164 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



his cap over his eyes, resumes his somewhat ticklish seat on 

 the rock to wait for the next fish. On some days when the 

 water is of the right height, and the fish are numerous and 

 inclined to run up the river, the old man catches a considerable 

 number ; though the capture of every fish is only attained by 

 a struggle of life and death between man and salmon, for the 

 least slip would send the former into the river, whence he 

 could never come out alive. I never see him catch one without 

 feeling fully convinced that he will follow the example of his 

 predecessor in the place, who was washed away one fine day 

 from the rock, and not found for some days, when his body was 

 taken out of the river several miles down." 1 



This picturesque old fisherman and his manner of fishing 

 can no longer be seen. Whether or not the salmon claimed 

 him in the deep pool, I know not. At Relugas the Divie 

 tributary, which receives the waters of the Dorback Burn from 

 Lochin Dorb with its castellated island, once a stronghold of the 

 " Wolf of Badenoch," enters the main river in a birch-clad de- 

 file similar to that of the Findhorn. Some distance lower down 

 is the curious rock-sculptured pool called Sluie Long Pool which 

 acts as a hold for salmon at most times, and has been the scene of 

 some extraordinary catches by net in the past, as the following 

 paragraph taken from the thirteenth volume of the new Statis- 

 tical Account of Scotland shows. It is dated February, 1842. 



" There is a considerable salmon fishing within the Parish, 

 at Sluie, the property of the Earl of Moray. Four men are 

 employed there to fish with a boat and draught nets the Sluie 

 Pool and two other pools near to it, with two or three more 

 considerably further down the river. Before salmon fishing 

 near the sea was so well understood as it is now, the fishery 

 at Sluie was of great celebrity. It appears by a letter dated 

 7th June, 1648, from the Earl of Moray to his Countess, that 

 ' in one night, on the pool of Sluie alone, 1,300 salmon were 

 taken ; and at one draught 620 scores.' About thirty-six 

 years ago, 360 salmon were caught in the same pool in one day. 

 But the number taken in all the pools connected with the net 

 fishing there does not now average about 700 yearly." 



This is second only to the miraculous draught of fishes 

 reported in the same account as having been made in the 

 1 Wild Sports of the Highlands, p. 211. 



