VIII 

 SUMMER DAYS ON A NOVA SCOTIAN SALMON STREAM 



Afoot the wash of waders and aloft the haze-veiled blue, 

 The heart it needeth nothing so the cast falls clean and true ; 

 O carol of the running reel and flash of mottled back ! 



A SUDDEN swerve of the highway, and there is the river 

 glimmering, dancing, sparkling along its boulder-strewn 

 channel, racing right merrily to swift annihilation in the tiny harbour 

 which twists stealthily in from the sea. We draw rein as we reach 

 the little bridge with its wooden piers fretting the impetuous current, 

 and look outwards on the blue salt water dotted with tawny sails 

 of fishing boats : at the white cottages of fishermen sprinkled 

 along the shores : at the background of dark fir trees, whose barbed 

 tops on the one side are traced as in india-ink against a cloudless 

 sky, and on the other are burnt and bitten into a fiery sunset. It is 

 the view up the valley threaded by the little salmon stream we have 

 come hither to fish which more steadfastly holds my gaze. Swiftly 

 towards me, between serried ranks of coniferous trees embroidered 

 with the white stems of silver birches, now with loud murmurings, 

 now with soft musical purl, again fairly shouting among the grey 

 granite boulders which are strewn on its pathway, sometimes slow 

 slipping over golden pebbles, sometimes swift sliding over glassy 

 ledges, comes my fascinating friend the river. For friend and 

 companion for the next two weeks this river is to be to me. At night 

 its voice will soothe me deliciously : all day long I will draw its 

 cheerful life into my veins. I will study its moods. There may arise 

 forbidding moods ; but, like some capricious charmer after spent 

 anger rewarding her patient lover with an unforgetable smile, 

 there is sure to come at length the sudden swift unveiling of dazzling 

 divine beauty. It may be at sunset-hour after rain, when there 

 unfolds a sudden transformation into an atmosphere so clear, so 

 marvellous, so brilliant, that the passage of light on the river (which 

 is the imperishable heart of the scene) glorifies the whole landscape, 

 until it becomes transfigured with colours never caught on the 

 canvas of Titian or of Turner. 



