HARRY OTTER 7 



he eyes his ample capture beaming are his looks 

 when he contemplates his coloured canvass. It is 

 with pain we take leave of the happy man : we would 

 willingly write his memoirs, but we have a higher 

 duty to perform. We are about to sing of Harry 

 Otter, even of ourselves, doing battle with the lusty 

 Salmon as we ride on the waves of the Tweed in our 

 little bark, or wade amongst its rapid cataracts. It 

 becomes us first, however, to preface our pages with 

 a short description of the Salmon itself, as well as of 

 Harry Otter ; and we will begin with the fish, as 

 being the most interesting animal of the two.* 



* The good-humoured fun which Harry Otter pokes at his 

 citizen contemporaries gives a somewhat exaggerated but not 

 wholly untrue picture of Cockney fishing of the day. The condi- 

 tions of their sport (not, I expect, much changed by the lapse of 

 nine or ten years) may be studied in The London Angler' s_Book, by 

 John Baddeley, 1834. A walk of twelve or fourteen miles to the 

 fishing and as many back seems to have been a common achieve- 

 ment. But fish were in those days to be caught in the Thames at 

 Battersea, there was fine trout fishing quite close to London, and 

 there were still rumours of salmon both in Thames and Lea, so things 

 were not quite so bad as Scrope suggests. His description of the 

 angler who wandered farther afield, sketch-book or notebook in 

 one hand and rod in the other, accords very well with the impres- 

 sions given by a good many contemporary books such as Medwin's 

 The Angler in Wales, 1834, which displays all the required " meander- 

 ing " of mind. (ED.) 



