6 AN ANGLER'S BASKET. 



precipice of i ,000 feet before so much as a lady fern interfered 

 to arrest your progress. And here on the black waters of 

 this awe-inspiring lake, hemmed in by these mountains, 

 which seem to have their summits in the sky, and overhang 

 the very spot where the boat is rocking, we fish, and find 

 sport too ; we basket six-and-twenty decent little trout in the 

 course of a couple of hours, until the purpling gloom steals 

 up the mountain sides, and unsuspected clefts appear under 

 the twilight shadows, and ghostly giants seem to stand out 

 suddenly to watch the time-worn cliffs like silent sentinels 

 throughout the night. Never in a long angling experience 

 in many parts of this loveliest and best of all lands have I 

 felt so strongly the irrepressible sense of man's tremendous, 

 littleness ; and that was what we all felt as we drove away 

 and left the spot to darkness and the centuries that are to be.. 



FLIES AND WORM FISHING. 



The flies will weary you this August morning, but that i& 

 only part of the fun. The " black incarnation of freedom," 

 as Mr. Ruskin called him, is as familiar in his treatment of 

 your nose and eyelids out here in the valleys as he is shame- 

 lessly blind to the eternal fitness of things when, with a 

 couple of pals, he promenades about your bald head when 

 you would sleep, perchance to snore, through Sunday 

 afternoon. You may smash at him as often as you like,, 

 and from any direction ; you will only irritate yourself, 

 without disturbing his equanimity in the slightest degree^ 

 He will return as certain as a cheque marked " No effects.'* 

 His perseverance is one of the noblest things in nature, and 

 the state of frenzy to which I once saw him reduce a little 

 man with a big nose was comforting and sublime. A 

 theatrical Richard III. was a baby to him in tragic pose and 

 pathos. You may smoke, you may steep yourself to the 

 eyes in eucalyptus and turpentine and other loud-smelling 



