AND ANGLING SONGS. 65 



hares, eagles, trout, char, and salmon. It would be difficult, 

 indeed, to disabuse one of the idea that the Highland capital 

 stands in the most intimate connexion with the haunts of these 

 animals, and that its atmosphere is actually charged with a 

 gamey fragrance. As a point of start and observation, or as a 

 place of tryst, it offers, no doubt, many advantages to the sports- 

 man, but it will not admit of being regarded in a more attrac- 

 tive light, or as forming the nucleus of a good sporting territory. 

 The inducements which the angler, in particular, meets with to 

 take up his quarters at Inverness, are very slight. A salmon 

 river, it is true, of ample width, intersects the town, and leads 

 to the impression that one has only to cross its surface with the 

 approved tackle, in order to command, almost at any time, a 

 merry run and active tussle with the king of fresh-water fishes. 

 Quite a mistake ! The Ness, with all its inviting features, its 

 plenitude of discharge and transparent purity, undergoes an 

 annual struggle to maintain even a second-place position among 

 our salmon rivers. In what may be called the open portion of 

 it, or that to which by payment of a fixed sum access can be 

 obtained, the character of the sport met with is very unequal, 

 and, taking it all in all, extremely discouraging. Prize days, it 

 is true, occasionally occur, but they are met chiefly by some 

 dogged and determined hand, who works the water perseveringly 

 as well as scientifically, and whose aim apparently is to support, 

 by every means in his power, the failing credit of the river. 

 Even in its best days, when its fisheries drew a rental three 

 times as large as they do at present, the Ness, it speaks for 

 itself, could never have been a first-class angling river. Its 

 character and action are too much those of a conduit to allow 

 of the salmon taking up a fixed position in its pools during the 

 open season. The great body of fish which had escaped the 

 nets there being no impediment in the shape of a fall or cruive- 

 dyke to their further progress would naturally push up and pass 



E 



