GALA WATER. 105 



Kantipole was the star. The real angler naturally avoids such 

 persons and their haunts. There is surely a medium between 

 such and the mawkish claret-sipping author of the "Salmonia," 

 who never said a clever thing in his life. He was a man of 

 genius, notwithstanding all that has heen said against him by 

 the London Doctor who "attempted his life." 



CHAPTER III. 



GALA WATER. 



"There's braw braw lads on Yarrow braes, 

 That wander through the blooming heather ; 

 But Yarrow braes, nor Ettrick snaws, 

 Can match the lads of Gala Water." 



BUKNS. 



A MOUNTAINOUS country, wild, desolate, barren, extending 

 from St. App's Head on the east to the Western Ocean, with 

 little or no interruption, separate the valleys of the Forth and 

 Clyde from those in which run the Tweed, Annan, and Nith. It 

 is in this range of hilly country that we find the sources of 

 most of the trouting rivers of south Scotland, including the 

 streams of the Gala I am now to describe ; but on my first 

 visit to the Gala, I reached it from the south. Since then I 

 have fished it at most points. It is a classic river ; Burns has 

 made its name immortal. Deeply engraven on memory's tablet 

 is my first visit to Gala, and my last. It was autumn ; the 

 autumnal floods had set in. As we crossed Minch Moor from 

 Peebles, intending to sleep at Selkirk, the rain fell in torrents. 

 On the summit of that terrible moor we were enveloped in a 

 thunder cloud. At three of the day it was as dark as midnight ; 

 yet we journeyed on by Yarrow, swollen into a fierce discoloured 

 torrent, until Selkirk rose to view. Here we rested ; but next 

 morning it brightened up ; I almost think it was Sunday morn- 

 ing. Wandering on by Tweedside, we crossed the silvery stream 

 by the bridge, which the traveller will still find a mile or two 

 below the junction of the Gala and Tweed. Thence retracing 



