Other
waters we knew well, and loved: the little salmon-stream in the west that
doubles through the loch, and runs a mile or twain beneath its alders,
past its old Celtic battle-field, beneath the ruined shell of its feudal
tower, to the sea. Many a happy day we had there, on loch or stream,
with the big sea-trout which have somehow changed their tastes, and to-
day take quite different flies from the green body and the red body that
led them to the landing-net long ago. Dear are the twin Alines, but
dearer is Tweed, and Ettrick, where our ancestor was drowned in a flood,
and his white horse was found, next day, feeding near his dead body, on a
little grassy island. There is a great pleasure in trying new methods,
in labouring after the delicate art of the dry fly-fisher in the clear
Hampshire streams, where the glassy tide flows over the waving tresses of
crow's-foot below the poplar shade. But nothing can be so good as what
is old, and, as far as angling goes, is practically ruined, the alternate
pool and stream of the Border waters, where
The triple pride
Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde,
and the salmon cast murmurs hard by the Wizard's grave. They are all
gone now, the old allies and tutors in the angler's art--the kind
gardener who baited our hooks; the good Scotch judge who gave us our
first collection of flies; the friend who took us with him on his salmon-
fishing expedition, and made men of us with real rods, and "pirns" of
ancient make.
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