328 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



me feel diffident, or previously made me doubt the 

 seasoning and strength of my rod. No sooner had the 

 barbed hook fastened in its insidious hold, and the 

 impaled monarch learned that he was captive, than 

 every effort of his lithe and agile frame was brought 

 into play to recover freedom. In every struggle, in 

 every effort to burst the bonds that made him 

 captive, there was an utter recklessness of conse- 

 quences, a disregard for life that was previously 

 unknown, as from side to side of the pool he rushed, 

 or headlong stemmed the sweeping current. Nor 

 did the hero confine himself to his own element ; 

 again and again he burst from its surface to fall 

 back fatigued but not conquered. The battle was 

 a severe one, a struggle to the death ; and when my 

 landing-net placed the victim at my feet, I felt he had 

 died the death of a hero. Such was my first sea trout, no 

 gamer truly than hundreds I have captured since ; but 

 what can be expected of a race of which every member 

 is a hero ? But to bonnie Scotland and its purple 

 braes, its snow-clad peaks and birchen slopes, its 

 sweet-noted mavis and plaintive cushey-doo, I bid 

 adieu, and flit across the broad ocean till the stormy 

 estuary of the St. Lawrence is reached, for here, as 

 well as in my native land, the sea trout cleaves the 

 briny tidal wave or ascends rushing, reckless rivers. 

 But, strange to say, in Eastern and Western streams 

 these beauties are very dissimilar in their habits ; 

 in the former you capture them in the upper 

 waters or fluvial portions, in the latter, if you desire 

 success, it is in the sea you must seek them, near 

 where an affluent empties its volume. I know of no 

 greater pleasure in this world so scantily supplied 



