104 'TWIXT SPEING AND SUMMER 



remembered frauds; wind, sky, and water may all be of 

 aspect most auspicious, yet the angler often returns at 

 night with a burden on his shoulder less by the weight 

 of a vanished luncheon and a drained flask. 



Howbeit, some rivers are exceptionally favoured, into 

 which salmon continue to run all through May and June, 

 and it was on the last day of the former month thac I 

 set out betimes to tempt fortune on the upper waters of 

 the Cree. This river, recently purged of all netting, and 

 reserved by an association of six members entirely for 

 angling, flows into the Sol way Firth through a tidal 

 channel eight miles in length, and is formed by the con- 

 fluence of the Minnick with the Cree proper eight miles 

 or thereby above high-water mark. The Minnick, flowing 

 from a group of deep lochs in the folds of the forests of 

 Buchan, is the larger of the two confluents, and runs 

 with a current as clear as any chalk stream ; the Cree, on 

 the other hand, strained from a vast expanse of peat 

 moss and moorland in south Ayrshire, is clear also, but 

 with the clearness of strong tea golden brown in the 

 shallows, dark as onyx in the rocky linns. For some 

 occult reason, ten fish ascended the smaller confluent in 

 the spring of 1900 for every one that entered the nobler 

 Minnick. The course of the Cree for several miles above 

 the junction is exceedingly troubled ; the river flows 

 between precipitous cliffs, tumbles over huge boulders, 

 and sleeps for brief intervals in profound, black abysses 

 locally known as linns. At the top of about three miles 

 of such a channel a formidable fall opposes itself to 

 ascending fish, only to be negotiated by them under cer- 

 tain conditions of water through an imperfect pass carved 

 in the solid silurian rock under direction of Frank Buck- 



