I Go A-Fishing

,wm ,0o. y ct-. & **. - O fe ^ ^ "^1 -V c ^ » ,0o. > >> * , -. o i0 ' V '/ A **. = ^ - ^ ^ ^cP ^ ^ c *r V V bo n4 "7* ^ I L. B . ^. .-\ ^%<\ I GO A-FISHING BY W. C. PRIME S4& V%1 NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. l<S73 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Harper & Brothers, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. HIC NULLA VOX MONTANI FLUMINIS NUMERUS NULLUS AQUARUM TALIS QUALIS EST ILLIC UBI IN RIPIS SACRIS JUCUNDITATE PERENNI QUIESCUNT QUORUM IN MEMORIAM ALMAM SCRIPTUM EST HOC VOLUMEN. 1 CONTENTS. PAGE I. WHY PETER WENT A- FISHING 9 II. AT THE ROOKERY 22 III. ISKANDER EFFENDI 37 IV. MORNING TROUT ; EVENING TALK 63 V. SUNDAY MORNING AND EVENING 82 VI. AN EXPLORING EXPEDITION 109 VII. THE ST. REGIS WATERS IN OLD TIMES 122 VIII. THE ST. REGIS WATERS NOW 1 38 IX. CONNECTICUT STREAMS 157 X. AMONG THE FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS 1 78 XI. ON A MOUNTAIN BROOK 208 XII. ON ECHO LAKE 235 XIII. THREE BOTTLES OF CLARET 253 XIV. WHAT FLIES TO CAST ON A SUNDAY 287 XV. IN NORTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE 301 XVI. AT THE FERNS 32 XVII. GOING HOME 35 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/igoafishing01prim WILL YOU GO? Good friend, you have read the title-page hereof, tell- ing you that I propose to go a-fishing, and the table of contents, which has given you some idea as to where I think of going. If you turn over this leaf it will imply that you accept the invitation to go with me. But be warned in time. The best of anglers does not always find fish ; and the most skillful casting of a fly does not always bring up trout. Often chubs and perch and red- fins—yea, even pickerel and pumpkin-seeds—rise to the fly, and you may be thereat disgusted. You can not be sure that you will find what you want, or what you will like, if you go beyond this page. If, however, you have the true angler's spirit, and will go a-fishing prepared to have a good day of it, even though the weather turn out vile and the sport wretched, then turn over the leaf and let us be starting. I GO A-FISHING. I. WHY PETER WENT A-FISHING. The light of the long Galilee day was dying out beyond the peaks of Lebanon. Far in the north, gleaming like a star, the snowy summit of Hermon received the latest ray of the twilight before gloom and night should descend on Gennesaret. The white walls of Bethsaida shone gray and cold on the northern border of the sea, looking to the whiter palace of Herod at its farther extremity, under whose very base began the majestic sweep of the Jordan. Perhaps the full moon was rising over the desolate hills of the Gadarenes, marking the silver pathway of the Lord across the holy sea. The stars that had glorified his birth in the Bethlehem cavern, that had shone on the garden agony and the garden tomb, were shining on the hill- sides that had been sanctified by his footsteps. The young daughter of Jairus looked from her casement in Capernaum on the silver lake, and remembered the solemn grandeur of that brow which now, they told her, had been torn with thorns. The son of her of Nain climbed the rocks which tower above his father's place of burial, and gazed down into the shining water, and pondered whether IO I GO A-FISHING. he who had been murdered'by the Jerusalem Hebrews had not power to say unto himself " Arise." Never was night more pure, never was sea more win- ning ; never were the hearts of men moved by deeper emotions than on that night and by that sea when Peter and John, and other of the disciples, were waiting for the Master. Peter said, "I go a-fishing." John and Thomas, and James and Nathanael, and the others, said, "We will go with you," and they went. Some commentators have supposed and taught that, when Peter said, " I go a-fishing," he announced the inten- tion of resuming, at least temporarily, his old mode of life, returning to the ways in which he had earned his daily bread from childhood ; that his Master was gone, and he thought that nothing remained for him but the old hard life of toil, and the sad labor of living. But this seems scarcely credible, or consistent with the circumstances. The sorrow which had weighed down tlie disciples when gathered in Jerusalem on that darkest Sabbath day of all the Hebrew story, had given way to joy and exultation in the morning when the empty tomb revealed the hitherto hidden glory of the resurrection, joy which was tenfold increased by an interview with the risen Lord, and confirmed by his direction, sending them into Galilee to await him there. And thus it seems incredible that Peter and John—John the beloved—could have been in any such gloom and despondency as to think of resuming their old employment at this time, when they were actually waiting for his coming who had promised to meet them. Probably they were on this particular evening weary with earnest expectancy, not yet satisfied ; tired of waiting : HAVE YOU ANY FISH? II and longing and looking up the hill-side on the Jerusa- lem road for his appearance ; and I have no doubt that, when this weariness became exhausting, Peter sought on the water something of the old excitement that he had known from boyhood, and that to all the group it seemed a fitting way in which to pass the long night before them, otherwise to be weary as well as sleepless. If one could have the story of that night of fishing, of the surrounding scenes, the conversation in the boat, the unspoken thoughts of the fishermen, it would make the grandest story of fishing that the world has ever known. Its end was grand when in the morning the voice of the Master came over the sea, asking them the familiar ques- tion, in substance the same which they, like all fishermen, had heard a thousand times, " Have you any fish ?"* " ?" * John xxi., 5 : Children, have ye any meat This translation, though literal, does not convey the idea of the original. The Greek is TIaidia, firj rt Trpoufdyiov ixlTl > an(l ^ e w°rd irpoafdyiov is used here, as in the best of the later Greek authors, to signify the kind of eatable article which the persons addressed were then seeking. Un- willing, in a matter of such importance (for every word of the Lord is of the highest importance) to trust my own limited knowledge of Greek, I read this page to one of the most trustworthy and eminent American scholars and divines one evening in my library, and the next morning received from him this note, which I take the liberty of appending " October 21st, 1872. "My dear Sir,—You are quite right in your interpretation of John xxi., 5. ' Meat,' in Luke xxiv., 41, is simply food, fipwaifioQ, any thing to eat. But, in John xxi., 5, the word is Trpoccpdyiov, something eatable (but especially flesh or fish) in addition to (vrpog) bread, which in Palestine was then, as now, the chief diet of the people. Had the disciples been out hunting, the meaning would have been ' Have you any game ?' As they had been all night fishing, the meaning was, and they so understood it, ' Have you any fish ?' " Yours very truly, ." 12 I GO A -FISHING. I am afraid that there was something of the human nature of disappointed fishermen in the Galilaeans that morning when they saw the gray dawn and had taken no fish, for their reply was in much the same tone that the unsatisfied angler in our day often uses in answer to that same inquiry. It is just possible that John, the gentle John, was the respondent. It may have been the some- what sensitive Peter, or possibly two or three of them to- gether, who uttered that curt " No," and then relapsed into silence. But when the musical voice of the Master came again over the water, and they cast where he bade them, John remembered that other day and scene, very similar to this, before they were the disciples of the Lord, when he went with them in their boat and gave them the same command, with the same miraculous result, and said to Simon, " Henceforth thou shalt catch men." The memory of this scene is not unfitting to the mod- ern angler. Was it possible to forget it when I first wet a line in the water of the Sea of Galilee ? Is it any less likely to come back to me on any lake among the hills when the twilight hides the mountains, and overhead the same stars look on our waters that looked on Gennesaret, so that the soft night air feels on one's forehead like the dews of Hermon ? I do not think that this was the last, though it be the last recorded fishing done by Peter or by John. I don't believe these Galilee fishermen ever lost the love for their old employment. It was a memorable fact for them that the Master had gone a-fishing with them on the day that he called them to be his disciples ; and this latest meeting with him in Galilee, the commission to Peter, " Feed my sheep," and the words so startling to John, " If I will that THE LOVE OF FISHING.

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