244 HINTS ON ANGLING. 



Fly-fishing is the favourite mode of angling with the 

 French in the Charente and all its subordinate streams; 

 but their flies are the very oddest things imaginable, and 

 their mode of using them ridiculous and unsportsmanlike. 

 The English angler stares alike at the apparatus and the 

 tactique, and wonders how a trout is ever caught at all 

 by such grotesque and clumsy devices. 



THE GARONNE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. 



Between yon parted hills, whose rugged forms 



Proclaim them rent by some catastrophe, 



Beyond the dim traditions of the land, 



Like lovers doomed to lasting severance, 



The flashing waters of the swift Garonne 



Dash down their slanting bed, and, sparkling on 



Through verdant plains and winding vales, pursue 



Their fertile and rejoicing course, until 



They lave the lofty walls of famed Bordeaux, 



That city of the vines ! The Nun's Story. 



THE Gironde, or Garonne, is another of the great rivers 

 of France. Taking into consideration all its windings 

 and turnings, it cannot traverse a course less than four 

 hundred miles in length. 



A little below Bordeaux, the large river called the 

 Dordogne, falls into the Garonne; and from this point, 

 the inhabitants have given the name of Gironde to the 

 two united streams, until they lose themselves in the bay 

 of Biscay. 



The Dordogne, with all its tributaries, is not, taken 

 as a whole, anything like so fine a trout-river as the 

 Garonne. The former rises out of, and flows through, a 

 rather more level country than the latter; but yet, the 



