flows
out again to join the Fraser at Lytton; the stream is swift and strong,
running when in high flood at the rate of twelve miles an hour. In 1894
there was a very high water, and the stationmaster at Savona's wired to
Ashcroft, a distance of twenty-four miles, to say that the bridge had
just been carried away. A reply came giving the time of its arrival,
which was just two hours afterwards. The _debris_ swept away the
Ashcroft bridge and also the bridge at Lytton.

At Savona's the fishing of the Lower Thompson begins, and at this point,
about a mile from the mouth of the river, there is an excellent hotel,
kept by Mr. Adam Fergusson, one of the "old timers" of British Columbia,
who came into the country with many others in the early days of the gold
diggings on the Fraser River. This is really the only fishing hotel on
the upper mainland of British Columbia, and is an excellent
headquarters from which several lakes can be reached, as also many
places on each side of the Thompson River. This part of the Thompson
River affords good fishing from Savona's to below Spence's bridge,
wherever the water is accessible, and, though a little sport can be
obtained in the latter part of May, chiefly with spoon and minnow, it is
not usually till July that the river is in really good order, when the
excess of snow water has been carried off and the river begins to fall
and get clearer. The hot weather sets in at the beginning of June, and a
quick rise of the river is an immediate result. On a rising water the
trout will not take. Often there is a pronounced fall in the middle of
June, owing to cooler weather setting in, though this does not always
happen. When it does occur excellent fishing can be obtained. I remember
its happening in the middle of June, 1901, and for a week there was
tremendous sport; a trout rose to every cast of the fly; but as soon as
the water began to rise again everything was at an end.

At the end of May, before the water begins to rise, a fair number of
fish can be taken by spinning from the bank with spoon and minnow at the
mouth of the river. But these are another fish, called locally the Dolly
Varden trout, a species of char, a handsome fish with pink spots and
light pink flesh, and good eating. They take the fly later on
occasionally, and run from 3/4lb to 4lb., but are not so lively as the
rainbow, though they are a strong and game fish. I once took fifteen in
a day's fishing with the minnow, and