You need
seldom wade, and the water is shallow, the bottom is of silver gravel.
You need not search all day at random, but you select a rising trout, and
endeavour to lay the floating fly delicately over him. If you part with
him, there is always another feeding merrily:
Invenies alium si te hic fastidit.
It is like an excursion into Corot's country, it is rich in memories of
Walton and Cotton: it is a dream of peace, and they bring you your tea by
the riverside. In salmon-fishing, on the Tweed at least, all is
different. The rod, at all events the rod which some one kindly lent me,
is like a weaver's beam. The high heavy wading trousers and boots are
even as the armour of the giant of Gath. You have to plunge waist deep,
or deeper, into roaring torrents, and if the water be at all "drumly" you
have not an idea where your next step may fall. It may be on a hidden
rock, or on a round slippery boulder, or it may be into a deep "pot" or
hole. The inexperienced angler staggers like a drunken man, is
occasionally drowned, and more frequently is ducked. You have to cast
painfully, with steep precipitous banks behind you, all overgrown with
trees, with bracken, with bramble. It is a boy's work to disentangle the
fly from the branches of ash and elm and pine. There is no delicacy, and
there is a great deal of exertion in all this.
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