A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



above, were constantly floating down to the sea, piling up in 

 the backwaters, and sometimes bumping into the angler wading 

 up to his armpits in the salmon-throws. 



Occasionally we would rope four logs together into a raft, 

 and with an oar as paddle and rudder, float through rapid and 

 pool to our farmhouse some miles below. On one occasion 

 the logs must have been a little small. But the raft being made 

 in a backwater, we deposited thereon a i6-lb. newly caught 

 salmon, our fishing bags, and then my companion, whom I 

 had carefully carried out on my back, I having waders and he 

 none. Last of all, our boatman and I got on the raft, which 

 promptly sank to the bottom, wetting my waderless friend to 

 the skin. His language on that occasion is not worth repeating. 

 Then we sent the boatman home by road, and proceeded gaily 

 on our way downstream on the raft, which just sustained its 

 reduced crew. We managed safely to reach the pool below 

 the farmhouse, when forty yards from the shore and in twenty 

 , feet of water the raft upset. Somehow I managed to accom- 

 plish the swim ashore, in waders, though my very clear recol- 

 lection is that I have never desired to repeat the experiment. 

 My companion climbed on to the raft again, and was eventually 

 retrieved, with the salmon and fishing tackle, some half a mile 

 lower down the river. But this was our last experiment in 

 raft-navigation. 



The Norway rivers that I know best are those of the Trond- 

 hjem Amt, the Orkla, to wit ; its parallel sister river, the Gula, 

 where I once killed a 17-pounder on the afternoon of a memor- 

 able day in September when I had killed my first bull-elk ; 



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