ich there enter the lake. In a quiet
bay near the fringe of _Pistia_ and water-lilies, where the water was
five or six feet deep, we trolled with a spoon for black bass, and took
some of very large size,--eight, ten and twelve pounds....

What adds much to the interest of fishing in strange waters is the
uncertainty of the sport and the variety of species; and in this lake
we could not tell whether the next offer would be from a peaceful perch,
a bounding bass, a piratical pike, or a gigantic gar. I put a chub, or
a fish resembling it, eight or nine inches long upon a gang of large
hooks, and cast it astern with a hand-line. Presently I saw a great
roll towards it from out the weeds, and my line stopped short. I had
something very heavy, which, however, played in the sluggish fashion of
the pike family, and in ten minutes, without much resistance, I had it
alongside the canoe, and it was gaffed by Pecetti. It was a huge
pike, four feet four inches long, and weighed, when we got to camp,
thirty-four pounds. Pecetti called it the striped pike, and said he had
seen them six feet long in some of the lakes: perhaps _Esox vittatus_
(Rafinesque) of the Mississippi Basin.

By this time the gars had collected about us in such numbers that the
other fish were driven away: we found it impossible to get a hook into
their bony jaws or bills, and only succeeded in capturing one of small
size by slipping a noose over its head as it followed the bait. This
gar-fish is useless as food, but we wanted a few specimens for Dr.
White, it being in demand for museums, particularly in foreign
countries, as it belongs to a species exclusively American, and
represents an order of fishes (the ganoids) of which few families at
present exist. This one, _Lepidosteus_, has a wide range in America,
being found from Florida to Wisconsin. Another American ganoid is _Amia
calva_, the dog-fish or bow-fin, which is very numerous in Western
rivers. Both are voracious, but unfit for food. They are described by
Agassiz as being of an old-fashioned type, such as were common in the
earlier geologic periods, and this is one among many proofs that North
America is the oldest of the continents.

Morris, Vincent, and the other hunters brought in to-day a large supply
of game,--deer, turkeys, and ducks,--but sustained the loss of one of
Morris's deer-hounds, which they supposed to have been taken by an
alligator while swimming a lake in pursuit of a deer. They were