Forgotten Treasures #9: TROUTING ON THE BRULÉ RIVER --PART 2

TROUTING ON THE BRULÉ RIVER OR SUMMER-WAYFARING IN THE NORTHERN WILDERNESS*

By John Lyle King.

Part 2, a representative chapter:
_________________________________________________

CHAPTER III.

While woodsmen, the weather prospects were our first concern. Beyond the
range of Old Probabilities and his reports, we could only forecast the
changes from the air and skies. To be drenched in the rain, or to shiver in
a raw atmosphere, was not favorable to enterprises of pith and moment. The
early morning signs, when we looked out and read the heavens, were
portentous of showers, and boded no pleasant starting of our Alton friends
downward, or of our own starting upward. The tokens however, somewhat later,
were more hopeful. The cloudiness while we were breakfasting and then
smoking, partially dispersed, and fitful glimpses of sun came through, and
much enlivened the prospects of the day and ourselves. The Alton party, when
it was seen that no more than showers, and not torrents of rain were
probable, struck its tent and shipped its impedimenta into the batteau; and
after an exchange of warm parting civilities, embarked and rapidly dropped
down out of view.

Our care was, then, to pack up and pack off. Our mission of sport would not
really begun until we were on the bosom of the Brulé. We thought ourselves
weather-wise enough to predict a dry, if not clear day, so we out hopefully.
There were rapids at the mouth of the river. The Indians forced the canoes
up the foaming torrent. We passed them by a flank movement on foot. High and
Bissell sometimes tarried at points, and risked a footing on unsteady logs
on the shore to throw a fly. The only success they had for their pains, was
to permanently hang some of their tackle on obstructive limbs.

When re-embarked, Pratt and myself, with Kaquotash and Thebault, manned the
large birch, and as the armament was borne by it, it was the gunboat of the
flotilla. As we were now making headway into the supposed domain of deer,
bear, wolf, fox, mink, muskrat and duck, it was fit that our crafts should
lead the advance. It was Pratt's mission to deal with any hapless creature
of the Brulé animal kingdom that might appear.

Up to noon noy a trout was taken. This did not dishearten us, for we had not
yet touched the verge of the trout fishing proper. But, after lunch, and an
hour further on, the luring fly began to strike the responsive fish. The
canoes were held at a stand, by the setting poles, at intervals, and the
water was vigorously whipped with casts. As a troutsman, I was the decided
novice of the party. My throwing was rather wild, and Pratt was more
particular about it than I was, watching it more than he did his own, and,
though I did not cause him an optical catastrophe by whirling the hook in
his eyes, he feared I would. As to twisting my line with his, or wrapping it
round his rod, he didn't mind that much. It was merely our good luck that
the canoe did not capsize, when he ducked his head down, on one side, to
give my line clear swing, and threw her out of trim. His patience was above
all praise. "Look out, King!" was the sharpest of his cautionary
expostulations. I tried to look out, and I know he did himself, vigilantly
look out. Nor had I the trained cunning of hand to securely fasten a fish.
My jerking was too soon or too tardy. Pratt, however, was good enough to
encourage me by telling me I would soon get my hand in.

George ran the canoe to a large boulder which parted the river into swirls
below it. I preferred it for a base to cast from, rather than from the
canoe, in which I did not dare perpendicularity. I stepped out on the rock,
and cast a fresh fly. In a twinkling it was snatched at, and to my surprise,
I had really struck a trout of dimensions, as was plain from the lively
struggle it made. But I brought him in. It was about a fourteen-ouncer. It
was the first trout I ever caught. The achievement brought down the house,
and the whole party huzzaed with a will. I was one told that the sensation
of catching one's first trout was akin to a father's elation over his first
baby. That was a criterion of the ecstatic of which I had had only hearsay
experience, but, though in the taking of the trout there was a bit of
satisfaction, it did not electrify me into thrills of delight, even though
my victim, by its size, dwarfed the pettier catches of the day.

The clouds began ominous lowering, and provident forethought moved us on to
the intended camping place. George and Thebault knew the river and the
eligibilities of shores, ground, situation, distance, etc., for encampment,
and had an aforethought spot selected. In the previous summer Thebault had
camped and cooked there in the service of our bar brethren, George C.
Campbell and Burton C. Cook, of Chicago. We pushed on steadily, so as to
forerun the rain. Bissell's taste of the sport was not satisfied with random
casts from the canoe. He turned up his breeches and stepped out to wade the
riffles and currents at will, in quest of more trout. He was left groping
and stumbling all about in the water, to be returned for with a canoe to
carry him to camp.

The camping ground was a high, steep grassy bank, at a bend, and with a
space, under immense trees, already cleared for prior camps. We had come to
it in complacent mood. We had made a fair start in trouting. The record of
the day, not so much for its count--fifty-five--but as a promise of better
yet to come, a catching that was but a cheering prologue to the more lavish
performance that was to follow, was eminently satisfactory. We were just
enough fagged to make rest enjoyable, and hungry enough to make the evening
culinary process most appetizing. Of course our board--literally so, a box
cover--was luxuriously spread with a fry of trout, the first banquet of the
fins to which we sat, and that, too, with stomach enough, Indian appetites
included, to clear the platters.

While George was going down to bring Bissell in from his angling waddle in
the stream, he started a deer. When he afterwards told us this, Pratt
pricked up his ears, taking it for granted that the buck was a straggler or
forerunner of a herd not far off in the woods, and his eyes glistened at the
thought that if there was such game afoot, there must be sport ahead. The
mosquitoes burdened the air with their songs, but the oil and tar with which
we copiously anointed ourselves served to repel them to respectful distance,
until, at least, the malodorous unguent lost its effect, and then the
slicking was repeated. On the whole, in that, our first camping on the
Brulé, an eminent sense of satisfaction as to the day itself, and as to the
prospects ahead, pervaded the whole party.

I turned in early, with a slight headache. My comrades had no idea of
prematurely retiring with too much trout to healthily go to bed with; and
while the camp-fire was wasting to embers and ashes, they reclined in the
tent, in the fading reflection of the dying light. They were not, then, the
contemplative men anglers are said to be. Between the snatches of sleep, I
heard high discourse among them about Darwin, evolution, Swedenborgianism,
and also other rambling profundities of theory and speculation. When their
jaws wearied at last of their verbosity and of what, in my somnolence,
appeared incoherent and windy twaddle, another perturbing element to prevent
an "exposition of sleep" coming upon me, was a rain which set in. This of
itself should have proved only a gentle lullaby to slumber, but, to the
common dismay, it was found that the tent was leaky, and the shower was
dripping through it.

Our concern was more for the provisions than for ourselves, and though the
ponchos at hand had not been a success on the wagon route, in the way of
shedding continuous torrents, they were impervious to the drip of the leaks,
and the stores already in the tent were covered with rubber coats. These
protected the commissariat well enough, but left us exposed to the drizzle.
However, the general humidity and discomfort of the situation, and the
dampness of "the drapery of the couch," did not prevent the party from
finally settling into stillness again, and from slumbers that would have
been refreshing if they had been more prolonged. But the mosquitoes swarmed
early to their morning onset, and brought us to the scratch and fretted us
mercilessly. Even the customary dope lost some of its repelling virtue. The
consequence was, we were irritated and unwilling early risers.

For the breakfast, Thebault eclipsed all his previous culinary successes, in
the way of fried cornmeal cakes, in Indian style. Probably a knack for
preparing the native maize, in its simple and natural excellence, is an
inherited or traditional trick of the native race, but, in this instance,
Indian instinct was blended with enlightened art in forming a superb
farinaceous product. Our salle a manger was the ground under spreading
foliage. We squatted on blanket bundles, or on a log, for sitting at the
board. The crockery and china service were platters, and cups of tin, span
new. They were better to us than pieces of Sevres or porcelain. Though not
decorated with any of the infinite designs or tracings of the ceramic art,
in their glistening spotless lustre we could see our own broadened and
grinning faces reflected.

High, thinking the shining morning calm was propitious for working up his
diary, carefully fixed himself in the mossy root of a tree, opened his neat
morocco-covered red-edged note book, began jotting down, for the spouse at
home, the events--a kind of pilgrim's progress--of the trip. The arrearage
of the past days of our itinerancy, the book so far being innocent of a
single diarial pencil trace, appeared too much for any reasonable patience
and diligence at his command. Besides, to recall and set down the
wretchedness of our first days on the road in the rain and in the dumps,
was, in a degree, to renew and go through all those infelicities again. He
preferred not to live them over, even by way of reminiscence. He said he was
disgusted; that a diary was a plague anyhow; that his promise to his wife
was neither willing nor considerate; that to keep it was not practicable;
that his cue, now, was the rod and not the pencil. He was on the point of
declaring an absolute rescission of the contract with his wife. I ventured
to remonstrate with him, and rallied him on the enormity of his threatened
recreancy to the obligations of loving and well regulated husbandry. He said
he would further consider, and at least would pledge to us all that he would
tabulate in his note-book the figures of our fishing.

It was Sunday, and we had the Sunday question to deal with. How to put in
the day--read, sleep, fish? There was a limited supply of profane literature
in camp, but not any sacred, suited to the day. No Moses or Matthew, but
some Victor Hugo and Wilkie Collins. For short exercises in reading that
would not over-tax the mind, I had Timb's "Century of Anecdote." All of it
was pretty thin nutriment and not at all sanctifying and but slightly more
entertaining. The fact was, we had an impression that reading, even novel
reading, was rather out of order, or an incongruity, in a party the first
postulate of whose programme was complete mental rest. The trip was intended
as a furlough and off-duty to the collective and individual brains of the
Chicago galaxy. By no very subtle casuistry we satisfied ourselves that
literature was, therefore, not just the recreation for the day before us.

High, as the veteran, experienced in Sabbatizing in the woods, after some
yawning and wearisome lounging, equipped himself for reverent diversion with
the fishes, and committed himself to Tom and the canoe for combined
meditation and fly-fishing, up the silent river. The example contagiously
infected Pratt and myself, and, under the guidance of Thebault, our canoe
was sped on the waters in similar quest of edification and trout. Bissell
was truer to the day, to the traditions of his Christian ancestry, and to
the teachings of the shorter catechism. He laid his rod on the slope of the
tent for unbroken Sunday rest. He remained in the camp, and, on the plea of
necessity, employed a considerable degree of his thoughtful reverence for
the day in patching his breeches and in overhauling his rig, and then
further satisfied his meditative disposition in a solemn perusal of one of
Victor Hugo's romances. His sartorial efforts would have done credit to one
of those nine wiseacre tailor of Tooley street.

We stopped here and there at hap-hazard to cast about us. We could get rises
at nearly any point. I was more than ever satisfied how little I knew, and
how much I had to learn, of trout fishing, and that I was not particularly
well fitted out to learn. My earlier piscatorial experiences and trophies of
any at all notable sort with game fishes were wholly those of bass-fishing
in Southern Indiana. I had, without conferring with any one who could have
enlightened me as to the best or the proper outfit, provided myself with
only a bass rod, of perhaps eighteen ounce weight. It is true, in choosing
it, I had an eye to use in the lacustral bonanzas of bass on and in reach of
our route of which I had heard. But even the taste, already, of trouting had
almost wholly disenamored me of bassing. The rod for bass, I now saw was not
the rod for trout. Mine had too little of the whip, or of springiness, and
required a more muscular arm than mine to wield it slashingly and
whizzingly. Just what it was not I knew from Pratt's slender and elastic
eight ounce rod, which he handled lithely and lightly, almost as freely as
if it were a lady's riding whip.

We landed at the head of a small island and in the shore chute, and Pratt
happened to strike a lusty trout, but in lifting it, got his rod demoralized
among the limbs, and lost the fish. The river was running comparatively
high, with the swell of the late rains. Most of the riffles of the normal
stage were covered and swollen into smooth, swift currents. It was easily
canoed with the pushing poles. They would strike bottom anywhere except in
rare deep holes. The water was little roiled even with the washes of the
rain; its bed was gravelly or rocky. As a consequence of the tumid volume of
the stream, the trout seemed dispersed from ordinary pools, and scattered
broadcast through the whole river at large, so that wherever we chose to
hold up, and cast from either side, we were almost sure of striking the
vagrant fish.

While out in the afternoon we were wetted with the usual shower. We very
little minded a sprinkle or a moderate rain. After we returned from our
cruising, Pratt went gunning, a few paces in the woods, and broke the solemn
forest silence with a show which brought down a solitary pigeon that was
stupid enough to moan its loneliness in a pinetree top so near the camp.
After the evening repast we loitered around the fire, some of us diligently
burning tobacco in the pipes and listening to the Indians, who related to us
their forest adventures, and incidents of their trapping mink, otter, martin
and beaver, in these and other regions. If we had needed more than the
oppressive stillness, the deep shadows and heavy foliage which overspread
us, to remind us that we were in the wilds of nature, the howl of a wolf
which we heard in the distance would have been assurance enough.

___________________________________________

End, Part 2.

That's all folks!


The complete text of this book is available from The Library of Congress as
a part of their "American Memory" collection at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umhome.html

The LOC copyright disclaimer for this collection is at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umres.html

To the best of my knowledge the use of this material here does not violate
any U.S. copyright law or LOC use policies.
___________________________________________
Wolfgang

"Wolfgang" wrote..

snip
..

I turned in early, with a slight headache. My comrades had no idea of
prematurely retiring with too much trout to healthily go to bed with; and
while the camp-fire was wasting to embers and ashes, they reclined in the
tent, in the fading reflection of the dying light. They were not, then,
the contemplative men anglers are said to be. Between the snatches of
sleep, I heard high discourse among them about Darwin, evolution,
Swedenborgianism, and also other rambling profundities of theory and
speculation. When their jaws wearied at last of their verbosity and of
what, in my somnolence, appeared incoherent and windy twaddle, another
perturbing element to prevent an "exposition of sleep" coming upon me, was
a rain which set in.

....Some things never change. Nor should they, I believe.



High, as the veteran, experienced in Sabbatizing in the woods, after some
yawning and wearisome lounging, equipped himself for reverent diversion
with the fishes, and committed himself to Tom and the canoe for combined
meditation and fly-fishing, up the silent river.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.


___________________________________________
Wolfgang

Great stuff.



Dan
....who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....

"Daniel-San" wrote in message
. net...

...Great stuff.



Dan
...who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....

LOC is good. There are many others. There is currently more free
literature available on the web than one could possibly read in a lifetime.
In fact, the volume is growing so fast that a lifetime could be spent merely
in keeping track of it. The trick today is to find and sort through what
one is interested in......and there's something for everyone's interests.
While the bulk of what's freely available is older stuff that has lapsed
into the public domain by virtue of expired copyright (despite the absurd
laws currently in force) there is also much that is hot off the
presses.....so to speak. Tons of stuff emanating from various governmental
agencies at all levels is never copyrighted and is thus freely available to
anyone who can find it. Lots of people are also writing things for free
distribution on their own hook.

It gets even better. In addition to plain text, there are also HTML
versions of many documents, allowing one to see what the originals look
like. There are also millions of photographs, film clips, maps, and other
graphic materials, and music. Want to see what your home town looked like
150 years ago? Look he

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/...ubjindex1.html

If you don't already have it, you'll need to download special software to
read these files. It's free, too. Learn all about it he

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/help/mrsid.html


If you're interested (or anyone else, for that matter), I've got URLs for
about 45 sites that list free e-books and other materials. There's a lot of
overlap, of course, and many of them only list other sources, but each one
has it's own uses. A few of good places to start (in no particular order):

The Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/

The Digital Book Index:
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/about.htm

The Internet Public Library:
http://www.ipl.org/

The Etext Archives:
http://www.etext.org/index.shtml

and, of course, Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/

Bon Voyage!

Wolfgang

Daniel-San wrote:

"Wolfgang" wrote..

snip
.

I turned in early, with a slight headache. My comrades had no idea of
prematurely retiring with too much trout to healthily go to bed with; and
while the camp-fire was wasting to embers and ashes, they reclined in the
tent, in the fading reflection of the dying light. They were not, then,
the contemplative men anglers are said to be. Between the snatches of
sleep, I heard high discourse among them about Darwin, evolution,
Swedenborgianism, and also other rambling profundities of theory and
speculation. When their jaws wearied at last of their verbosity and of
what, in my somnolence, appeared incoherent and windy twaddle, another
perturbing element to prevent an "exposition of sleep" coming upon me, was
a rain which set in.


...Some things never change. Nor should they, I believe.

When I read that passage the thought occurred to me that it sounded
just like ROFF. :-)

High, as the veteran, experienced in Sabbatizing in the woods, after some
yawning and wearisome lounging, equipped himself for reverent diversion
with the fishes, and committed himself to Tom and the canoe for combined
meditation and fly-fishing, up the silent river.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

___________________________________________
Wolfgang

Great stuff.

Absolutely. It makes me wish I had never posted my rambling
monologue disguised as a TR.


Dan
...who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....

*Everyone* needs to do that. :-)


Chuck Vance (and not just us liberrians and liberrian wannabes
like Wolfgang :-)

Wolfgang wrote:

If you're interested (or anyone else, for that matter), I've got URLs for
about 45 sites that list free e-books and other materials. There's a lot of
overlap, of course, and many of them only list other sources, but each one
has it's own uses. A few of good places to start (in no particular order):

The Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/

The Digital Book Index:
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/about.htm

The Internet Public Library:
http://www.ipl.org/

The Etext Archives:
http://www.etext.org/index.shtml

and, of course, Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/

You know, I think we could make a librarian out of you yet. :-)


Chuck Vance (not that there's anything wrong with that)

"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...

"Daniel-San" wrote in message
. net...

...Great stuff.



Dan
...who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....
Wolgang wrote:
LOC is good. There are many others. There is currently more free
literature available on the web than one could possibly read in a
lifetime. Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang. Nice piece and thanks for the links.
DaveMohnsen
Denver

"Wolfgang" wrote ...

"Daniel-San" wrote ...

...Great stuff.



Dan
...who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....

LOC is good. There are many others. There is currently more free
literature available on the web than one could possibly read in a
lifetime. In fact, the volume is growing so fast that a lifetime could be
spent merely in keeping track of it. The trick today is to find and sort
through what one is interested in......and there's something for
everyone's interests. While the bulk of what's freely available is older
stuff that has lapsed into the public domain by virtue of expired
copyright (despite the absurd laws currently in force) there is also much
that is hot off the presses.....so to speak. Tons of stuff emanating from
various governmental agencies at all levels is never copyrighted and is
thus freely available to anyone who can find it. Lots of people are also
writing things for free distribution on their own hook.

It gets even better. In addition to plain text, there are also HTML
versions of many documents, allowing one to see what the originals look
like. There are also millions of photographs, film clips, maps, and other
graphic materials, and music. Want to see what your home town looked like
150 years ago? Look he

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/...ubjindex1.html

Fun. A good hour or two spent looking at towns I've never heard of.

Emphasis on the word "good". :-)


Not really sure what it is that makes me facinated with old things. Perhaps
a bit of romance for a 'simpler' life. Perhaps, dare I say it, a bit of
"pageantry?" I have no idea. I do know that I look at the dates on every
coin I receive as change. Why? Because I think it's cool to hold a quarter
(dime, whatever) that is sixty, or seventy, or more years old. Certainly, a
coin can't tell its story, but imagine how many -- and whose -- hands have
touched that coin in its 'life'. Imagine what was purchased with it. Imagine
what work was done to earn it. A simple quarter -- a few grams of
essentially worthless metals melted together and emblazoned with a
picture -- can tell so much, all without saying anything. I'm no
numismatist -- I don't care about any monetary value an older coin may hold.
Nor do I much care about the appearance of its mint marks. I just like the
fact that this little trinket has witnessed so much of our history. In my
bizzarro world, receiving a coin in the normal course of a transaction that
is that old just makes me a part of our shared history. Buying an old penny
from a collector, however, is cheating.

So if I like quarters that much... imagine a map. Especially the ones of the
early colonial times. As an undergrad, I took a course that covered the
witch trials in Salem. (Interestingly, under the History and Women's Studies
rubrics.) Various theories were covered, and I suppose that some of them may
have held some merit, but what held my interest in the class (other than,
ahem, studying the women, of course) was the plethora of maps available for
study. They probably held some relevance to the topic at hand, but who
cared, I was into them for the stories they told. Buy a map of town X today,
and it'll show roads, hospitals, and some other points of interest (assuming
said points exist in town X, anyway). A map from the 17th or 18th century
(and, to a somewhat lesser degreee, IMO the 19th and early 20th, too) will
show not only roads, but where _everything_ was. It shows the pasture lands,
the common areas, the shops, the . . . It's very easy to get a feel for what
the place may have looked like. A difficult thing to accomplish with an
atlas today. Maybe it's a simple function of population growth, or changes
in cartographic method, or whatever, but maps today just tell you how to get
somewhere.


I guess I've rambled a lot. I just like old stuff that tells a story. Even
if I have to imagine that story.

Moral of the above: Thanks for the link to the maps. Very good stuff.

Dan

"Conan The Librarian" wrote ...
Daniel-San wrote:

"Wolfgang" wrote..

snip
.

I turned in early, with a slight headache. My comrades had no idea of
prematurely retiring with too much trout to healthily go to bed with; and
while the camp-fire was wasting to embers and ashes, they reclined in the
tent, in the fading reflection of the dying light. They were not, then,
the contemplative men anglers are said to be. Between the snatches of
sleep, I heard high discourse among them about Darwin, evolution,
Swedenborgianism, and also other rambling profundities of theory and
speculation. When their jaws wearied at last of their verbosity and of
what, in my somnolence, appeared incoherent and windy twaddle, another
perturbing element to prevent an "exposition of sleep" coming upon me,
was a rain which set in.


...Some things never change. Nor should they, I believe.

When I read that passage the thought occurred to me that it sounded
just like ROFF. :-)

Being somewhat 'new' around these parts, I refrained from saying same. But I
sure agree.



High, as the veteran, experienced in Sabbatizing in the woods, after some
yawning and wearisome lounging, equipped himself for reverent diversion
with the fishes, and committed himself to Tom and the canoe for combined
meditation and fly-fishing, up the silent river.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

___________________________________________
Wolfgang

Great stuff.

Absolutely. It makes me wish I had never posted my rambling monologue
disguised as a TR.

You kidding? That was a great story to read.




Dan
...who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....

*Everyone* needs to do that. :-)


Chuck Vance (and not just us liberrians and liberrian wannabes like
Wolfgang :-)



Dan

"Daniel-San" wrote in message
. com...

...Want to see what your home town looked like 150 years ago? Look he

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/...ubjindex1.html

Fun. A good hour or two spent looking at towns I've never heard of.

Emphasis on the word "good". :-)


Not really sure what it is that makes me facinated with old things.
Perhaps a bit of romance for a 'simpler' life. Perhaps, dare I say it, a
bit of "pageantry?" I have no idea. I do know that I look at the dates on
every coin I receive as change. Why? Because I think it's cool to hold a
quarter (dime, whatever) that is sixty, or seventy, or more years old.
Certainly, a coin can't tell its story, but imagine how many -- and
whose -- hands have touched that coin in its 'life'. Imagine what was
purchased with it. Imagine what work was done to earn it. A simple
quarter -- a few grams of essentially worthless metals melted together and
emblazoned with a picture -- can tell so much, all without saying
anything. I'm no numismatist -- I don't care about any monetary value an
older coin may hold. Nor do I much care about the appearance of its mint
marks. I just like the fact that this little trinket has witnessed so much
of our history. In my bizzarro world, receiving a coin in the normal
course of a transaction that is that old just makes me a part of our
shared history. Buying an old penny from a collector, however, is
cheating.

So if I like quarters that much... imagine a map. Especially the ones of
the early colonial times. As an undergrad, I took a course that covered
the witch trials in Salem. (Interestingly, under the History and Women's
Studies rubrics.) Various theories were covered, and I suppose that some
of them may have held some merit, but what held my interest in the class
(other than, ahem, studying the women, of course) was the plethora of maps
available for study. They probably held some relevance to the topic at
hand, but who cared, I was into them for the stories they told. Buy a map
of town X today, and it'll show roads, hospitals, and some other points of
interest (assuming said points exist in town X, anyway). A map from the
17th or 18th century (and, to a somewhat lesser degreee, IMO the 19th and
early 20th, too) will show not only roads, but where _everything_ was. It
shows the pasture lands, the common areas, the shops, the . . . It's very
easy to get a feel for what the place may have looked like. A difficult
thing to accomplish with an atlas today. Maybe it's a simple function of
population growth, or changes in cartographic method, or whatever, but
maps today just tell you how to get somewhere.


I guess I've rambled a lot. I just like old stuff that tells a story. Even
if I have to imagine that story.

Moral of the above: Thanks for the link to the maps. Very good stuff.

Nice exposition on old stuff. And, speaking of expositions, somewhere in
that mess of aerial views is a stunningly detailed rendition of Chicago's
1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Wish I could tell you exactly where, but
I changed the file names when I downloaded them. I could email it to you if
you like. It's a 14 megabyte file, and you'll need a MrSID file viewer.
Don't know if you're familiar with the story of the exposition, but it's an
interesting one. The Museum of Science and Industry is the only original
structure remaining. I'd heard a bit about it from time to time, but didn't
know much about it until I read "The Devil in the White City" a couple of
years ago. The story as told by Erik Larsen is a fascinating account of how
an impossible job got done in an amazingly short time......not quite short
enough to make the proposed opening on the 400th anniversary of Columbus's
landing.....but it was done fast nevertheless. The only thing that saves
this from being a REALLY good book is that Larsen seems to have lost his
mind entirely and tried to interweave an inane tale of a serial killer who
was working Chicago at the time into the story of the exposition.....which
it has absolutely nothing to do with.

If you're still interested in that Salem business, Mary Beth Norton's "In
the Devil's Snare" is an excellent and highly detailed chronicle of the
events in and around Salem. That's the good news. The bad news is that she
fails miserably (embarrassingly, I think) to support her thesis. As you
doubtless remember, many theories have been proposed to explain the bizarre
series of events that led eventually to the deaths of 21 people. None of
them has been entirely satisfactory. Norton, borrowing a page from modern
psychology, proposes that the girls and young women at the core of the
accusations all shared a common exposure to depredations by the local Indian
tribes at the margins of settled lands and were all suffering from what is
now called post traumatic stress syndrome. An interesting idea, which the
author outlines pretty well in the introductory matter......and then
virtually ignores until the conclusion, beginning on page 295. It looks as
if she had no confidence at all in her thesis and only pasted some crap in
at the end because she was afraid that someone would remember it from the
beginning. Oh well, everything in between is pretty good.

Wolfgang

"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
...
Daniel-San wrote:

"Wolfgang" wrote..

snip
.

I turned in early, with a slight headache. My comrades had no idea of
prematurely retiring with too much trout to healthily go to bed with; and
while the camp-fire was wasting to embers and ashes, they reclined in the
tent, in the fading reflection of the dying light. They were not, then,
the contemplative men anglers are said to be. Between the snatches of
sleep, I heard high discourse among them about Darwin, evolution,
Swedenborgianism, and also other rambling profundities of theory and
speculation. When their jaws wearied at last of their verbosity and of
what, in my somnolence, appeared incoherent and windy twaddle, another
perturbing element to prevent an "exposition of sleep" coming upon me,
was a rain which set in.


...Some things never change. Nor should they, I believe.

When I read that passage the thought occurred to me that it sounded
just like ROFF. :-)

Chapter III is fairly typical, I think........but that doesn't necessarily
mean that it's selection for inclusion here was entirely random.

High, as the veteran, experienced in Sabbatizing in the woods, after some
yawning and wearisome lounging, equipped himself for reverent diversion
with the fishes, and committed himself to Tom and the canoe for combined
meditation and fly-fishing, up the silent river.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

___________________________________________
Wolfgang

Great stuff.

Absolutely. It makes me wish I had never posted my rambling monologue
disguised as a TR.

Au contraire mon bookish frere, you have nothing at all to be ashamed of.
As a matter of fact, there is a LOT of stuff in ROFF that is every bit as
good as anything you'll find anywhere else, judged by any standard worth
considering. And I'm certain others think so as well. I'd bet a shniy new
nickel I wouldn't be the only person here thrilled to see someone mine the
archives and start up a "Best of ROFF" series.

Dan
...who apparently needs to poke around the LOC site a bit more....

*Everyone* needs to do that. :-)

Amen.

Chuck Vance (and not just us liberrians and liberrian wannabes like
Wolfgang :-)

My biggest fans never read I word I write. ;-)

Wolfgang
who knows there's nothing better than a good dose of roff to put a boy to
sleep with a smile on his face.