82 THE SALMON 



The Craigs pool, where another boat awaited us, 

 is one designated by Scrope as Craigover, and is the 

 scene of one of those terrible poaching proceedings — 

 sunning the salmon— which he describes with such 

 astounding candour ; but for which he ought to have 

 done at least a month on the treadmill. It is the 

 very ideal of a salmon pool, and I was not surprised 

 when my attendant remarked that it always held 

 some fish at any period of the season. There is a 

 gravel bank on the Mertoun side, but the Craigs, a 

 precipitous sandstone rock, rises opposite at an angle 

 of the stream, which just above descends in a rapid 

 almost amounting to a small fall. At the bottom of 

 the rock numerous boulders, the ' tumbled fragments 

 of the hills,' tell of similar debris beneath the waters, 

 forming the subaqueous caverns and buttresses which 

 salmon love to haunt. Two small natural cairns 

 protrude into the water, one at the lowest corner of 

 the rock, and the second twenty or thirty yards lower 

 down : there is sufficient stream to hang the fly 

 properly, but the black surface denotes great depth, 

 and altogether it looked an ideal spot at any height 

 of the river, but especially promising when she was 

 low and bright. Here a rather long cast is required, 

 as the deep water extends a long distance from the 

 rocks, andi the boatman 1 cannot wade in far. Here 



