larger fish, at the bottom of the great pool, and is carried down by him almost to the

sea.

POIET.-I cannot hold him! He has run

HAL.-I see him: he is hooked foul, and I fear we shall never recover him, for he is going out to sea. Give me the rod,-I will try and turn him; and do you run down to the entrance of the pool, and throw stories, to make him, if possible, run back. Ay! that stone has done good service; he is now running up into the pool again. Now call the fisherman, and tell him to bring a long pole, to keep him if possible from the sea. Now you have a good assistant, and I will leave you, for tiring this fish will be at least a work of two hours. He is not much less than 20lbs. and is hooked under the gills, so that you cannot suffocate him by a straight line. I wish you good fortune; but should he turn sulky, you must not allow him to rest, but make the fisherman move him with the pole again; your chance of killing him depends upon his being kept incessantly in

PRODUCE OF MORNING'S SPORT. 115

action, so that he may exhaust himself by exercise. I shall go and catch you some river trout, for your dinner;-but I am glad to see, before I take my leave of you, that Ornither has likewise hold of a fish,—and, from his activity, a lusty sea trout.

[He goes, and returns in the afternoon.]

HAL.-Well, Poietes, I hope to see your fish of 20lbs.

POIET.-Alas! he broke me,

-turned

sulky, and went to the bottom; and when he was roused again, my line came back without the fly; so that I conclude he had cut my links by rubbing them against some sharp stone. But, since, I have caught two grilses and a sea trout, and lost two others, salmons or grilses, that fairly got the hooks out of their mouths.

HAL. And, Ornither, what have you done? Well, I see, a salmon, a grilse, and a sea trout. And Physicus?

PHYS. I have lost three fish; one of which broke me, at the top of the pool, by

running amongst the rocks; and I have only one small sea trout.

HAL.-Your fortune will come another day. Why, you have not a single crimped fish for dinner, and it is now nearly two o'clock; and you have been catching for the picklers, for those fish may all go to the boiling house. I must again be your purveyor. Can you point out to me any part of this pool where you have not fished?

ALL.-No.

HAL.-Then I have little chance.

PHYS. O yes! you have a charm for catching fish.

HAL.-Let me know what flies you have tried, and I may perhaps tell you if I have a chance. With my small bright humming bird, as you call it, I will make an essay.

POIET.-But this fishery is really very limited; and two pools for four persons a small allowance.

HAL.-If you could have seen this river twenty years ago, when the cruives were a mile higher up, then you might have enjoyed fishing. There were eight or ten pools, of

SALMON RIVERS.

TAY AND TWEED.

117

the finest character possible for angling, where a fisherman of my acquaintance has hooked thirty fish in a morning. The river was then perfect, and it might easily be brought again into the same state; but even as it is now, with this single good pool and this second tolerable one, I know no place where I could, in the summer months, be so secure of sport as here-certainly no where in Great Britain.

POIET. I have often heard the Tay and the Tweed vaunted as salmon rivers.

HAL.-They were good salmon rivers, and are still very good, as far as the profit of the proprietor is concerned; but, for angling, they are very much deteriorated. The net fishing, which is constantly going on except on Sundays and in close time, suffers very few fish to escape; and a Sunday's flood offers the sole chance of a good day's sport, and this only in particular parts of these rivers. I remember the Tweed and the Tay in a far better state. The Tweed, in the late Lord Somerville's time, always contained taking-fish after every flood in the

summer and, between Abbotsford and Melrose, I have known six or seven fish taken by a single rod in the morning. In the Tay, only ten years ago, at Mickleure, I was myself one of two anglers who took eight fine fish,-three of them large salmon, -in a short morning's fishing; but now, except in spring fishing, when the fish are little worth taking, there is no certainty of sport in these rivers; and one, two, or three fish (which last is of rare occurrence), are all even an experienced angler can hope to take in a day's skilful and constant angling.

POIET. You have fished in most of the salmon rivers of the north of Europe,-give us some idea of the kind of sport.

HAL.-I have fished in some, but perhaps not in the best; for this it is necessary to go into barbarous countries-Lapland, or the extreme north of Norway; and I have generally loved too much the comforts of life to make any greater sacrifices than such as are made in this expedition. I have heard the river at Drontheim boasted of as an excellent salmon river, and I know two worthy