beneath which the trout hide, rising at vagrant insects which swarm and hang in midair, or play in the beams of light which come down through the leaves.

In midwinter this and all the cañons of the range are at their best, and doubtless in the old days many a party of friars with their neophytes spent the day in these charming resorts catching trout for the mission supply.

The splendid mission of Santa Barbara faces the sea at Santa Barbara, and its long line of arches presents an artistic, indeed imposing presence. No trout stream makes music here, but not far-three hours as the burros pleaseback in the range flows the Santa Ynez, which we have seen at La Purissima Concepcion, even to-day affording some of the best trout in California.

The mission of San Fernando Rey de Espagna in the Encino Valley, founded in 1797, looks out on a great valley surrounded by mountains down which pours the Los Angeles River, and one does not have to wander far from its long corridors to find a trout stream and trout. And so one might easily associate every mission in this monastic chain, from San Diego de Alcala to San Carlos Borromeo, with the quiet and beauty of trout streams. "Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so," was an epigram of Walton, and as angling is a vir

tuous and gentle art suggestive of silence, of pure waters, and gentle music, and the imagery of beautiful things in nature, it requires no strength of the imagination to associate the builders of the missions with the best of sports and pastimes. There is hardly a California mission whose chimes cannot be heard on some trout stream or good angling grounds, be it San Antonio de Padua, Santa Clara, San Buenaventura with its steelheads, or San José de Guadalupe, beyond which you may reach the trout streams of Mount Hamilton; San Antonio de Pala, on Pala Creek, San Antonio, or La Soledad.

True the streams are not large, and in summer are very small, especially those of the Coast Range, but the true angler is not after weight or size, and this was the philosophy of Walton; he went fishing not particularly to catch fish, merely using the pastime as a medium for the further enjoyment of nature. And so one may fish the streams of Southern California and incidentally find the fine old ruins along El Camino Real, or he may have the missions as the sole objective, in which case I would advise taking rod and line, a good selection of flies, and a well-thumbed Walton.

THE SONG OF THE TROUT STREAM (RIO CARMELO)

"BY

CHAPTER IX

THE DIVING COWS OF PLUMAS

Y the great horn spoon! but this is too much." The speaker, or rather the user, for this was an awful oath somewhere once, was an angler, and he was casting a yellow fly in one of the most charming streams in California, and in one of its most attractive pools. There was a long reach of river coming down between two rows of vivid green willows, which stood so even and so regular that they looked like green lines of men standing at attention. And well they might, as in front of them, parading up and down at their ease, very much at it indeed, were platoons, crowds, and companies of trout, so big, so fat, so active, so ready to jump, so everything, that no wonder the very trees sat up and took notice.

Up at the head of this line you could see a splendid snow-capped mountain, a delightful Quaker gray, where there was no snow, and the snow was really glaciers that were always there, forming among other things, the head waters of this little river known by the name of Plumas;