53 Sweden. 



are no means of taking the fish, which are to be met wiiii in 

 abundance, while the whole of the fishing for hundreds and hun- 

 dreds of miles along tlie Western coast are monopolized by a few 

 rich Englishmen, wlio perhaps never see the country except during 

 a month or two in the summer, who never spend a shilling among 

 the poor inhabitants, except just at the fishing season ; who have 

 not the slightest interest in the land further than as a means of 

 gratifying their love for sport, and yet have assumed a power to 

 warn otlier older residents in the country off water (a good deal of 

 vhich, if the matter was looked into, has really no private owner), 

 which surely in their wild tracts, at least, we should have imagined, 

 would have been as free at least to one stranger as another. Is 

 it possible that such can really be the case ? 



And now for a word or two on the practice of monopohzing 

 fishing in this wild land. I obser\^ed in 1864 some letters in the 

 Field, in which we were told that the River Alten up near the 

 North Cape from the Lea to tlie Fors, is leased by the Duke of 

 Roxburgh, the Hansen by Sir Charles Taylor and his friends, and 

 that there is not a river of note in Norway that is not now protected 

 by English lessees. This is a wide statement j and without for one 

 moment denying the full right of any man in any country to let 

 his fishings or his shootings to whoever he chooses, or for any other 

 man to rent them j but when we are told that not a river of note 

 n Norway but what is protected, it naturally leads us to ask, " What 

 is meant by this protection ?" 



I do not exactly know how the law stands in Norway as regards 

 fishing ; I fancy, however, much the same as in Sweden. Now in 

 Sweden no man has the least right to interfere with the middle of the 

 stream. Every proprietor has the sole right of fishing in one- 

 third of tlie water — that which abuts upon his own land. Thus 

 two-thirds of the river can be preserved — one-third on each side ; but 

 Jhe middle-third, which is here called tiie king's highway, is open to 

 /ll. It must, moreover, always be kept open not solely for the 

 purposes of navigation, but for the sake of the fish passing up 

 and down. Not a stake, net, or ***"" obstacle, may be placed 



