MY FIRST SEA-TEOUT. 325 



by the Celt, I made my debut in taking the life of the 

 silver-sheened, gracefully-built beauty, whose home is 

 indifferently the pellucid burn or the storm-tossed 

 ocean. Of the spot where my maiden effort was made 

 history has no story to tell of ruthless slaughter or 

 blighted ambition ; still it is a bonny place, and such 

 as once gazed upon is likely not easily to be forgotten. 



I allude to the head of Loch Long, in Argyleshire, 

 where the river, or rather brook, Lyon, enters the 

 mountain-fringed loch on which stands the village of 

 Arrochar. The month of August had hardly passed 

 away when the clear skies and mountain peaks became 

 overcast with that dark, drifting, humid mass of clouds 

 that betoken a heavy fall of rain. The weather-wise 

 were not wrong in their conjectures, for true the gates 

 of heaven were opened, and hillsides and glens for two 

 successive days were pelted with the pitiless rains 

 till the burns became brim full, and the surplus water 

 waxed wrath against the enclosing banks as if the 

 yellow, turbid stream would burst its boundary. 

 Impatient youth proverbially is, and I fretted at the 

 imprisonment that the weather imposed upon me ; but 

 to some extent I was consoled by learning that when 

 the spate cleared out the sea trout would be on the 

 take, and that I should have a chance of trying my 

 skill with a nobler foe than those that had previously 

 fallen to my prowess. 



At length the late rain-gorged hillsides had returned 

 to their normal condition, and the mud-stained stream 

 had gradually reverted to its proper colour. The time 

 had come for me to prove my skill. Nor long was I 

 kept in doubt ; the fourth, or fifth, or sixth throw 

 hooked a fish, such a fish as never before had made 



