r a time from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be
said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I
should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life
in travelling abroad if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend
afterwards at home."--WILLIAM HAZLITT: On Going a Journey.

The peculiarity of trout-fishing in the Traun is that one catches
principally grayling. But in this it resembles some other pursuits
which are not without their charm for minds open to the pleasures of the
unexpected--for example, reading George Borrow's The Bible in Spain with
a view to theological information, or going to the opening night at the
Academy of Design with the intention of looking at pictures.

Moreover, there are really trout in the Traun, rari nantes in gurgite;
and in some places more than in others; and all of high spirit, though
few of great size. Thus the angler has his favourite problem: Given an
unknown stream and two kinds of fish, the one better than the other; to
find the better kind, and determine the hour at which they will rise.
This is sport.

As for the little river itself, it has so many beauties that one does
not think of asking whether it has any faults. Constant fulness, and
crystal clearness, and refreshing coolness of living water, pale green
like the jewel that is called aqua marina, flowing over beds of clean
sand and bars of polished gravel, and dropping in momentary foam from
rocky ledges, between banks that are shaded by groves of fir and ash and
poplar, or through dense thickets of alder and willow, or across meadows
of smooth verdure sloping up to quaint old-world villages--all these are
features of the ideal little river.

I have spoken of these personal qualities first, because a truly moral
writer ought to make more of character than of position. A good river
in a bad country would be more worthy of affection than a bad river in
a good country. But the Traun has also the advantages of an excellent
worldly position. For it rises all over the Salzkammergut, the summer
hunting-ground of the Austrian Emperor, and flows through that most
picturesque corner of his domain from end to end. Under the desolate
cliffs of the Todtengebirge on the east, and below the shining
ice-fields of the Dachstein on the south, and from the green alps around
St. Wolfgang on the west, the translucent waters are gathered in
little tarns, and shot through roaring brook