THE RIVER TAY. 153 



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 assertion, 

 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 Tay, 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 



