We despatched our camp-building and bed-making with speed, for we had a purpose.  The Penobscot was a very beautiful river, and the Ayboljockameegus a very pretty stream; and if there is one place in the world where trout, at certain seasons, are likely to be found, it is in a beautiful river at the mouth of a pretty stream.  Now we wanted trout; it was in the programme that something more delicate than salt-pork should grace our banquets before Katahdin.  Cancut sustained our a priori, that trout were waiting for us over by the Aybol.  By this time the tree-shadows, so stiff at noon, began to relax and drift down stream, cooling the surface.  The trout could leave their shy lairs down in the chilly deeps, and come up without fear of being parboiled.  Besides, as evening came, trout thought of their supper, as we did of ours.

Hereupon I had a new sensation.  We made ready our flies and our rods, and embarked, as I supposed, to be ferried across and fish from terra firma.  But no.  Cancut dropped anchor very quietly opposite the Aybol’s mouth.  Iglesias, the man of Maine experience, seemed nought surprised.  We were to throw our lines, as it appeared, from the birch; we were to peril our lives on the unsteady basis of a roly-poly vessel,—­to keep our places and ballast our bowl, during the excitement of hooking pounds.  Self-poise is an acrobatic feat, when a person, not loaded at the heels, undertakes trout-fishing from a birch.

We threw our flies.  Instantly at the lucky hackle something darted, seized it, and whirled to fly, with the unwholesome bit in its mouth, up the peaceful Ayboljockameegus.  But the lucky man, and he happened to be the novice, forgot, while giving the capturing jerk of his hook, that his fulcrum was not solid rock.  The slight shell tilted, turned—­over not quite, over enough to give everybody a start.  One lesson teaches the docile.  Caution thereafter presided over our fishing.  She told us to sit low, keep cool, cast gently, strike firmly, play lightly, and pull in steadily.  So we did.  As the spotted sparklers were rapidly translated from water to a lighter element, a well-fed cheerfulness developed in our trio.  We could not speak, for fear of breaking the spell; we smiled at each other.  Twenty-three times the smile went round.  Twenty-three trout, and not a pigmy among them, lay at our feet.  More fish for one dinner and breakfast would be waste and wanton self-indulgence.  We stopped.  And I must avow, not to claim too much heroism, that the fish had also stopped.  So we paddled home contented.

Then, O Walton!  O Davy!  O Scrope! ye fishers hard by taverns! luxury was ours of which ye know no more than a Chinaman does of music.  Under the noble yellow birch we cooked our own fish.  We used our scanty kitchen-battery with skill.  We cooked with the high art of simplicity.  Where Nature has done her best, only fools rush in to improve:  on the salmonids, fresh and salt, she has lavished her creative refinements; cookery should only ripen and develop.  From our silver gleaming pile of pounders, we chose the larger and the smaller for appropriate experiments.  Then we tested our experiments; we tasted our examples.  Success.  And success in science proves knowledge and skill.  We feasted.  The delicacy of our food made each feaster a finer essence.