CHAPTER XVI. 



FISHING ON THE NEILGHERRIES. 



" We care not who says, 

 And intends it dispraise, 

 That an angler to a fool is next neighbour j 

 Let him prate ; what care we ? 

 We're as honest as he ; 

 And 90 let him take that for his labour." — 



Cotton. 



The fishing on tho Neilgherries is poor to a degree, while 

 with several such fine lakes it might be very good. It is a 

 thousand pities that, with the exception of Dr. Day's intelligent 

 action, all the admirable energy that has been displayed in stocking 

 the Neilgherries with fish has taken the mistaken direction it has. 

 To go all the way to England for the common carp was truly a sad 

 waste of most laudable enterprise and painstaking perseverance, for 

 the carp is only an imported fish in England, and attains but a 

 slight weight there comparatively, with a very poor flavour, and 

 yields next to no sport ; whdst India is itself the very paradise of 

 carps of numerous sorts, from 200 lbs. downwards ; carps that are 

 much better eating, that propagate and grow more rapidly, and, 

 moreover, afford excellent sport to the angler with fly, spoon, live 

 bait, or bottom fislung, as may happen to be preferred by the 

 weary health-seeker of the chief sanitarium of Southern India, 

 Ootacamund. How large the carp grow at Ootacamund I do not 

 know, careful netting only could tell us. Fishermen there have 

 told me certainly of lines carried away by them, but then their 

 lines were very frail ones, unsupplemented by reels, and the fish 

 that liroke them might quite as well have been the Carnatic Carp 

 put in by Dr. Day. All the fish I have seen taken there, whether 

 by rod or net, were miserable little things, of about 3 ozs. in weight, 

 and I have seen two or three drags made by the authorities, on 



