od provider," except in providing trout in their
season, though it is doubtful if there was always fat in the house
to fry them in. But he could tell you they were worse off than that
at Valley Forge, and that trout, or any other fish, were good
roasted in the ashes under the coals. He had the Walton requisite of
loving quietness and contemplation, and was devout withal. Indeed,
in many ways he was akin to those Galilee fishermen who were called
to be fishers of men. How he read the Book and pored over it, even
at times, I suspect, nodding over it, and laying it down only to
take up his rod, over which, unless the trout were very dilatory and
the journey very fatiguing, he never nodded!

II

The Delaware is one of our minor rivers, but it is a stream beloved
of the trout. Nearly all its remote branches head in mountain
springs, and its collected waters, even when warmed by the summer
sun, are as sweet and wholesome as dew swept from the grass. The
Hudson wins from it two streams that are fathered by the mountains
from whose loins most of its beginnings issue, namely, the Rondout
and the Esopus. These swell a more illustrious current than the
Delaware, but the Rondout, one of the finest trout streams in the
world, makes an uncanny alliance before it reaches its destination,
namely, with the malarious Wallkill.

In the same nest of mountains from which they start are born the
Neversink and the Beaverkill, streams of wondrous beauty that flow
south and west into the Delaware. From my native hills I could
catch glimpses of the mountains in whose laps these creeks were
cradled, but it was not till after many years, and after dwelling in
a country where trout are not found, that I returned to pay my
respects to them as an angler.

My first acquaintance with the Neversink was made in company with
some friends in 1869. We passed up the valley of the Big Ingin,
marveling at its copious ice-cold springs, and its immense sweep of
heavy-timbered mountain-sides. Crossing the range at its head, we
struck the Neversink quite unexpectedly about the middle of the
afternoon, at a point where it was a good-sized trout stream. It
proved to be one of those black mountain brooks born of innumerable
ice-cold springs, nourished in the shade, and shod, as it were, with
thick-matted moss, that every camper-out remembers. The fish are as
black as the stream and very wild. They dart from beneath the
fringed rocks, or dive with the hook int