Dateline- Toronto

by Ernest Hemingway

  In addition to the old rise-and-fall copper cylinder there is a modern Haskell gauge where the rising and falling of the harbor waters are shown by a line traced on a cylinder of paper which revolves by clockwork and is only removed once a month. This gauge is so delicate that even the passing of a vessel and consequent displacement of water is registered.

  Both the old and the new gauges are set in wells in the basement of the harbor building. The old gauge is still used for daily readings and is checked by the Haskell gauge at the end of the month.

  Right now the water is six and a half inches below the zero mark. But this is no lower than it was last year. While in 1897 it was 21 inches below zero and in 1900 was 16 inches below the measuring point.

  Since the first measurements were made in 1854 the highest level the water ever reached was in 1870, when it rose to 47 inches above the zero point of 9 feet. The next highest level was sixteen years later, in 1886, when the bay flooded to 46 inches above zero.

  The lowest level ever recorded was in 1895, when the water of the bay dropped to 26 inches below the average. The next shallowest period came two years later, in 1897, when the water fell to 25 inches below zero.

  There is a definite fluctuation in the depth of water in Lake Ontario. Starting in 1854, when the water rose to 36 inches above the measuring point, it fell away steadily but surely until 1870, when the high level was a record-smasher. Then the level dropped again until 1876, when it rose for another high tide and then fell again until the high water of 1886.

  Since then it has fallen until 1901, when it started to mount again and rose until 1908, when it hit forty-six and one-half inches above zero, flooding Center Island and causing great property damage.

  From the record floods of 1908, the water level fell steadily until in 1911 it was the lowest since 1874. In 1911 the ferry boat Trillium ran aground and lay for fifty-eight minutes, stuck fast on her way to the city from the Toronto-Tecumseh lacrosse match at Hanlan’s Point.

  The Island Queen went to her rescue, took off 600 passengers to lighten the Trillium—and went aground herself. Launches, sailboats, rowboats, canoes rescued the 2,000 stranded people of the two boats. And that summer, ferryboats had a hard time dodging the shoals and sandbanks caused by the shallow water.

  Again in 1913 the old reaction came, and on April 13 of that year the water in the harbor was rising at the rate of 2 inches a day. Hundreds of feet of land on the lagoon at the island were under water and property was being damaged. The water kept on mounting until it reached 36 inches above the zero mark on April 16. The harbor board was extremely anxious and property owners on the island were panicky. At the same time Lake Superior was falling steadily.

  The northwest gales came along and lowered the dangerously mounting flood. On May 10 an east wind piled the water, in the harbor up to the 39-inch mark. But that was the highest it reached and from then on fell away.

  The drop back commenced the next year, 1914, when the water only got up to 24 inches above the zero mark. In 1915, only two years after the threatened flood, the lake level could not rise above 9 inches and remained almost stationary.

  The water-level measure records the strange rise and fall of the water in the Great Lakes, but it does not explain it. Are there tides in the Great Lakes?

  One theory is that as the molten mass in the interior of the earth cools it causes the surface of the earth to slowly contract. It may expand occasionally in a sort of bubbling motion.

  All over the world this motion would be going on and other bodies of fresh water rise and fall just as Ontario does. As the earth contracts the water would fall. As it expands, the water would rise. These tides are well known on the Swiss lakes, which rise and fall with regularity.

  Lake Ontario is usually deepest in June, and then falls away in depth until it becomes shallowest in November, January or February. That is the local movement, caused probably by the great flow of water which comes down the chain of lakes from Superior to Ontario, causing the level to rise in each lake until the flood has passed.

  But there is no satisfactory explanation for the big controlling movement that causes periods of floods and terms of shallow water following one another in a mysterious and unaccountable movement which makes June sometimes the shallowest month in spite of the local causes that work to make it the deepest. Hot summers, evaporation, snowfall play their part, but do not explain all.

  After two years of resting the floods had another try in 1916, when in June the water level set out for a record. Every day in June the waters of the harbor rose until on the tenth it was up to 36½ inches above the zero. Thousands of dollars of damages were done to the island, boathouses swept away, beaches destroyed, property flooded. The friendly northwest gale came along though and lowered the dangerously mounting level.

  After 1916 the water level stayed fairly high. In 1919 it mounted to 39½ inches above zero, or near the flood level. But in 1920 the highest it could climb to was 12 inches above the zero mark. In 1921 it only got up to 24½ inches above, and last year started to climb again to 27 inches. This year the highest water has been 15 inches above zero, measured on June 24. The lowest measured was in February, when the harbor waves were down to 11½ inches below the measuring point. Just now it is 6½ inches below zero.

  From previous indications there may be a spell of several years of low water before a climb again. But the water level is tricky and knows no regular rules, and there is nothing in the past performances of the harbor to prevent another flood next spring.

  Trout Fishing in Europe

  The Toronto Star Weekly

  November 17, 1923

  Bill Jones went to visit a French financier who lives near Deauville and has a private trout stream. The financier was very fat. His stream was very thin.

  “Ah, Monsieur Zshones, I will show you the fishing,” the financier purred over the coffee. “You have the trout in Canada, is it not? But here! Here we have the really charming trout fishing of Normandy. I will show you. Rest yourself content. You will see it.”

  The financier was a very literal man. His idea of showing Bill the fishing was for Bill to watch and the financier to fish. They started out. It was a trying sight.

  If undressed and put back on the shelf piece by piece, the financier would have stocked a sporting-goods store. Placed end to end his collection of flies would have reached from Keokuk, Ill., to Paris, Ont. The price of his rod would have made a substantial dent in the interallied debt or served to foment a Central American revolution.

  The financier flung a pretty poisonous fly, too. At the end of two hours one trout had been caught. The financier was elated. The trout was a beauty, fully five and a half inches long and perfectly proportioned. The only trouble with him was some funny black spots along his sides and belly.

  “I don’t believe he’s healthy,” Bill said doubtfully.

  “Healthy? You don’t think he’s healthy? That lovely trout? Why, he’s a wonder. Did you not see the terrific fight he made before I netted him?” The financier was enraged. The beautiful trout lay in his large, fat hand.

  “But what are those black spots?” Bill asked.

  “Those spots? Oh, absolutely nothing. Perhaps worms. All our trout here have them at this season. But do not be afraid of that, Monsieur Zshones. Wait until you taste this beautiful trout for breakfast!”

  It was probably proximity to Deauville that spoiled the financier’s trout stream. Deauville is supposed to be a sort of combination of Fifth Avenue, Atlantic City, and Sodom and Gomorrah. In reality it is a watering place that has become so famous that the really smart people no longer go to it and the others hold a competitive spending contest and mistake each other for duchesses, dukes, prominent pugilists, Greek millionaires and the Dolly sisters.

  The real trout fishing of Europe is in Spain, Germany and Switzerland. Spain has probably the best fishing of all in Galicia. But the Germans and the Swiss are right behind.

  In Germany the great diffic
ulty is to get permission to fish. All the fishing water is rented by the year to individuals. If you want to fish you have first to get permission of the man who has rented the fishing. Then you go back to the township and get a permission, and then you finally get the permission of the owner of the land.

  If you have only two weeks to fish, it will probably take about all of it to get these different permissions. A much easier way is simply to carry a rod with you and fish when you see a good stream. If anyone complains, begin handing out marks. If the complaints keep up, keep handing out marks. If this policy is pursued far enough the complaints will eventually cease and you will be allowed to continue fishing.

  If, on the other hand, your supply of marks runs out before the complaints cease you will probably go either to jail or the hospital. It is a good plan, on this account, to have a dollar bill secreted somewhere in your clothes. Produce the bill. It is 10 to 1 your assailant will fall to his knees in an attitude of extreme thanksgiving and on arising break all existing records to the nearest, deepest and woolliest German hand-knitted sock, the South German’s savings bank.

  Following this method of obtaining fishing permits, we fished all through the Black Forest. With rucksacks and fly rods, we hiked across country, sticking to the high ridges and the rolling crests of the hills, sometimes through deep pine timber, sometimes coming out into a clearing and farmyards and again going, for miles, without seeing a soul except occasional wild-looking berry pickers. We never knew where we were. But we were never lost because at any time we could cut down from the high country into a valley and know we would hit a stream. Sooner or later every stream flowed into a river and a river meant a town.

  At night we stopped in little inns or gasthofs. Some of these were so far from civilization that the innkeepers did not know the mark was rapidly becoming worthless and continued to charge the old German prices. At one place, room and board, in Canadian money, were less than ten cents a day.

  One day we started from Triberg and toiled up a long, steadily ascending hill road until we were on top of the high country and could look out at the Black Forest rolling away from us in every direction. Away off across country we could see a range of hills, and we figured that at their base must flow a river. We cut across the high, bare country, dipping down into valleys and walking through woods, cool and dim as a cathedral on the hot August day. Finally we hit the upper end of the valley at the foot of the hills we had seen.

  In it flowed a lovely trout stream and there was not a farmhouse in sight. I jointed up the rod, and while Mrs. Hemingway sat under a tree on the hillside and kept watch both ways up the valley, caught four real trout. They averaged about three-quarters of a pound apiece. Then we moved down the valley. The stream broadened out and Herself took the rod while I found a lookout post.

  She caught six in about an hour, and two of them I had to come down and net for her. She had hooked a big one, and after he was triumphantly netted we looked up to see an old German in peasant clothes watching us from the road.

  “Gut tag,” I said.

  “Tag,” he said. “Have you good fishing?”

  “Yes. Very good.”

  “Good,” he said. “It is good to have somebody fishing.” And went hiking along the road.

  In contrast to him were the farmers in Oberprechtal, where we had obtained full fishing permits, who came down and chased us away from the stream with pitchforks because we were Auslanders.

  In Switzerland I discovered two valuable things about trout fishing. The first was while I was fishing a stream that parallels the Rhône River and that was swollen and gray with snow water. Flies were useless, and I was fishing with a big gob of worms. A fine, juicy-looking bait. But I wasn’t getting any trout or even any strikes.

  An old Italian who had a farm up the valley was walking behind me while I fished. As there was nothing doing in a stream I knew from experience was full of trout, it got more and more irritating. Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl. Finally I sat down and waited for the Italian to go away. He sat down, too.

  He was an old man, with a face like a leather waterbottle.

  “Well, Papa, no fish today,” I said.

  “Not for you,” he said solemnly.

  “Why not for me? For you, maybe?” I said.

  “Oh yes,” he said, not smiling. “For me, trout always. Not for you. You don’t know how to fish with worms.” And spat into the stream.

  This touched a tender spot, a boyhood spent within forty miles of the Soo, hoisting out trout with a cane pole and all the worms the hook would hold.

  “You’re so old you know everything. You are probably a rich man from your knowledge of fishworms,” I said.

  This bagged him.

  “Give me the rod,” he said.

  He took it from me, cleaned off the fine wriggly gob of trout food, and selected one medium-sized angleworm from my box. This he threaded a little way on the number ten hook, and let about three-fourths of the worm wave free.

  “Now that’s a worm,” he said with satisfaction.

  He reeled the line up till there was only the six feet of leader out and dropped the free-swinging worm into a pool where the water swirled under the bank. There was nothing doing. He pulled it slowly out and dropped it in a little lower down. The tip of the rod twirled. He lowered it just a trifle. Then it shot down in a jerk, and he struck and horsed out a fifteen-inch trout and sent him back over his head in a telephone-pole swing.

  I fell on him while he was still flopping.

  The old Italian handed me the rod. “There, young one. That is the way to use a worm. Let him be free to move like a worm. The trout will take the free end and then suck him all in, hook and all. I have fished this stream for twenty years and I know. More than one worm scares the fish. It must be natural.”

  “Come, use the rod and fish now,” I urged him.

  “No. No. I only fish at night,” he smiled. “It is much too expensive to get a permit.”

  But by me watching for the river guard while he fished and our using the rod alternately until each caught a fish, we fished all day and caught eighteen trout. The old Italian knew all the holes, and only fished where there were big ones. We used a free wriggly worm, and the eighteen trout averaged a pound and a half apiece.

  He also showed me how to use grubs. Grubs are only good in clear water, but are a deadly bait. You can find them in any rotten tree or saw-log, and the Swiss and Swiss-Italians keep them in grub boxes. Flat pieces of wood bored full of auger holes with a sliding metal top. The grub will live as well in his hole in the wood as in the log and is one of the greatest hot-weather baits known. Trout will take a grub when they will take nothing else in the low-water days of August.

  The Swiss, too, have a wonderful way of cooking trout. They boil them in a liquor made of wine vinegar, bay leaves, and a dash of red pepper. Not too much of any of the ingredients in the boiling water, and cook until the trout turns blue. It preserves the true trout flavor better than almost any way of cooking. The meat stays firm and pink and delicate. Then they serve them with drawn butter. They drink the clear Sion wine when they eat them.

  It is not a well-known dish at the hotels. You have to go back in the country to get trout cooked that way. You come up from the stream to a chalet and ask them if they know how to cook blue trout. If they don’t, you walk on a way. If they do, you sit down on the porch with the goats and children and wait. Your nose will tell you when the trout are boiling. Then after a while you will hear a pop. This is the Sion being uncorked. Then the woman of the chalet will come to the door and say, “It is prepared, Monsieur.”

  Then you go away and I will do the rest myself.

  Gargoyles as Symbol

  The Toronto Star Weekly

  November 17, 1923

  It would be difficult to find a detail of architecture that is more popular with the European tourists than the gargoy
les of Notre Dame in Paris. Thousands have climbed the weary stone stairs to examine them in detail and then examine, from above, the magnificent panorama of the French capital. But the gargoyles are pleasant fellows to meet, with their grinning faces and elfish profiles; all pleasant but two. And those two are located on the northeastern aspect of the tower that looks out toward Germany. These two are the hungry gargoyles. The one is swallowing a long, luckless dog, while its companion gazes greedily down toward the land where France is now encamped.

  But, the tourists will remonstrate, Notre Dame was built centuries ago. How could the present-day attitude of France be veiled in their horrible visage?

  Truly the cathedral was built more than six hundred years ago, but these gargoyles were executed and placed in position there by order of Napoleon the Third, a short time before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. The cathedral is old; but these monstrosities are not. They belong to modern history and the commencement of French hatred toward the eastern neighbor.

  These world-famed gargoyles were placed on Notre Dame by E. E. Viollet-le-Duc, who died in 1879. He was an intimate friend of Napoleon the Third, and was employed in the restoration of many ancient buildings that had suffered during the French Revolution. In that connection he was engaged with his Notre Dame gargoyles for eleven years. Other buildings which he restored with figures do not exhibit the horror and rapacity of these two gargoyles which face Germany. Did he here express, in stone, the thoughts of the French leaders which are now current history?

  The Sport of Kings

  The Toronto Star Weekly

  November 24, 1923