i8o SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 



Experiences like those have never occurred to any- 

 body save men of the Shepherd's poetic fancy, though 

 there are well-authenticated facts on record which 

 sound almost as extraordinary even to the initiated, 

 as when the present Lord Lovat killed in the river of 

 Beauly no fewer than 156 fish in five successive days. 

 And so we leave the realms of the literature of fancy 

 for those of sober fact, albeit not altogether untinged 

 by romance ; as in that delightful volume of Scrope's, 

 " The Days and Nights of Salmon-fishing/' As accom- 

 plished an artist with the rod as the rifle, no keener 

 hand ever pursued the noble sport in serene indifference 

 to weather, wettings, and the bitter caprices of the 

 northern climate. A glance over the illustrations is a 

 pleasure in itself, and eminently suggestive besides ; 

 for Scrope had enlisted the services of no smaller men 

 than Wilkie, the two Landseers, and Edward Cooke. 

 Their drawings are a panoramic epitome of sport on 

 the border river for Scrope confines himself entirely 

 to the Tweed ; and th^y embrace all forms of fishing, 

 legitimate, illegitimate, and commercial, with rod, and 

 net, and leister. Here we have a boatful of men 

 " burning the water," their faces and forms lighted up 

 by the ruddy glow of their fire ; there you have a 

 group by Wilkie working the drag-net, enthusiasm 

 and the keenest eagerness of expectation expressed in 

 each speaking body and limb, down to the bulging 

 back sinews in their sturdy calves. There a party has 

 pulled ashore after a catch, and the mighty salmon is 

 being scrupulously weighed ; and again the angler, 



