OLD PATTERN AND NEW 129 



and grappled with him ; and finding him still 

 slippery and elusive, he cast himself bodily upon 

 him, and fixed him with his weight at once : toto 

 certatum est corpore regni. So thought he of 

 Macedonian appellation ; but he did not express 

 himself in such terms, being a man of no clerk-like 

 capacity : whatever he might have thought, he only 

 said, looking up with a grin of delight and with a 

 Wiltshire accent, " I got un ! be hanged if I ha'nt." 



A cold bath for a few minutes more or less is of 

 no consequence ; so I made him remain a space, 

 like iEtna pressing upon the shoulders of Enceladus, 

 till I came up and gripped the huge salmon by the 

 tail, and walked to dry land with him, triumphant. 



I was nearly three hours in killing this fish, all 

 owing to the derangement of a multiplying reel ; 

 and as this contrivance, though useful enough in 

 our trout rivers, will by no means answer with very 

 large fish, I have mentioned the above occurrence 

 in detail as a warning to others. 



After this time I caused to be made some large 

 single reels, nicely constructed, so as to give the 

 line out evenly, and not run too slackly ; and I 

 directed that the cylinders should be of a very 

 ample circumference, which gave me the same 

 advantage that a multiplying reel has with the 

 usual cylinder. 1 



1 The original cut being here reproduced, the reader may perceive 

 with what prodigious disadvantages our predecessors had to contend in 

 the matter of tackle. Imagine going forth to battle with a winch of 

 this description : long in that diameter which ought to be short, and 

 shallow in that which should obviously be deep — a very nightmare of a 

 salmon reel. As a contrast I have inserted, by permission of Messrs. 

 Farlow and Co. of 191 Strand, a cut of their latest pattern of aluminium 

 patent lever reel. — Ed. 



K 



