_Several years ago I made my first visit to this country, and it has been my privilege to return thither annually on fishing excursions of varying duration. These outings have been so enjoyable and have yielded so much pleasure at the time and afterwards, that I should like to sound the angler's pack-cry, "Good Fishing!" loudly enough to lead others to go also._
_The photographs from which the illustrations were made, except where due credit is given to others, were taken with a small hand camera which has hung at my belt in crossing mountains and wading streams, and are mainly of such scenes as one comes upon in out-of-the-way places while following that "most virtuous pastime" of fly-casting._
BEFORE exercising the right of eminent domain over these waters, it may be profitable to say a word in explanation of the fact that hardly more than a score of years ago many of these beautiful lakes and streams were absolutely without fish life. This will aid us in understanding what the government has done and is still doing to create an ideal paradise for the angler among these mountains and plateaus.
There was a time, and this too in comparatively recent geological eras, when the waters of that region now under consideration abounded with fish of many species. The clumsy catfish floundered along the shallows and reedy bayous in company with the solemn red-horse and a long line of other fishes of present and past generations. The lordly salmon found ideal spawning grounds in the gravelly beds of the streams draining to the westward, and doubtless came hither annually in great numbers. It may be that the habit of the Columbia river salmon to return yearly from the Pacific and ascend that stream was bred into the species during the days when its waters ran in an uninterrupted channel from source to sea. It is true that elsewhere salmon manifest this anadromous impulse in as marked a degree as in the Columbia and its tributaries, yet, the conclusion that these heroic pilgrimages are _habit_ resulting from similar movements, accidental at first, but extending over countless years, is natural, and probably correct. When one sees these noble fish congested by thousands at the foot of some waterfall up which not one in a hundred is able to leap, or observes them ascending the brooks in the distant mountains where there is not sufficient water to cover them, gasping, bleeding, dying, but pushing upward with their last breath, the figure of the crusaders in quest of an ancient patrimony arises in the mind, so strong is the simile and so active is your sympathy with the fish.