This lake has one peculiarity which, in the minds of certain tourists, eclipses all the rest.  I mean its possibilities for fishing.  We know that sad experience has taught mankind to invent the proverb:  “Once a fisherman, always a liar.”  I wish, then, at the start, to say I am no fisherman; but what I saw here would inevitably make me one if I should remain a month or two upon these shores.  Lake Yellowstone is the fisherman’s paradise.  Said one of Izaak Walton’s followers to me:  “I would rather be an angler here than an angel.”  Nor is this strange.  I saw two men catch from this lake in one hour more than a hundred splendid trout, weighing from one to three pounds apiece!  They worked with incredible rapidity.  Scarcely did the fly touch the water when the line was drawn, the light rod dipped with graceful curve, and the revolving reel drew in the speckled beauty to the shore.  Each of these anglers had two hooks upon his line, and both of them once had two trout hooked at the same time, and landed them; while we poor eastern visitors at first looked on in dumb amazement, and then enthusiastically cheered.

[Illustration:  GREAT FISHING.]

Can the reader bear something still more trying to his faith?  Emerging from the lake is a little cone containing a boiling pool, entirely distinct from the surrounding water.  I saw a fisherman stand on this and catch a trout, which, without moving from his place, or even unhooking the fish, he dropped into the boiling pool, and cooked!  When the first scientific explorers of this region were urging upon Congress the necessity of making it a National Park, their statements in regard to fishing were usually received with courteous incredulity.  But when one of their number gravely declared that trout could there be caught and boiled in the same lake, within a radius of fifteen feet, the House of Representatives broke forth into roars of laughter, and thought the man a monumental liar.  We cannot be surprised, therefore, that enthusiastic fishermen almost go crazy here.  I have seen men, after a ride of forty miles, rush off to fish without a moment’s rest as if their lives depended on it.  Some years ago, General Wade Hampton visited the Park and came as far as Lake Yellowstone.  On his return, some one inquired what he thought of Nature’s masterpiece, the canon of the Yellowstone.

[Illustration:  LARRY, AS FISHERMAN AND COOK.]

“The canon!” cried the general, “no matter about the canon; but I had the most magnificent fishing I ever saw in my life.”

One day, while walking along the shore, my comrade suddenly pressed my arm and pointed toward the lake.  “An Indian!” I cried in great astonishment, “I thought no Indians ever came here.”  Our guide laughed heartily; and, as he did so, I perceived my error.  What I had thought to be an Indian was but a portion of a tree, which had been placed upright against a log.  The only artificial thing about it was a bunch of feathers.  Everything