TROUT IN NOR IV A V. 23 



salmon, wearied with their boisterous passage up the 

 broken waters, come in to take a rest. Here the red- 

 capped wizened old farmer waits, and as he sees a salmon 

 enter (the water is clear enough to see to any depth), he 

 lowers a great four-barbed fork on a staff twelve feet 

 long, as far as he thinks safe, then gives an awful prod, 

 you see the shaft furiously shaken from below, and up 

 comes a salmon which the farmer immediately offers to 

 sell you for a "specie." In Norway I have always found 

 that when anything is said to you which you do not 

 wish to entertain, the best way is not to understand it ; 

 this is on the same principle that it is sometimes well to 

 be afflicted with deafness, as you are then enabled to 

 refuse to hear applications for subscriptions, and other 

 unpleasant things. So I did not understand what the 

 old man meant when he offered to sell me his fish, for I 

 did not want it. However, he heaped coals of fire on my 

 head by offering to let me fish as much as I liked in his 

 part of the river ; he even went Avith me while I fished, 

 and asked me to share his meal when the time for feeding 

 came. Oh, that Mr. Smith could know this ! At 

 dinner he sat at one side of the table and I at the other, 

 and both helped ourselves from the same dish, which 

 contained a salmon all mushed and jammed together as 

 though it had been prepared with a "peggy," in a "peggy- 

 tub." The wife who was no less hospitable than her 

 husband, pointed out with her finger, the curd which one 

 only sees in fresh caught salmon, as the tit-bits of the 

 dish. Then I had some drink brought, of a bright canary 

 colour, and had to pretend to drink some, but being a 



