312 SPORT INDEED 



very softly and carefully and steals up near the spot. 

 Then he kneels on one knee and passes his hand, turned 

 with fingers up, deftly under the rock until it comes 

 in contact with the fish's tail. Then he begins the 

 tickling with his forefinger, gradually running his 

 hand along the fish's belly further and further towards 

 the head until it is under the gills. Then comes a 

 quick grasp, a struggle, and the prize is wrenched out of 

 his natural element, stunned with a blow on the head, 

 and landed in the pocket of the poacher. 



I was born very near this classic stream — not more 

 than a stone's throw from its banks — and as two of my 

 male relatives were out-and-out sportsmen, many a 

 lesson I received from them in my early days. I rec- 

 ollect a great snowstorm which buried that section of 

 country in drifts that would make the much-vaunted 

 piles of our American blizzards seem puny and insig- 

 nificant. The distance from ocean to ocean at this 

 point is only sixty miles, and the fierce winds sweep 

 down the English Channel on the one side, or from 

 the German Ocean on the other, and drive the snow 

 before them with frightful velocity, burying land- 

 marks, houses, fences and even trees. It was a few 

 days before Christmas, in 1852, that a great storm 

 visited us. I was seven years of age, and therefore 

 the incidents attending it made a lasting impression. 

 We lived in a low, two-story house at a place called 

 Ling Riggs, directly on the moors. (Ling is another 



