people of Cincinnati, and of Connersville and other Indiana cities. In early days there was a canal leading from the Ohio River at Lawrenceburg up the beautiful Whitewater Valley to Hagerstown, which is only twenty miles from the head of the West Fork. The canal fell into disuse, and a railroad was built on its towpath, through Connersville, Brookville and on to Cincinnati. But the basin of the canal remains alongside the railroad, and it mutely

tells an interesting story of other days. The fisherman and lover of nature, which every fisherman is, may find no more entrancing place to spend his vacation than in the Whitewater Valley at and below Brookville.

THE KANKAKEE.

Along half its course, where its beauties have not been marred by attempts to clear up and "improve" the low lands lying ad

jacent to it, the Kankakee River looks much as it must have appeared to the first settlers. It courses through a forest of great elms and other trees such as grow on wet ground, and the branches of these hang near, or touch, the water. Some of the trees are beautifully hung with vines, and, all in all, the scenery is altogether unlike that of any other river in Indiana. A ride in a motor boat up or down the Kankakee between Water Valley, where the main lin? of the Monon cresses it, and English Lake, is like a trip to fairyland. Beautiful birds flush at every turn. Kingfishers, green hercns, great blue herons, wood ducks, mallards, hawks, owls, cccasionally a great eagle, many read heads, flickers, redwings, divers, mudhens-all these and others are there in plenty. And, frightened by your boat, inaking strong waves in two or three feet of water, will run great fish-often shools of them-you wonder what kinds and what their size, they disturb the water so surprisingly. Set your hooks for them. Some of them are carp, but not all; many are catfish, up to fifteen pounds, wall-eyed pike of like weight, ordinary pike, or pickerel of weight ofttimes nearly twice as great, and bass, large and small-mouthed, up to five and six pounds.

Several sportmen's clubs of Chicago and Indiana have leased many thousands of acres of the low lands along the river and holi them for the fine duck hunting there each spring and fall. And in the prairies farther back are many thousands of prairie chickens that are being carefully protected in the hope that from them in time the rest of the State can be stocked.

If I could have my way about it the lands along both sides of the Kankakee for thirty or forty miles, where they have not yet been ruined by ditching, would be purchased by the State and set apart forever as a refuge for wild life and a public park for pleasure seekers. Above English Lake most of the river has been dredged and now appears as a straight and ugly ditch. The land along it is sandy and pcr. Farther down I hope it is still sandier and poorer, so that there can be re profit in its "improvement" by ditching, as to ditch it there as has been done above, would be little les; then a crime against posterity.

The Kankakee region is the one place left in all Indiana where wild life exists much as it did before civilization came to the State:

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