TROUT IN NOR WA V. 29 



widens out into a large pool, several hundred yards long, 

 and fifty or sixty wide. At the head, a considerable fall 

 tumbles over the rocks in dazzling foam, and for a long 

 distance the water is charged almost like soda water, 

 with bubbles of air. Here, on the morning after our 

 second arrival, we took our bath. The pool might have 

 been made for the purpose ; at its margin, ten yards 

 behind the house, is a sloping rock, going straight down 

 into deep water, where you may take your header from 

 any height you please, and a few yards below is a little 

 beach where you can walk pleasantly out. A plunge into 

 the soda water, and you soon find that it will be well not 

 to get far out into the current, for even here you rapidly 

 drift downwards, and the broken waters are not far off. 

 After such a luxurious bath as one who loves the water, 

 as an angler should, can never forget, we land at our little 

 beach and lazily commence dressing. What is the luxury 

 of tuidrcss ? Where is the pleasure in lolling on rocks, 

 unbooted, and clothed only in trousers and shirt .-* 

 Luxury indeed it is ; there is a feeling of liberty about it, 

 a freedom from the commonest restraint of our lives, that 

 is delicious, and makes us linger and linger. As we lie 

 steeping in the warm sunlight, or sit negligently chatting 

 on the good fortune which has brought us here, what is it 

 that we see dimpling the surface of the water, where a few 

 moments ago we, like so many grampuses, were rolling 

 and plunging } Trout, of course ! Fetch the rod ; it is 

 there in the house, only a dozen yards away, all ready for 

 use. A cast of the flies goes over the charmed circle ; at 

 the first throw a brilliant half-pounder is fast, and in a 



