376 ifcfttGS of tbe 1Rot>, IRffle, anfc 6un 



for the great purpose, he viewed as something in the 

 character of magic. This together with a drop of 

 whisky in a bottle gave us not only a roving commission 

 but made us always the most desirable guests imaginable 

 There were no gentleman fishers in those days as now 

 to come three hundred miles in cold spring snows, 

 lodging at the inns here around us at some pound a day, 

 besides both treating and paying the tacksmen at a high 

 rate, something like another pound, for the favour of a 

 liberty to starve and fatigue themselves on the cold 

 water. One might have proved them mad before a jury 

 of Athenians. It was years after this ere Scrope came 

 round and succeeded old John Wight and Geordie 

 Sanderson, by trebling the rents of the Mertoun waters, 

 commencing what we may call the gentle epidemical 

 mania for salmon fishing, which has had the effect of 

 these great lordly pikes driving us smaller fry out of 

 the water." 



The Scrope here referred to was the famous William 

 Scrope, author of " The Art of Deer-stalking " and " Days 

 and Nights of Salmon-fishing on the Tweed," to whom I 

 have devoted a special chapter. He was John Younger's 

 bete noire the mere mention of his name was enough to 

 rouse the Radical shoemaker of St. Boswell's into a white 

 heat of indignation. John hardly ever alludes to his 

 aristocratic rival without bitterness. Possibly there was 

 a reason for this bitterness at any rate, John, in his 

 little book on " River Angling," hints that there was. 

 In describing the flies which he himself designed and 

 dressed, he writes : 



" I reduced all strictly to five, which I perceived, or at 



