall of twenty or thirty feet, over a steep, shelving rock,
shooting with a swift current far out into the lake. These falls
constitute a beautiful cascade, and their roar may be heard of a calm,
summer evening, for miles out on the placid water.
"At the foot of these falls, in the summer season, the trout
congregate; beautiful large fellows, from one to three pounds in
weight; and a fly trailed across the current, or over the eddies, just
at its outer edge, is a thing at which they are tolerably sure to
rise. Well, last summer, I was out that way among the lakes that lie
sleeping in beauty, and along the streams that flow through the old
woods, playing the savage and vagabondizing in a promiscuous way. The
river was low, and a broad rock, smooth and bare, sloping gently to
the water's edge, under which the stream whirled as it entered the
lake, and above which tall trees towered, casting over it a pleasant
shade, presented a tempting place to throw the fly. I cast over the
current, and trailed along towards the edge of the rock, when a
three-pounder rose from his place down in the deep water.
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