THE SALMON'S JOURNEY 389 



follower of Robin Hood, will descend from the covert and 

 explain the law with firm courtesy. His courtesy would be 

 more hardly strained if he were acting on such government 

 instructions along the rivers of Sligo or Clare, or even in 

 Scotland. But in Scotland the halcyon days of the poacher 

 are over, and it would be difficult to find a to-day's parallel to 

 the great scene between Mr. Geddes, that warlike man of 

 peace, and the banded poachers in Redgauntlet. It would 

 be less difficult in Ireland to find modern instances of the 

 sort. The daring and the endurance of the West of Ireland 

 man is almost inconceivable. He will on occasion swim down 

 the river in the coldest winter night to adjust the net aright 

 and enclose a likely fish. Many indeed kill themselves from 

 recurrent exposure. 



All salmon, it is now proved or almost proved, have a 

 true instinct for their own river, and thanks to it the early 

 rivers are not more crowded with fish than the late. It is 

 astonishing how greatly rivers in the same locality vary. One 

 of the earliest of all the rivers empties into the sea at Sligo. 

 The fresh-run fish will begin to run up in December. In the 

 Erne, a few miles more north, the salmon come with the 

 other events of the spring, with the cuckoo, and swallow, and 

 bluebells. And the rivers differ in different years there are 

 early years and late years. The reasons are more simple and 

 obvious than we can usually find to account for migration. 

 Where the falls are heavy and steep as in the Erne the 

 water must be of just such a volume as the ascent re- 

 quires. One of the most glorious and surprising of natural 

 spectacles is a salmon jumping up a fall. The heavy narrow 

 channel at the point where the salmon are netted often looks 

 over-powerful for even a fish, and many of the falls look 

 impossible. But the salmon will curl itself into the likeness 

 of a steel spring and give way with equal force. He rushes 



