50 A RIVER OF NORWAY 



as one of the greatest of human follies. The 

 house stands at the head of Dais Fjord, here 

 very beautiful ; near it is a large waterfall, but 

 of no great height, beneath which three hundred 

 salmon were caught the preceding season, and 

 only four during the last." 



We have our good years and our bad years 

 now, but happily we have not experienced 

 such an extraordinary discrepancy as this. As 

 the Norwegians had not yet acquired the art 

 of fishing with a rod and line, and the few 

 English sportsmen who had visited the country 

 at that date had gone farther north, to the 

 Namsen, the Stenkjaer, or the Gula, these fish 

 must have been netted. Breton might have 

 given us further details ; but what can you ex- 

 pect of a man who neither fished nor smoked ? 



In no Norwegian river with which I am 

 acquainted is there any autumn run of fish, 

 such as occurs in Scotch rivers. But strag- 

 glers no doubt run until the end of the season. 

 The ordinary legal close time begins on Sep- 

 tember 15, but on many rivers, or on parts 

 of them, such as on the upper water here, 

 there is an extension of rod fishing until 

 September 30. Here the main run is over 



