“O Thousand Isles!  O Thousand Isles!”

It seemed to King that a poem might be constructed more in accordance with the facts and with the scientific spirit of the age.  Something like this: 

     “O Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two Isles! 
     O Islands 1692! 
     Where the fisher spreads his wiles,
     And the muskallonge goes through! 
     Forever the cottager gilds the same
     With nightly pyrotechnic flame;
     And it’s O the Isles! 
     The 1692!”

Aside from the pyrotechnics, the chief occupations of this place are boating and fishing.  Boats abound—­row-boats, sail-boats, and steam-launches for excursion parties.  The river consequently presents an animated appearance in the season, and the prettiest effects are produced by the white sails dipping about among the green islands.  The favorite boat is a canoe with a small sail stepped forward, which is steered without centre-board or rudder, merely by a change of position in the boat of the man who holds the sheet.  While the fishermen are here, it would seem that the long, snaky pickerel is the chief game pursued and caught.  But this is not the case when the fishermen return home, for then it appears that they have been dealing mainly with muskallonge, and with bass by the way.  No other part of the country originates so many excellent fish stories as the Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-two Islands, and King had heard so many of them that he suspected there must be fish in these waters.  That afternoon, when they returned from Gananoque he accosted an old fisherman who sat in his boat at the wharf awaiting a customer.

“I suppose there is fishing here in the season?”

The man glanced up, but deigned no reply to such impertinence.

“Could you take us where we would be likely to get any muskallonge?”

“Likely?” asked the man.  “What do you suppose I am here for?”

“I beg your pardon.  I’m a stranger here.  I’d like to try my hand at a muskallonge.  About how do they run here as to size?”

“Well,” said the fisherman, relenting a little, “that depends upon who takes you out.  If you want a little sport, I can take you to it.  They are running pretty well this season, or were a week ago.”

“Is it too late?”

“Well, they are scarcer than they were, unless you know where to go.  I call forty pounds light for a muskallonge; fifty to seventy is about my figure.  If you ain’t used to this kind of fishing, and go with me, you’d better tie yourself in the boat.  They are a powerful fish.  You see that little island yonder?  A muskallonge dragged me in this boat four times round that island one day, and just as I thought I was tiring him out he jumped clean over the island, and I had to cut the line.”

King thought he had heard something like this before, and he engaged the man for the next day.  That evening was the last of the grand illuminations for the season, and our party went out in the Crossman steam-launch to see it.  Although some of the cottages were vacated, and the display was not so extensive as in August, it was still marvelously beautiful, and the night voyage around the illuminated islands was something long to be remembered.