120 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



a little variety in our somewhat monotonous bill of 

 fare, and spared us the necessity of signs and refer- 

 ences to the phrase book while our parties were 

 together. About four or five days brought us to our 

 destination. During the journey I had passed by 

 many a pool and rapid which made my fingers itch to 

 grasp the rod, and now the day was at hand when I 

 might hope to try for my first salmon. 



Of course I was not at liberty to fish wherever 

 my fancy led me, like those fortunate early pioneers 

 whose adventures I had devoured in Newland's fascin- 

 ating volume. One of his party began harling, and 

 was nearly towed out to sea by a twenty-pounder 

 as soon as the packet had anchored at Christ iansand. 

 In 1865 most of the rivers were rented, and the 

 Rauma was in the hands of that prince of sportsmen, 

 Mr. W. Bromley Davenport, who has recorded some of 

 his adventures there in his too short work Sport. 

 If there be any among my readers who have not 

 already devoured the fascinating chapter in which 

 he records how, at five in the morning, he caught 

 a forty-three-pounder, and on the same evening 

 lost a salmon so large that the morning fish was, in 

 the graphic words of his fisherman, " only a small 

 piece of this one," let him lose no time in getting hold 

 of the book. 



That year he did not occupy at his usual quarters, 

 but had sublet the house and fishing rights to Lord 

 Coventry and Captain Pennant. They had a very 

 long stretch of water at their disposal, and the boat- 

 man whom I sent for and engaged on my arrival told 

 me that they very seldom came to the lower pools 

 immediately adjacent to my quarters, and that they 



