SALMON-FISHING. 45 



element of uncertainty would perhaps lead to uni- 

 versal celibacy. Still possessing it however, and 

 far from any approximation to this latter result, let 

 me sing the praises of that sport which ranks next 

 to fox-hunting in its utter absence of certainty — 

 the prince and king of all the angling domain — 

 salmon-fishing. Delightful in itself, this regal sport 

 conducts its worshippers into the grandest and wildest 

 scenes of nature, to one of which I will at once 

 ask my reader to accompany me. 



We will imagine that it is the middle of June, and 

 that London has begun to be as intolerable as it 

 usually becomes at that season, and that he is willing 

 to fly with me across the sea and to settle down for a 

 space in a Norwegian valley, and, surrounded by 

 scenery unsurpassed in its abrupt wildness by any- 

 thing to be seen even in that wildest of wild countries, 

 survey salmon-fishing from an Anglo- Norwegian 

 sportsman's point of view. Having with more or 

 less discomfort safely run the gauntlet of that most 

 uncertain and restless of oceans, the North Sea, we 



