196 IN HIGHLAND WATERS 



Well, I went there. I trudged across that steep 

 four miles (four! I believe if the kinks were pulled 

 out of them they would be nearer fourteen) with that 

 burning impatience which makes one's boots feel like 

 4-inch guns. At last I stood beside the vaunted 

 Guseran. ' She ' was still small contemptibly, ridicul- 

 ously small not having quickened, as yet, to the 

 rainfall; but there are some deep, black pots among 

 the rocks, where salmon and sea-trout harbour in the 

 lowest water. My gillie recommended a ' Popham ' or 

 a 'Jock Scott' of the smallest size. See how that 

 schoolmaster has been at work ! Thirty years ago, 

 when I first knew Highland streams, had any profane 

 Southerner offered to exhibit such meretricious lures, 

 he would have been made to learn his place, and been 

 looked on as a likely candidate for a berth in the 

 county asylum if he had put up anything more gay 

 than a brown mallard or dun turkey wing. Now the 

 local authorities are just as dogmatic in the other 

 direction : nothing will attract ' our fish ' but the most 

 vivid confections of scarlet, blue, and gold. 



With exemplary docility, I mounted a tiny Jock 

 Scott, with a Pennell hackle as a dropper. Here and 

 there a sea-trout flashed up as if to frighten the intru- 

 der; presently a fellow of about a pound, turning 

 sharply from the dropper, impaled himself on the 

 double hooks of the Jock Scott, dashed about the rocks 

 in fine style, and was landed. Then the river was seen 

 to be swelling ; it had been strange if it did not, seeing 

 that a close sheet of warm rain had been falling since 



