ST. BOS WELLS. 219 



salmon and four sea-trout — the salmon twenty-two 

 and seven pounds each ; the largest sea-trout seven 

 pounds, and the smallest three. One would think it very- 

 awkward work for such as he to wade ashore and land 

 the fish, and so it would be, and dangerous too ; but his 

 plan, unless when he fastens upon a salmon or something 

 very weighty, is not to leave the water at all. He simply 

 runs the fish a little, then winds it close in, and 

 dexterously seizing it behind the gills, in an incredibly 

 short space has the minnow disgorged, and the captive 

 safely '" landed " in his capacious creel. I have often 

 watched him thus skilfully manipulating in deep water, 

 upon a trout of two or three pounds weight, and have 

 thought that few fishers with the best of sight could have 

 managed half so well. 



Besides being an angler, Rankin is a capital rod- 

 maker. His want of sight seems to be in great part made 

 up to him in the acuteness of his other faculties, especially 

 those of hearing and touch. The latter sense enables him 

 to give a better taper and balance to a rod than nine- 

 tenths of ordinary makers can give, who are guided by 

 their eyesight alone. His rods are perhaps not so 

 elegantly finished in respect of varnishing and fittings as 

 some others ; but in every quality that would recommend 

 them to that sensible individual, "the really practical 

 angler," they are much in advance of many very expensive 

 articles which I have handled. When first he made the 

 attempt to add to his income in this way, he was not very 

 particular about the finishing ; and on receiving an order 

 from a gentleman-friend for one of his rods, he proposed 



