68 Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, 



never fancied I should live to see. I was fairly startled^ and hardly 

 knew what to do, for I could plainly see (he was not two feet below 

 tlie surface) how slightly he was hooked. I pulled up the candocks 

 and loosed him, and he ran out into the middle of the hole, and 

 aofain grot fast. I will not tire the reader witli all the chases we had 

 backwards and forwards after that pike. I suppose it w^as at least 

 half an hour before I got the landing-net under him, and lugged 

 him into the boat. I never saw such a monster of a pike -, he was 

 not so very long, but so broad in the back, and darker-coloured 

 than any pike I ever saw before. He was as fat as butter, and 

 just weighed thirty-nine pounds Swedish, which would be some- 

 where about thirty-eight pounds English. I dried his head as a 

 trophy, and I hope to have the pleasure in autumn of showing it 

 myself to Mr. Francis, along with tlie hook that took the fish. I don't 

 mean to say that he was put into the stew by the monks that owned 

 the old cloister, but there was something very wicked and monkish 

 in his appearance, and, judging from the length and size of his 

 tusks (I can hardly call them teeth), might have been of any age 

 you pleased. 



We often have a night leistering in the shallow water on the 

 open places where the reeds have been cut. We get nothing but 

 pike ; plenty of them, however, for the last night 1 was out I stuck 

 twenty-seven pike. They were, however, not very large, the lot 

 weighing together about seventy pounds. I have, however, often 

 killed one cwt. here in the night. This is a sport (groans from the 

 opposition) which I greatly delight in 5 and let me say that it takes 

 some little skill to guide tlie boat single-handed, attend to the fire, 

 and strike the fish well. 



No other ducks breeds with us, as far as I can see, save the wild 

 duck, the widgeon, and the teal 3 and of these the former is by far 

 the most common. No wild geese breed with us, and, strange to 

 say, I never even saw a flock pitch during their migrations. Towards 

 the middle of September, the ducks get very strong and wild, the 

 old mallards are then assuming the full plumage again, and when a 

 shot is fired the birds rise from all parts of the reeds. About the 



