rsh-marigolds.

[Illustration: "I wade in as far as I can, and make a tremendous swipe
with the rod."]

Such are our county contents, but woe befall the day when I took to
salmon-fishing. The outfit is expensive, "half-crown flees" soon mount
up, especially if you never go out without losing your fly-book. If
you buy a light rod, say of fourteen feet, the chances are that it
will not cover the water, and a longer rod requires in the fisherman
the strength of a SANDOW. You need wading-breeches, which come up
nearly to the neck, and weigh a couple of stone. The question has been
raised, can one swim in them, in case of an accident? For _one_, I can
answer, he can't. The reel is about the size of a butter-keg, the line
measures hundreds of yards, and the place where you fish for salmon
is usually at the utter ends of the earth. Some enthusiasts begin in
February. Covered with furs, they sit in the stern of a boat, and are
pulled in a funereal manner up and down Loch Tay, while the rods fish
for themselves. The angler's only business is to pick them up if a
salmon bites, and when this has gone on for a few days, with no bite,
Influenza, or a hard frost with curling, would be rather a relief.
This kind of thing is not really angling, and a Duffer is as good at
it as an expert.

Real difficulties and sufferings begin when you reach the
Cruach-na-spiel-bo, which sounds like Gaelic, and will serve us as
a name for the river. It is, of course, extremely probable that you
pay a large rent for the right to gaze at a series of red and raging
floods, or at a pale and attenuated trickle of water, murmuring
peevishly through a drought. But suppose, for the sake of argument,
that the water is "in order," and only running with deep brown swirls
at some thirty miles an hour. Suppose also, a large presumption, that
the Duffer does not leave any indispensable part of his equipment
at home. He arrives at the stream, and as he detests a gillie, whose
contempt for the Duffer breeds familiarity, he puts up his rod,
selects a casting line, knots on the kind of fly which is locally
recommended, and steps into the water. Oh, how cold it is! I begin
casting at the top of the stream, and step from a big boulder into a
hole. Stagger, stumble, violent bob forwards, recovery, trip up, and
here one is in a sitting position in the bed of the stream. However,
the high india-rubber breeks have kept the water out, except about a
pailful, which graduall