THE MICROBE 



rcan tourists of to-day would have said to the menage 

 I cannot imagine ! 



The trouting potentialities of the Engadine, how- 

 ever, offered to my but half-experienced eye a great 

 and virgin field, not virgin in one sense, for the native 

 anglers were in considerable evidence, and doubtless 

 are so still, with gigantic bamboo poles, from which 

 they flung an impaled grasshopper on lake and stream. 

 They wondered at my little jointed rod and Mr. Pul- 

 man's flies, for I doubt if they had ever seen such an 

 outfit before. No Englishman, so far as I could learn, 

 had ever then fished there. I had compiled a fishing 

 vocabulary, which I, still have, of about forty German 

 words relating to the sport. So with the help of 

 gesticulations I could put leading questions to my 

 brother sportsmen if not exchange fish stories with 

 them. But they either did not answer at all, or over- 

 whelmed me with such torrents of eloquence that 

 I was glad to escape, no wiser than before. The trout 

 were small, sometimes of a colour and condition that 

 won my approval, sometimes of the blue and starve- 

 ling type suggestive of glacier water. I was not very 

 successful, but it was novel and interesting, and on 

 each occasion some fresh prospect held out untold 

 possibilities. The experiences of Devonshire no doubt 

 wanted some readjustment. But one or two ventures 

 did prove quite successful. 



Now my Oxonian companion had been quite badly 

 bitten by my enthusiasm, and for lack of alternative 

 had invested a franc or two in a twenty-foot bamboo 

 pole. It was unhandy to be sure as an article of bag- 

 gage, and when we shifted quarters I well remember 



39 



