THE RIVER TAY. 173 



send to the cook, for I am sorry to say I did not catch 

 him." 



Host. — "Not catch him — not catch him ! Impossible, 

 with all your skill, armed as you are to the teeth, with 

 roach, bleak, minnows, frogs, kill-devils, and the deuce 

 knows what. Not catch him ! Come, you're joking." 



Piscator. — " Serious, I assure you. I never was so 

 beat before, and yet I never fished better; but though 

 I did not absolutely hook him, he ran at me several 

 times." 



An universal shout of laughter followed this asser- 

 tion, which made my friend not a little suspicious ; 

 but he never again touched upon the subject. Some 

 time afterwards, wandering near the scene of his 

 operations, he saw an immense carving of a pike placed 

 upon a pole near the margin of the water, and painted 

 beautifully : he guessed he had seen him before. 



Let us now return to the Scotch rivers. 



The Ta}r, which rises from, and is approximated by, 

 vast and desolate regions of moss and moor, preserves 

 its volume of water much longer than those rivers that 

 have their sources in a more pastoral and agricultural 

 country, and of course is much longer in good order for 

 fly fishing. But when the black clouds burst over the 

 vast wilderness of mountains, a hundred torrents gleam 

 on all sides, rush down the rocky ravines, and change 

 the burns into turbulent rivers, which pour their floods 

 into the mighty channel of the Tay : thus this river 

 probably carries more water to the ocean than any 

 other in Great Britain. 



I have read much of the rapids of the great rivers in 



