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Beside acting as guide, and explaining to his companion the mysteries of Coral-Land, the Pilot kindly introduced Sammy to some of his acquaintances and friends. One of these was a very large odd-looking Sun-Fish, a curious creature, all head and no body.
The line was no sooner cast into the water, than the hook was seized, and many were the brilliant specimens of sun-fish that our eager fishermen cast at Catharine's feet, all gleaming with gold and azure scales. Nor was there any lack of perch, or that delicate fish commonly known in these waters as the pink roach.
The variety of the fish was equal to the rapidity with which they were taken: basses, perch, sun-fish, buffaloes, trouts, and twenty other sorts. In less than half an hour my canoe was full to sinking; and I should certainly have sunk with my cargo, had it not been most opportunely taken out by one of the spare boats.
On returning it was found the clerk had purchased a fish, something like a sun-fish; and as the artist was engaged in drawing and describing it, the cook took the liver and roe for supper in the cabin, with the result that Cook and the Forsters were nearly poisoned, and were only cured by the most careful attention of the surgeon.
"Do you remember what a quantity of large fish bones we found in the eagle's nest on the top of our hill, Louis?" said Hector. "I do; those fish must have been larger than our perch and sun-fish; they were brought from this very lake, I dare say." "If we had a good canoe now, or a boat, and a strong hook and line, we might become great fishermen."
But great was his disappointment to find no water-babies there to play with, though he asked the sea-snails, and the hermit crabs, and the sun-fish, and the bass, and the porpoises. But though one fish told him that he had been helped the previous night by the water-babies, Tom could find no trace of them at all.
Many had been born there and knew no other life, and many, like the Sun-Fish had grown so fat with good living that it would have been almost impossible for them to squeeze through the largest opening. In fact the Lagoon was like a large aquarium of curious and beautiful fish.
The slough was full of two or three varieties of perch, or, as we called them, sun-fish; also a white fish called chub. These fish were all very palatable, and I caught loads of them. In the fall, when the wild grapes were ripe, they would fall off into the water and were fed upon by the fish. Beneath the vine-clad cottonwoods the fishing was always good.
As boys, I and my youngest brother knew "Hiawatha's Fishing" almost by heart, so I had an intense desire to see "Gitche Gumee, the Big-Sea Water," which we more prosaically call Lake Superior, the home of the sturgeon "Nahma," of "Ugudwash" the sun-fish, of the pike the "Maskenozha," and the actual scene of Hiawatha's fishing.
They all had good sport, however, for the smaller fry of the finny tribes that haunted the vicinity of the old bridge suffered from the well-known tendency of extreme youth to take everything into its mouth. Indeed, at that season, an immature sun-fish will take a hook if there is but a remnant of a worm upon it. The day was good for fishing, since thin clouds darkened the water.
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