138 AUTUMNS IN ARGYLESHIRE 



can still excite myself over any unwonted cap- 

 ture, although, perhaps, I do not make quite 

 so much noise over it as when I was nine 

 years old. 



There are pages in my memory which still 

 enshrine my greatest success, as the big pike 

 I caught out of a coracle in a Kentish pond, 

 which towed my little bark against the wind ; 

 my first salmon caught in Norway in 1862 ; my 

 first twenty-pounder from the Tay ; and last, not 

 least, another twenty-pound fish which I landed 

 by myself with a trout rod and small fly, in the 

 little Argyleshire stream I am about to describe, 

 where such monsters are rare indeed. There are 

 few kinds of British field-sports to which I am 

 altogether a stranger ; but, although each has 

 its attraction, I still keep my warmest devotion 

 for my first love. 



There is no kind of sport in which one is so 

 entirely independent of extraneous aid ; there is 

 doubtless a romance and an excitement about 

 the pursuit of the noblest of Scotch beasts of 

 chase, the red deer, in the solitude of the forest ; 

 but there is the decided drawback that you are 

 usually handed over to the tender mercies of 

 a stalker, whose commands you are implicitly 

 bound to obey, and who may or may not con- 

 descend to give you a reason for them ; and 

 there is also the necessity for a tail of gillies 

 and ponies. So grouse-shooting requires keepers, 



