The great attraction, however, of this region, is the brook trout, with which the streams and lakes abound.  The water is of excessive coldness, the thermometer indicating 44° and 45°in the springs, and 47° or 48° in the smaller streams.  The trout are generally small, but in the more remote branches their number is very great.  In such localities the fish are quite black, but in the lakes they are of a lustre and brilliancy impossible to describe.

These waters have been much visited of late years by fishing parties, and the name of the Beaver Kill is now a potent name among New York sportsmen.

One lake, in the wilds of Callikoon, abounds in a peculiar species of white sucker, which is of excellent quality.  It is taken only in spring, during the spawning season, at the time “when the leaves are as big as a chipmunk’s ears.”  The fish run up the small streams and inlets, beginning at nightfall, and continuing till the channel is literally packed with them, and every inch of space is occupied.  The fishermen pounce upon them at such times, and scoop them up by the bushel, usually wading right into the living mass and landing the fish with their hands.  A small party will often secure in this manner a wagon-load of fish.  Certain conditions of the weather, as a warm south or southwest wind, are considered most favorable for the fish to run.

Though familiar all my life with the outskirts of this region, I have only twice dipped into its wilder portions.  Once in 1860 a friend and myself traced the Beaver Kill to its source, and encamped by Balsam Lake.  A cold and protracted rainstorm coming on, we were obliged to leave the woods before we were ready.  Neither of us will soon forget that tramp by an unknown route over the mountains, encumbered as we were with a hundred and one superfluities which we had foolishly brought along to solace ourselves with in the woods; nor that halt on the summit, where we cooked and ate our fish in the drizzling rain; nor, again, that rude log house, with its sweet hospitality, which we reached just at nightfall on Mill Brook.

In 1868 a party of three of us set out for a brief trouting excursion to a body of water called Thomas’s Lake, situated in the same chain of mountains.  On this excursion, more particularly than on any other I have ever undertaken, I was taught how poor an Indian I should make, and what a ridiculous figure a party of men may cut in the woods when the way is uncertain and the mountains high.

We left our team at a farmhouse near the head of the Mill Brook, one June afternoon, and with knapsacks on our shoulders struck into the woods at the base of the mountain, hoping to cross the range that intervened between us and the lake by sunset.  We engaged a good-natured but rather indolent young man, who happened to be stopping at the house, and who had carried a knapsack in the Union armies, to pilot us a couple of miles into the woods so as to guard against