flye for darknesse, the red flye in medio, and the black flye for lightnesse." This was his receipt for night fishing, and any one who has read Colonel Venable's Night Fishing will see that what he wrote came from Barker's Delight. The full title of the charming book is, "Barker's Delight, or The art of Angling. By Thomas Barker, an ancient practitioner in the said art."

CHAPTER XII

THE SALMON OF MONTEREY

NEARLY all the old explorers who sailed

north from Mexico speak of the salmon and its vast schools in and about the bay of Monterey. The Californians have fished them for years, yet few eastern anglers understand that there is famous sport to be had in the big bay with the fish supposed to be the king of the fresh-water game. But the salmon of the Pacific coast is very different from the long silvery fellow taken in Newfoundland, the streams of the St. Lawrence, and Great Britain. He is of several kinds and of such strange and unaccountable habit that one takes a second look at Dr. Jordan when he tells the story, and wonders whether this is a fish story or a story of a fish, between which there is supposed by wags to be a difference.

Thus Dr. Jordan tells us that in going upstream, a salmon of a certain kind will turn up a river that leads to a lake in which they spawn, while its companion keeps on to the next river which does not begin in a lake.

How these fishes

know the difference or why there should be a difference is one of the piscatorial nuts which you and I need not worry about as we are going a-fishing. Then Dr. Jordan tells us that the forty-pound salmon we are in search of at Monterey dies after it spawns, hundreds of miles from the sea, and worst of all is the trait of the Pacific coast salmon told in the story. It seems that when the American government was considering the purchase of Alaska from Russia the English government objected, but an old salmon-fishing English angler settled the question at a conference with the following remark: "Oh, let the d- Yankees have it, the salmon won't rise to a fly." And so we got Alaska for a bagatelle, and its salmon fisheries, alone worth ten times the amount of the purchase price.

This is true, the salmon will not rise to a fly, though I remember an article on the Klackamas by Kipling in which he described his catches with the fly, and how he and a nameless companion pranced up the sands and landed the big fish. This, doubtless, was one of the few exceptions, and I conclude that Kipling had some peculiar flies which he has kept to himself ever since.

If the salmon will not take a fly, they make up for it by rising to a spoon, or sardine bait, in a fashion to delight the most critical angler, and I can imagine no more inspiriting scene

than to go out in Monterey Bay in July, August, and September and follow the vast schools. The fish appear in June or July and gather about the mouths of the rivers, and in the great bay, ready for the later ascent to the spawning grounds. You may take your choice of places. The little town of Monterey, the ancient capital of California, is a charming place, and here is a salmon fishery; hence the facts regarding the fish can be had at first-hand, with an abundance of boats to go out in, while the town and Del Monte, a beautiful park, a veritable game preserve, is a fascination in itself. Here are groves of the restful Monterey cypress in whose shadows are pools stocked with black bass, and reaching away from this salmon fishers' paradise are roads which might be a part of a city park, which lead you down the picturesque coast to the old mission or out toward the Gabilan range where you climb steep trails, and in winter look down upon one of the most extraordinary flower gardens in the world-acres, miles of flowers which fill the valleys and race away up to the mountain chaparral, a blaze of color, making the entire land a Field of the Cloth of Gold, and in the centre a little lake of the deepest blue in a setting of gold and green, purple and red. Then there are the laurels, groves, forests of them, filling the little cañons. You see them when you are casting for trout in the Carmelo,

and you stroll into them and trace up the rich odor of the leaves, that, when crushed, fill the air with incense.

Indeed, it is not all fishing, or salmon, or trout, when you are on a fishing trip around Monterey, as there are many allurements that keep you, ashore, away from the water, which is well, as one may even have too much of salmon fishing.

Then there is Capitola, on the opposite side of the bay, and Santa Cruz, at the foot of the splendid mountains of the same name. At all these places hotels or inns are found directly on the coast, and a fleet of boats to take the anglers out. I found them all equally inviting and different.

One summer I made my headquarters at Del Monte and fished the Carmelo, a trout stream a few miles distant. About fifteen miles from the sea, at Los Laurelles, was a little inn from which I could reach the trout stream in ten minutes, and following this radiant stream down to the mission I looked out on the smooth Pacific, and the finest salmon fishing on the coast. So with the aid of a team one can fish for trout one day and salmon the next, but if we are after salmon alone we remain at the attractive town of Del Monte, which is only comparable to a beautiful English estate where age has left its imprint in big trees. The wharf of the town reaches far