120 SALMON FISHING IN THE TWEED 



gentlemen, an attention that, considering all things, 

 he was fairly entitled to ; but his rod lay across the 

 river, the butt end opposed in its passage by one 

 rock in the middle of it, and the top by another ; 

 so the weight of the stream bore upon the centre, 

 and snapped it in twain. The corpulent gentleman 

 took all with the greatest good humour ; and as 

 the water streamed from him at all points, as it 

 were from a river god, and as he applied a brandy 

 flask to his mouth, he said only at the intervals 

 between his potations, " I am not quite so sure 

 that your waders catch the most fish ; gentlemen, I 

 say, I have my doubts of it." 



To the credit of my friends be it spoken, they 

 waded and swam after the two divisions of his rod, 

 which they spliced together for him, and set him 

 going again ; not in the faithless water, but on the 

 trusty shore, which he now seemed to prefer. 



I cannot in conscience recommend a course of 

 wading to a sedentary man as a new experiment, or 

 even as an old custom revived after a lapse of years ; 

 and this for the following reason. 



General Gowdie was born on the banks of the 

 Leader-water, which falls into the Tweed about a 

 mile and a half below Melrose, near Fly Bridge. 

 In his youth he was an ardent and expert salmon 

 fisher ; in after life he went out to India, and 

 served honourably there for forty years. At 

 length, in the decline of life, he was seized with the 

 Swiss passion — an unconquerable yearning to revisit 

 the land of his sires. Night after night he heard in 

 his dreams the murmuring lapse of the Leader as 

 it glided down his native valley ; again he reposed in 



