The Writings of John Burroughs | Page 5

had a very good understanding upon the subject.
They could both swim, yet their floats looked very perilous,--three pieces of old plank or slabs, with two cross-pieces and a fragment of a board for a rider, and made without nails or withes.
"In some places," said Johnny, "one plank was here and another off there, but we managed, somehow, to keep atop of them."
"Let's leave our floats here, and ride with him the rest of the way," said one to the other.
"All right; may we, mister? "
I assented, and we were soon afloat again. How they enjoyed the passage; how smooth it was; how the boat glided along; how quickly she felt the paddle! They admired her much; they praised my steersmanship; they praised my fish-pole and all my fixings down to my hateful rubber boots. When we stuck on the rifts, as we did several times, they leaped out quickly, with their bare feet and legs, and pushed us off.
"I think," said Johnny, "if you keep her straight and let her have her own way, she will find the deepest water. Don't you, Denny?"
"I think she will," replied Denny; and I found the boys were pretty nearly right.
I tried them on a point of natural history. I had observed, coming along, a great many dead eels lying on the bottom of the river, that I supposed had died from spear wounds. "No," said Johnny, "they are lamper eels. They die as soon as they have built their nests and laid their eggs."
"Are you sure?"
"That's what they all say, and I know they are lampers."
So I fished one up out of the deep water with my paddle-blade and examined it; and sure enough it was a lamprey. There was the row of holes along its head, and its ugly suction mouth. I had noticed their nests, too, all along, where the water in the pools shallowed to a few feet and began to hurry toward the rifts: they were low mounds of small stones, as if a bushel or more of large pebbles had been dumped upon the river bottom; occasionally they were so near the surface as to make a big ripple. The eel attaches itself to the stones by its mouth, and thus moves them at will. An old fisherman told me that a strong man could not pull a large lamprey loose from a rock to which it had attached itself. It fastens to its prey in this way, and sucks the life out. A friend of mine says he once saw in the St. Lawrence a pike as long as his arm with a lamprey eel attached to him. The fish was nearly dead and was quite white, the eel had so sucked out his blood and substance. The fish, when seized, darts against rocks and stones, and tries in vain to rub the eel off, then succumbs to the sucker.
"The lampers do not all die," said Denny, "because they do not all spawn;" and I observed that the dead ones were all of one size and doubtless of the same age.
The lamprey is the octopus, the devil-fish, of these waters, and there is, perhaps, no tragedy enacted here that equals that of one of these vampires slowly sucking the life out of a bass or a trout.
My boys went to school part of the time. Did they have a good teacher?
"Good enough for me," said Johnny.
"Good enough for me," echoed Denny.
Just below Bark-a-boom--the name is worth keeping--they left me. I was loath to part with them; their musical voices and their thorough good-fellowship had been very acceptable. With a little persuasion, I think they would have left their home and humble fortunes, and gone a-roving with me.
About four o'clock the warm, vapor-laden southwest wind brought forth the expected thunder-shower. I saw the storm rapidly developing behind the mountains in my front. Presently I came in sight of a long covered wooden bridge that spanned the river about a mile ahead, and I put my paddle into the water with all my force to reach this cover before the storm. It was neck and neck most of the way. The storm had the wind, and I had it--in my teeth. The bridge was at Shavertown, and it was by a close shave that I got under it before the rain was upon me. How it poured and rattled and whipped in around the abutment of the bridge to reach me! I looked out well satisfied upon the foaming water, upon the wet, unpainted houses and barns of the Shavertowners, and upon the trees,
"Caught and cuffed by the gale."
Another traveler--the spotted-winged nighthawk--was also roughly used by the storm. He faced it bravely, and beat and beat, but was unable to stem it, or even hold his own; gradually he