We have the usual complement of campers and tourists in the Park this season. The former are mostly of our own mossbacks; but it will not do to call the tenderfoot by any less dignified title than a tourist. I saw one of the latter start out the other morning for a day’s sport. He had a rifle and a shot-gun, a game-bag, a fishing rod and creel; he remarked to me, as he climbed up on the off side of his horse, that he was pretty well fixed for a day’s campaign. I told him I thought he was, but suggested that he ought to take along a bass drum to beat up the game, and, do you know, the fellow got mad and made me apologize. If he had only kept me in front of his infernal arsenal, I never would have modified my suggestion, but he threatened me over his shoulder, and that looked dangerous. He came back at night, to my surprise, but brought neither fish, flesh nor fowl; it is perhaps needless to say he was the only disappointed party in the Park.
A strict enforcement of the game and fish law would be an advantage to this vicinity. The Park is easy of access, and when the railroads, or either of them now under construction, shall be completed, the Park and its surroundings, a very paradise for sportsmen, can be made the most attractive resort in the state. Why, it is worth a day’s journey to sit where I do now, under the shadow of a pine whose every sigh in the cool breeze is freighted with fragrance, and feast on the massively beautiful scenery. A foreground of a mile or two of meadow rich in green and gold; the beetling lava cliffs on the left, and the brown hills, studded with great piles of granite, sloping gently down to the margins of the Grand. The noble stream flecked with silver, rolling majestically along and keeping time to its own melody, while away beyond lies the range for a background, with Long’s Peak, o’ertopped with fleecy clouds to serve him as a diadem, to be changed to a turban of rainbow tints for evening dress. And the sunsets that gather about the head of the rugged giant! You who view them from the other side should sit under the shadow of Mount Bross and see the cloud tints that crown His Majesty. Your view from the eastern side shows but the work of a tyro; from this the accomplished task of the master. If I had the gift I spoke of, you should see it as I do; as it is, there is nothing left but to come over and take it in for yourself. You can have a change of programme every day, and when you tire of the pictures, if you can, it is easy climbing a few hundred feet to find a dozen others just as grand and no twins. I suppose many a fellow has glanced over his shoulder up the Grand and seen a mountain with a notch in it, no more, not even a patch of color. But ten to one of these have seen something more and yet made a hearty meal of flitch and potatoes.
MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY.
Without fair success with rod and line, a camping trip, to some at least, would be a failure. The weather giving fair promise, I started over the divide below the Springs to revisit several familiar pools and riffles down the Grand, in anticipation of a good morning’s sport. The forenoon was expended with half a dozen trout and as many miles’ tramp as the result. Life is not worth living without a disappointment now and then. I met with a decided failure where I had rarely had anything but success, and it sharpened my appetite—for dinner.
A day or two after I was joined by my familiar and guide, the Doctor, who is an animated encyclopedia not only of the Park, but of the state, and we forthwith put up a job, as it were, upon the denizens of Williams’ Fork. Nine o’clock found us on the banks of that beautiful stream, our horses picketed and we ready to meet any emergency that might arise—that’s a new name for ’em. The Doctor started up stream and I took to the bed of the creek about half a mile from its mouth. Twenty minutes and not the sight of a fin. I also began to think that Williams’ Fork was depleted. Brown hackles and gray, and a half dozen other newfangled varieties not named to me, had no more effect than the wiles of a three-card-monte dealer have upon one who “has been there.” I thought of lying down upon the bank and seriously playing with the garter snakes, but changed my mind and put on a gray hackle with a peacock-body. Result, a trout. I had found the color to tickle their fancy for the day.
Trout and—and—women are very much alike; few men know much about either, unless you take their own words for it. Both are handsome, of course, delicate in taste, fickle as to ornament, not otherwise, and always too confiding in that which is least to be relied on. I felt sorry for that trout as I slipped her into my creel; they are such short-sighted fish—I’ll not say why—but they exact the angler’s care, and carry out the simile admirably. Had I offered that trout a worm for breakfast, the chances are ten to one she would have inquired whether I took her for a sucker. But it occurs to me all at once that I am on delicate ground—the current runs five miles an hour, the water is above my knees and the rocks are slippery; to fall is easy as—lying; the fate of our common ancestor is a warning.
By the time I had reached the Grand I had about seven pounds of fair-sized trout, besides having returned with all possible gentleness to the water a number of small-fry. I did not consider it much of a catch, as upon more than one occasion over the same ground I had filled my fourteen-pound creel in the same time. The Grand looked tempting as I waded out into the deep, clear current at the confluence of the streams, and dropped the peacock as far out in the deep pool as I could. I took that fly out in a hurry as I saw the gaping mouth of a leviathan, to my imagination, about to take it off. I speedily had the fly changed to one upon which I could rely, and commissioned it to that pool on business of moment. It had no sooner touched the surface than the glistening sides of my much-coveted triumph shone in the brilliant sunlight, clear of the water, as he darted for the fly and—missed. I thought the fish a little nervous, and I sent the falsehood over into the pool again; as soon as it touched the tiny wavelets that roofed the haunt of his excellency he was again visible, shooting from out the depths straight to his destiny. He reached it, and for a second lay poised as if in inquiry, and then, realizing that he had “struck it,” disappeared as suddenly as he had come. I realized, too, that I had struck it. There was music in the air—the music of the reel—and that trout danced to the measure with fifty feet of line before he allowed an inch of slack. He was nervous; there was plenty of water, a hundred feet at least, to the opposite bank, and miles up or down stream; there was no reason whatever for uneasiness—on the part of the fish I mean. But he seemed as much disturbed as ever when the slack was all in, and I, quietly and in as dignified but determined a manner as smooth stones and rubber boots would permit, backed up to the dry beach. Exhibiting the utmost reluctance to being thus led by the nose, he suddenly took it into his head to come voluntarily, started my way, but as suddenly changed his mind; the reel accommodated his whim and played a waltz; the old fellow, however, soon got giddy and asked for a rest; there could be no bar to so reasonable a request, paradoxical as it may seem; I immediately relieved him of the weight of the loose silk and gave him the privilege of a closer inspection of the gentleman at my end of the line. Had any other man been in my place, I should have concluded that the fellow on the fly was not favorably impressed, as he started with celerity on another trip across the Grand. Being myself a man of benignant appearance, I concluded, of course, that he had become enamored of the sound of the reel and was delighted that I had taken a hand in the revelry. Humanity, however, has not the monopoly on making mistakes, and as the reel was evidently taking a turn—this time at a dead march—I towed the gentleman round and gently drew him out on the clean gravel. He measured just nineteen inches; when I first saw him I thought he was “a yard long,” but even with his nineteen inches his capacity for conferring happiness was immeasurable. As I relieved his mouth of the hook, the Doctor, who had come down to me unawares, startled me with the remark, “You seem to take a heap of delight in catching a sucker.” There was a maliciousness in his tone that led me at once to inquire what success he had met with; his open creel disclosed three only, that would not weigh half as much as my capture; they were the result of his morning’s work. My own dignity will sometimes get the better of my reverence, and I read him a homily on envy.