cigarette butt down in the dry leaves.

The Hatchery camp was built by Bige and Bill at a time when I was carrying about with me a rather complicated harness in which was a broken arm; so, I had no hand in its construction, but I contributed a lot of advice. I have found it a very comfortable living place.

It has for many years been our practice, on occasions when we happened to have a good supply of game in the cooler, to go back to the cottage by the lake, collect our women folks and lead them over the trail to camp, where we would give them an exhibition of real camp cookery; while we roasted a saddle of venison before the campfire, serving it to our distinguished guests while they sit upon logs around our rustic camp table in the shade of the towering forest trees. Thus do we square ourselves, justify long absences and gain new indulgences.

There is a wonderful spring at The Hatchery. The water is very cold and there is a large volume of it boiling out of fissures in the rocks on the mountain side. Indeed it is the beginning of a fair sized brook which tumbles over the boulders and swiftly rushes along its gravelly bed just back of the cabin. By its music we are lulled to sleep at night and it is the first sound to greet us at day break.

Basting a Venison Roast

Bige allowed that it was a great pity that there were no holes in that brook with water deep enough for trout to live in as the water was ideal for that purpose. Trout are fond of cold spring water. They flourish best in it. Besides, the nearest trout brook was two miles away, and sometimes, during the open season, we need fish. So, said we, "let's make some holes."

Immediately, we got busy building a dam across the stream near the shack. We employed some of the methods of Brother Beaver, which, though primitive, are none the less effective, and we soon had a pool of water from three to four feet deep, seventy feet long and twenty feet wide at the dam. Then selecting our smallest hooks, we filed off the barbs and went down to Pickwacket Brook where we caught some trout which we kept alive and brought back in a bait pail. Many and frequent changes of the water were necessary to keep our fish alive, but they were safely deposited in the pool.

A Dinner Party at Camp Hatchery

Then, a more pretentious plan was devised and in carrying it into effect, we built other dams, five in all, with stretches of swift water between. Gravelly and sandy spawning beds were provided in the shallow water. Overflow or spillway places were made on one end of each dam, so that the fish might freely pass up or down from one pool to another. Stones and overhanging banks made suitable hiding places for the shyest and most wary fish known to anglers. In short, we reproduced as nearly as possible the most favorable conditions for the natural propagation of brook trout.

Many fishing trips were made before we considered our hatching ponds sufficiently stocked. At first we fed our fish daily, but we soon learned that they had natural food in abundance and that they preferred it to what our catering provided.

During three summers that our experiment in pisciculture has been in progress, not the least of the pleasures of life at Camp Hatchery, is found in watching the spawning beds, observing the play of schools of fingerlings, or lying on the shore of one of the pools in the evening twilight, to see the larger trout jump clear above the surface and grab a passing fly or moth.

Enemies of the brook trout, neither those of the two-legged nor those of the four-legged varieties have yet seriously raided our fish farm. Individuals of the original planting have now developed into the most desirable sizes for table use. And it is now possible for me, in the morning while Bige is lighting the camp fire, to take a fly rod, go twenty yards back of the cabin to one of the pools and by the time Bige has the coffee made and the bacon cooked, have my breakfast trout caught, dressed, and in the frying pan before they have finished flopping.

END OF CAMPS AND TRAILS