TRAilliam Scrope 433 



Now, John Younger was an honest man as well as a 

 good sportsman, and I daresay in the main what I have 

 quoted may be true ; but then, as I have already shown, 

 Mr. Scrope, with his wealth and his luxury, and his 

 grand seigneur modes of sport, had an effect upon the 

 excellent shoemaker so exasperating and irritating that 

 he can hardly be trusted to write or speak of his bete 

 noire with absolute fairness and impartiality. Therefore 

 it would be advisable, perhaps, to take honest John's state- 

 ments on this subject with a considerable pinch of salt. 



How William Scrope first became a "fisher for 

 salmon " is very humorously told in " Days and Nights 

 of Salmon-fishing," but at too great length to be quoted 

 entire. I will therefore condense the narrative. He 

 had started off from Selkirk one morning for trout- 

 fishing in the Ettrick with a handsome rod by the then 

 famous London maker Higginbotham. He had killed 

 two trout, a five-pounder and a two-pounder, and was 

 immensely proud of himself in consequence. What 

 happened next I will let him tell in his own words : 



" I had not long completed this immortal achievement 

 ere I saw a native approaching, armed with a prodigious 

 fishing rod of simple construction, guiltless of colour or 

 varnish. He had a belt round his waist, to which was 

 fastened a large wooden reel or pirn, and the line passed 

 from it through the rings of his rod : a sort of Wat 

 Tinlinn he was to look at. ... 



' What sport,' said I, ' my good friend ? ' 



1 1 canna say I hae had muckle deversion, for she is 

 quite fallen in, and there will be no good fishing till 

 there comes a spate.' . . . 



VOL. II. 7 



