294 TEAVEL, ADVENTUEE, AND SPOET. 



forgot all about the dead warriors and their quarrels, 

 and looked at its blue waters solely from a fisherman's 

 point of view. In ordinary weather it runs swiftly 

 within well-defined banks no rocks stand up per- 

 petually fretting and fighting with its waves ; and if 

 the huge rafts of silver fir, which float down in great 

 numbers, shoot the lashers in safety, they have nothing 

 to fear from running aground on its shingly banks 

 except delay. But in bad weather, after heavy rains, 

 it loses its bright transparent colour, and becomes 

 a furious milky-coloured torrent, carrying down an 

 immense body of sand, with quantities of chips, and 

 logs, and trees, and anything it can get the grip of, 

 when it encroaches on the land. It spreads out to 

 a breadth of a quarter of a mile, or more, when it 

 can ; and the worn grey shingle it has deposited, and 

 the stunted, smothered-looking alders it invades and 

 prevents from flourishing, form rather dreary objects 

 at low water in an otherwise beautiful valley. The 

 shingle runs out in spits, sometimes forming a bar 

 almost across the stream, and so helps to make many 

 fine pools of all sizes, which have generally a rapid, 

 sometimes, alas ! a too rapid "tail." Below the prin- 

 cipal dams also there are generally large pools, deep, 

 and often with a strong backwater. The Englishman 

 was on his way to Lenggries, a little village a few 

 miles up the valley, to join a friend, and, in company 

 with him, to wage war on a species of salmon Avhich 

 inhabits these waters. In the still pools, and in the 



