[Illustration: S]treams, from which the angler can soon fill his basket with trout, are not wanting in these mountains. It is the cold, pure waters, that spring from the perpetual fountains of the heights, that this royal fish inhabits. Show me a swift and amber-colored stream, babbling down the mountain slope under dense, luxurious forests, and, between laureled banks, issuing with rapids and cascades into a primitive valley, and I will insure that in it swims, in countless numbers, the prized fish of the angler. You or I may not be able to demonstrate this assertion; but the urchin with smiling face, yellow hair, torn shirt, suspenderless pantaloons, bare feet, and legs nude to his knees--this untaught boy, who lives in yonder homely hut amid the chestnut trees--will soon convince you of the truth of what I say, and besides, give you a few points, impossible to secure from piscatorial books, on how to catch the trout. I do not mean to say that the angler will meet with success at every point on one of these streams; for along its lower stretches, as the primeval character of the valley vanishes, as the water grows warmer under frequent floods of sunshine, and, losing its resinous color, flows with glassy surface between more open banks, the sport becomes less captivating, until only the chub and shiner rise to the fly. The best trout-fishing, like the best hunting, is to be found in the wildest sections. The advance of civilization lessens the sport as rapidly as it thins the herds of deer along the wooded margins of the streams. Whether it be the disturbance of the waters by the line of active saw-mills, that with each year reaches deeper into the mountain solitudes, and the receding of the forests beneath the woodman’s axe; or the advent of the barefoot angler, that effects this change, makes no difference with my statement; for it is advancing civilization that brings them both. But few persons are unfamiliar with the trout. What they have not learned from actual experience concerning its habits and appearance, has been obtained from books. The trout has been a standing theme for poets, and more has been written about it than any other fish. That honest and enthusiastic old angler, Isaak Walton, thus sums up, in a few words, his nature and habits: