NORWAY AND ITS SEA TROUT 233 



restlessly, for a rise of water, and I left the two anglers, 

 owners of the river, who were living in a snug Nor- 

 wegian home of their own, waiting, too, with patient 

 resignation. There they were amongst the fishing 

 tackle, guns, cartridge cases, dogs, and miscellaneous 

 paraphernalia essential to noble sportsmen who, poor 

 fellows, in these hard times, can only spend a few 

 months every year with a lovely fiord under their noses, 

 and a few hundredweights of salmon, and odds and 

 ends of reindeer, blackcock, and ryper now and then 

 to engage their attention. I wonder no more that 

 English sportsmen go a little mad about their beloved 

 Norway ; and that hard-working judges, bishops, 

 university dons, and professional men of all sorts and 

 conditions, find their best balm of Gilead amongst its 

 picturesque valleys and hills. Of course the sportsmen 

 are not always happy. If in the smoking-room on our 

 homeward passage A. was able to remark that he had 

 finished up, two days previously, with a 30-lb. salmon, 

 and B. stated the heavy totals on a few favoured rivers, 

 there were C. and D. to bemoan deplorable blanks, 

 and tell of anglers who had gone home disgusted before 

 their term of tenure expired ; indeed, one fellow pas- 

 senger whispered me near the smoke stack that a 

 gentleman of his acquaintance had paid close upon 

 400 for a river that yielded him just thirty fish for the 

 entire season. 



