106 DATS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING. 



who does not practise either angling or field sports of 

 some sort or another. They all demand skill and 

 enterprise. If you ask me to reconcile angling to 

 reason, you may possibly distress me. It is an instinct, 

 a passion, and a powerful one, originally given to man 

 for the preservation of his existence. The waters as 

 well as the land yield forth their increase. In the joy- 

 less regions of the north, when the bear famishes on 

 the iceberg, and the gaunt wolf howls amongst the 

 snow-drifts, the miserable tenant of the land stalks 

 along the desolate shores, and with his javelin, or hooks 

 of bone, acquires by his rude skill a precarious subsis- 

 tence for his family. Everlasting winter has stamped 

 her iron foot upon the soil : the snow whitens all in- 

 terminably, except where the blasts drive it from the 

 face of the bleak rocks ; and without this resource he 

 must perish, — he and his sad family together. Even 

 it is ordained from above. 



Thrice happy are we, who live in a more genial 

 climate, and who inherit the instinct given to our less 

 fortunate fellow-creatures, and exercise it not from hard 

 necessity, but as a means of recreation. Man being thus 

 evidently destined to fish, let us consider the style of 

 thing that is likely to give him the most gratification. 



When I read of the whale fishery, and of that animal 

 running out a mile of rope, for an instant my thoughts 

 were bent on the seas of Greenland ; but I was taken 

 aback by the frontispiece of Captain Scoresby's enter- 

 taining narrative, which represents his boat thrown 

 aloft in the air by a playful jerk of a whale's tail, and 

 all the crew tumbling seaward in very sprawling and 



