No pursuit is more sedentary, if one may talk of a sedentary pursuit, and none more to my taste, than trout-fishing as practised in the South of England.  Given fine weather, and a good novel, nothing can he more soothing than to sit on a convenient stump, under a willow, and watch the placid kine standing in the water, while the brook murmurs on, and perhaps the kingfisher flits to and fro.  Here you sit and fleet the time carelessly, till a trout rises.  Then, indeed, duty demands that you shall crawl in the manner of the serpent till you come within reach of him, and cast a fly, which usually makes him postpone his dinner-hour.  But he will come on again, there is no need for you to change your position, and you can always fill your basket easily—­with irises and marsh-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