Camping on the St. Lawrence; Or, On the Trail of the Early Discoverers

by Everett T. Tomlinson

“There’ll be a pitched battle between those men before they get home,” said Bert.

“Oh, no, the’ won’t,” said the driver; “it’s just the way with them. They’re as jealous of one another as all possessed, but they’re good friends, too. But I guess Hank McBride won’t put on quite so many airs as he’s been doin’ of late. He’s a notion he’s the only fellow that can take out a party hereabouts.”

About an hour and a half later the boys drove up in front of their hotel, and, leaving their driver to look after their fish, ran up to their rooms, and speedily prepared for the dinner which was ready for them.

When they at last came out of the dining room and appeared on the piazza, they beheld a small crowd assembled about a spot on the lawn. When they joined the group, they discovered that their fish were the objects which had drawn the spectators. Many were the exclamations of astonishment at the number and size of the victims, and when at last the people departed, the boys were left to themselves.

What to do with their catch then became the question. They had talked of packing the muscallonge in ice and forwarding it to their parents in New York, but the intense heat and the thought of possible delays had seemed to make that impracticable. They had finally decided to give them all to the proprietor of the hotel, and had just turned to enter the office to inform the clerk of their decision, when a man approached and accosted Jock.

To the lad’s surprise he recognized him as a friend of his father’s, and, after introducing him to his friends, the man expressed a desire that the huge muscallonge should be given to him if the boys had no other plan of disposing of it; and, wondering at his urgency, and aware that the remainder of their catch would be ample for all the immediate wants of the hotel, they readily consented.

It was some three weeks afterward when they learned that the man to whom they had presented their prize had first had a photograph of himself and his two boys taken with fishing-rods in their hands, and the monstrous fish in the foreground, and had then shipped the fish to the editor of the local paper of the village in which his home was. A marked copy of this paper had been sent the boys, in which they read a long account of the struggle this man and his boys had in catching the muscallonge, and how, at last, success had crowned their efforts, and in their generosity they had sent their prize, “which weighed some sixty pounds,” to the editor himself. Great are the ways of fishermen, and marvellous the increase in weight which some fish attain after they have been drawn from their native waters! All that, however, is an outside matter, and as our boys did not learn of the various uses to which their prize was assigned until weeks had passed, it has no legitimate part in the records of this story.

Promptly at the appointed hour on the following morning George appeared before the hotel, and the boys took their seats in his wagon to be carried back to the Landing. It was evident that George was in no wise downcast over the envious charges of his rival boatman on the preceding day, and as they rode on he explained to them many of the points of interest in the region.

As there was an abundance of time before the departure of their boat for Ogdensburgh, they were all eager to examine the places he described, and as he had dwelt particularly upon the attractions of a neighboring cemetery,—“graveyard,” George called it,—they consented to stop and visit it.