CONTINENTAL STATES. 175 



" Having furnished myself with a small stock of necessaries, 

 two dozen of good Limerick flies, and half a score of cast lines, 

 I set off for Honfluer, purposing to pay a visit to a friend there for 

 two or three days, and then proceed to Pont Audemer an angling 

 station on the north > boundaries of the province, of some little 

 notoriety and reputation. And I shall take the liberty of mention- 

 ing here, for the comfort and convenience of angling continental 

 tourists, that I derived much benefit in my subsequent rambles 

 from a tin digester, which I had got made at Havre, and which 

 enabled me to cook either fish or flesh with scarcely any trouble 

 whatever. This utensil was made of block tin ; round like a dish, 

 and about nine inches in diameter; had three small feet, and a 

 little tin cup to hold about an ordinary wineglassful of any kind 

 of spirit, by the ignition of which the cooking was effected. I 

 carried the entire apparatus in my fishing-basket among other 

 articles. It did not weigh more than ten ounces ; and it often 

 was the means by which I obtained a comfortable and palatable 

 dinner, when I would otherwise, to all appearance, have had to go 

 without. 



"Having arrived at the fishing stream of Pont Audemer, I took 

 the rod, and ascended the waters some little distance from the 

 town. I found several French gentlemen had been trying their 

 piscatory skill in this locality a week before my arrival, and, 

 according to report, had been very successful. One of the party 

 had caught a trout with minnow, near the mouth of the stream, 

 which weighed three pounds ten ounces ; a very fine, short, thick 

 fish, which had been preserved, and was about being placed in 

 a glass-case to ornament one of the sitting-rooms of the inn. I 

 found in my rambles that the streams were very rippling and 

 finely turned for a single-handed rod-fisher, and that red bodies 

 and gray wings were my most successful colours. The first day's 

 sport yielded me ten very fine trout, nearly all of a size, measuring: 

 about eleven inches, and weighing, on an average, about three 

 quarters of a pound each. On the second day I laboured at the 

 streams, and with great care too, for full four hours, and never got 

 a single rise; when, all of a sudden, a general movement took 

 place in every direction, both in streams and still water, and in 

 another hour I obtained fifteen; more varied, however, in size 

 than those of the day preceding, and amounting to nearly the same 

 weight. The black palmer was the favourite to-day. Erom all I 

 heard, I was led to conclude, that all the trout in this river are 

 rather uncertain and capricious in their tastes and movements 

 a fact, connected with their natural history generally, I have often 

 had opportunities of verifying, in reference to the finny tribes of 

 our own rivers in Great Britain. 



"I was not successful in hooking one of the small species of 

 salmon (saumoneau) which are to be found in the Rille, and Avliich, 

 writers on natural history say, are only to be found here and in the 

 Rhine. I had the good fortune, however, to see one of these rare 



