66 FISH AND FISHING IN SCOTLAND. 



families, Menteith of Closeburn. Drumlanrig once boasted of its 

 breed of wild cattle, but these, I think, have been destroyed, or 

 suffered to become extinct. Fish the Nith, and a strong stream 

 which joins it from the south and west, and, crossing the ridge of 

 hills to the south of Keir, fish the Cam : it will lead you to 

 Dumfries. 



LOWER WATERS OP THE NITH : FROM THE BRIDGE TO THE SEA. 



I never fished these waters ; nor did I ever see anyone angling 

 in them. The liver is here fished with the net, as the fishing 

 belongs to the town of Dumfries. But for this it would, I think, 

 furnish sport to the angler, but have some doubts as to this, for 

 throughout the greater part of its course it is influenced by the 

 tide. Nevertheless, it abounds with the salmonidse, and it may 

 interest the angler to hear them described as I saw them, "taken 

 with the net." 



JOURNEY FROM THE DEE TO THE NITH. 



I left the angler at Kirkcudbright, on the Dee ; and from this 

 we started for Dumfries. 



I am persuaded that no true angler ever unless compelled 

 so to do by force of circumstances travels to the field of his 

 enjoyment on horseback, in a gig or chariot, in a post-chaise, 

 or by the most frightful and most odious of all means of convey- 

 ance, the rail. The angler leaves his home as old Izaak did, if 

 allowed to do so, on foot, using the instruments of travel which 

 Nature has bestowed on him. He is, or ought to be, a simple- 

 minded man ; no jolly-good-dinner fellow ; no roysterer; no hack 

 litterateur ; no uproarious bully ; no clubbist ; no man in search 

 of the picturesque that is, Saxon burlesque, the mock senti- 

 mental. Such men have angled, and written about angling, and 

 they may have written well about it, just as the man of no 

 feeling best described " The Man of Feeling." But anglers such 

 persons are not ; they are roysterers and bullies, who seek the 

 water-side as a relief from dissipation. The poor Cockney, who 

 travels to the Tweed in a post-chaise, and appears soon after on 

 its quiet placid bank, cased, like Hamlet's ghost, in furs and water- 

 proofs sufficient to carry him harmless to the pole : even he, 



