CLEAR WATERS 



stones with its accompanying babel of hearty Doric 

 echoed all through the month and far into February. 

 Nobody down on the coast knew anything to speak of 

 about the interior of these hills, or indeed anything 

 about trout, as is the way of local people. But before 

 the end of March, so eager was I, in that glorious hey- 

 day of youth, when all the world was fresh and new, 

 an oyster to be opened, I had already discovered a 

 snug inn in the heart of the moors, and was actually 

 hauling out, to my amazement, big bull-trout kelts 

 in the finest-looking river I had as yet ever fished. 

 As Devonshire trout rose well in March, and as this 

 to my eyes seemed a replica of Exmoor, I had assumed 

 they would be equally accommodating here. But to 

 shorten the story, I was in due course on terms of 

 more or less intimacy with most of the streams and 

 burns in these glorious hills, finding means of getting 

 to them for two or three days at a time, on and off, 

 throughout two whole fishing seasons. They were all 

 free water then, as they mainly are now, and despite 

 their solitude and the roughness of the few roads 

 that led to them were, by comparison with our closely 

 preserved streams of the south-west, heavily fished. 

 Edinburgh, Berwick, and Newcastle contained anglers 

 galore as they do to-day, though no doubt the great 

 increase in population of the first and last-named has 

 extended automatically to the fraternity, while the 

 motor and the cycle, even with steep and awkward 

 roads, must have made their mark. 



But even forty odd years ago those truly Scottish 

 institutions, the ' Fushin Clubs ' of Edinburgh and 

 elsewhere, often held their competitions on the best 



