er heerd him coming."

I shall not forget the utter disgust of R---- and P----, when, like a
couple of Samsons they awoke, and found that their hair was certainly
untouched, but that the most positive support of their strength had been
cut off irretrievably, and their dinner of lamb gone where all innocence
should go. Some bread and cheese, together with a few eggs which the
boatmen purchased for us at a neighbouring cottage, supplied the loss of
our lamb. The coolness of the afternoon gave R---- and P----, an
opportunity to renew their ardour, and at six o'clock they both might
have been found encouraging the habit of patience in the art of angling.

The rattling of their reels, gave, at almost every half hour, the
announcement of a bite, and hurrying in their prams to the shore, my
friends, after the torture of another half hour, would, with the
assistance of a gaff, place the unhappy salmon among the long grass
growing on the river's brink.

The Norwegians, and I believe, all persons who have the sense of taste
developed to a most extraordinary nicety, say that the fish which are
caught with the hook, are not to be compared in flavour to those taken
in the net. Though I cannot account for the exquisiteness of taste, that
can distinguish between one and the other plan of catching the salmon, I
can very easily suppose that the pain, more or less, given in the
destruction of an animal, may increase or decrease the flavour of the
flesh, when used as food. A fish drawn backwards and forwards through
the water with a hook piercing its gills, or the more tender fibres of
the stomach, till it is almost jaded to death, and then lacerated with
such an instrument as the gaff, must endure such an accumulation of the
most intense pain, that the sweeter juices of the flesh escape during
the throes of a protracted death, and render its taste more stale and
flat. But the fish, taken in the net, suffers no injury; and free from
pain is instantaneously deprived of life, while the muscular parts
retain all the rigour and nutriment requisite for human food.

R---- and P---- caught eight fish between them, varying from fifteen to
twenty-five pounds' weight each; and, striking our tent, we returned in
the twilight of evening to the yacht at Larvig.

Nothing daunted, R---- and P---- rose again the following morning at
two, and collecting their fishing apparatus, began to prepare for
another jaunt up the river. They were very desirous t