The Collector Went Up The Stream To
Examine A Meadow At Its Head With Reference To The Quantity Of Hay It
Might Yield For His Cow, Fishing By The Way.
All the Indians except
the two eldest boys who joined the Collector, remained among the
berries.
The fishermen had rather poor luck, owing, they said, to the sunny
brightness of the day, a complaint seldom heard in this climate. They
got good exercise, however, jumping from boulder to boulder in the
brawling stream, running along slippery logs and through the bushes
that fringe the bank, casting here and there into swirling pools at
the foot of cascades, imitating the tempting little skips and whirls
of flies so well known to fishing parsons, but perhaps still better
known to Indian boys. At the lake-basin the Collector, after he had
surveyed his hay-meadow, went around it to the inlet of the lake with
his brown pair of attendants to try their luck, while I botanized in
the delightful flora which called to mind the cool sphagnum and carex
bogs of Wisconsin and Canada. Here I found many of my old favorites
the heathworts - kalmia, pyrola, chiogenes, huckleberry, cranberry,
etc. On the margin of the meadow darling linnaea was in its glory;
purple panicled grasses in full flower reached over my head, and some
of the carices and ferns were almost as tall. Here, too, on the edge
of the woods I found the wild apple tree, the first I had seen in
Alaska.
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