DUNCAN GRANT'S BIG FISH 187 



"If your leviathan should be superlatively 

 boisterous, no one knows what may happen. For 

 instance, should you be in a boat, and he should 

 shoot away down the river, you must follow 

 rapidly ; then, when he again turns upwards, what 

 a clever fellow your fisherman must be, to stop a 

 boat that has been going down a rapid stream at 

 the rate of eight miles an hour, and bring it round 

 all of a sudden in time to keep company with the 

 fish, who has taken an upward direction ! And 

 what a clever fellow a piscator must be, if he can 

 prevent twenty yards of his line, or more, from 

 hanging loose in the stream ! These sort of things 

 will happen, and they are ticklish concerns. All I 

 can do is to recommend caution and patience ; and 

 the better to encourage you in the exercise of these 

 virtues, I will recount what happened to Duncan 

 Grant in days of yore. 



" First, you must understand that what is called 

 'preserving the river' was formerly unknown, and 

 every one who chose to take a cast did so without 

 let or hindrance. 



" In pursuance of this custom, in the month of 

 July, some thirty years ago, one Duncan Grant, a 

 shoemaker by profession, who was more addicted 

 to fishing than to his craft, went up the way from 

 the village of Aberlour, in the north, to take a cast 

 in some of the pools above Elchies-water. He 

 had no great choice of tackle, as may be conceived ; 

 nothing, in fact, but what was useful, and scant 

 supply of that. 



" Duncan tried one or two pools without success, 

 till he arrived at a very deep and rapid stream, 



