136 HAPPY HUNTING-GEOUNDS 



angler and tourist, and often, as in the case of the 

 Abyssinian traveller Bruce, posterity has done tardy 

 justice by accepting the accuracy of records doubted 

 and ridiculed by contemporaries. I do not believe 

 that fishermen as a race are more unreliable than any 

 other class of men when they are recording their own 

 experiences, but I am reminded of one instance which 

 occurred on the upper part of the Hvilested beat where 

 a fisherman gained great distinction as a phenomenal 

 liar by telling a story which he himself absolutely 

 believed, as he had been deceived by a practical joke. 

 He had come out to Norway as a guest of 

 Lort Phillips, and was experiencing, I will not say 

 enjoying, his initiation into the difficulties of cast- 

 ing at Stor pool, where, crede experto, it is by no 

 means easy to get out a decent line without catching 

 the boughs behind you, or breaking the bend of your 

 hook against a rock. He was very hot-tempered, and 

 his misfortunes and difficulties proved too much for 

 his nerves. At last, when Ole had rescued his fly 

 from the bushes for the tenth time or thereabouts, he 

 deliberately broke his rod across his knee, pitched it 

 reel, line and all into the deepest part of the pool, 

 and turning upwards to the road walked sullenly 

 homewards, leaving his attendant aghast and dumb 

 with astonishment. The Norwegian race are poor, 

 and count and appreciate every ore and kroner 

 which they earn with such difficulty ; and the 

 deliberate sacrifice of so valuable an outfit was un- 

 thinkable. Ole repaired to his cottage and there 

 rigged out an impromptu grappling apparatus with 

 which he went back to the pool and recovered the 

 jettisoned treasure. In a few minutes he had spliced 



