Besides, I was glad of another and final opportunity to pay my respects to the finny tribes of the Neversink.  At this point it was one of the finest trout streams I had ever beheld.  It was so sparkling, its bed so free from sediment or impurities of any kind, that it had a new look, as if it had just come from the hand of its Creator.  I tramped along its margin upward of a mile that afternoon, part of the time wading to my knees, and casting my hook, baited only with a trout’s fin, to the opposite bank.  Trout are real cannibals, and make no bones, and break none either, in lunching on each other.  A friend of mine had several in his spring, when one day a large female trout gulped down one of her male friends, nearly one third her own size, and went around for two days with the tail of her liege lord protruding from her mouth!  A fish’s eye will do for bait, though the anal fin is better.  One of the natives here told me that when he wished to catch large trout (and I judged he never fished for any other,—­I never do), he used for bait the bullhead, or dart, a little fish an inch and a half or two inches long, that rests on the pebbles near shore and darts quickly, when disturbed, from point to point.  “Put that on your hook,” said he, “and if there is a big fish in the creek, he is bound to have it.”  But the darts were not easily found; the big fish, I concluded, had cleaned them all out; and, then, it was easy enough to supply our wants with a fin.

Declining the hospitable offers of the settlers, we spread our blankets that night in a dilapidated shingle-shop on the banks of the Biscuit Brook, first flooring the damp ground with the new shingle that lay piled in one corner.  The place had a great-throated chimney with a tremendous expanse of fireplace within, that cried “More!” at every morsel of wood we gave it.

But I must hasten over this part of the ground, nor let the delicious flavor of the milk we had that morning for breakfast, and that was so delectable after four days of fish, linger on my tongue; nor yet tarry to set down the talk of that honest, weather-worn passer-by who paused before our door, and every moment on the point of resuming his way, yet stood for an hour and recited his adventures hunting deer and bears on these mountains.  Having replenished our stock of bread and salt pork at the house of one of the settlers, midday found us at Reed’s shanty,—­one of those temporary structures erected by the bark jobber to lodge and board his “hands” near their work.  Jim not being at home, we could gain no information from the “women folks” about the way, nor from the men who had just come in to dinner; so we pushed on, as near as we could, according to the instructions we had previously received.  Crossing the creek, we forced our way up the side of the mountain, through a perfect cheval-de-frise of fallen and peeled hemlocks, and, entering the dense woods above, began to look anxiously about for the