TROUT IN THE TYROL. 261 



a fearful obstacle to the enjoyment of art or antiquity. 

 But there are trout streams around Salzburg, and some 

 fine trout in them ; and I have passed some of the pleas- 

 antest days along those streams, looking up at the grand 

 pile of the Untersberg, in whose caverns the two emperors 

 sit face to face, sleeping, but now nearly ready to wake. I 

 was fishing there in June, 1871, and wondering what could 

 happen to rouse the mighty Charles, and a month later 

 the thunders of Weissembourg must have shaken the im- 

 perial slumbers. But Ischl, Major, Ischl were you ever 

 at Ischl ? It is the most lovely spot in Europe. Go there 

 before you die, and don't go to the Hotel Bauer on the 

 hill, but to Sarsteiner's, The Kreutz, a capital inn, with 

 old books in the halls, and pictures of all sorts of places, 

 and large bed-rooms and saloons, and a kitchen that is 

 not to be surpassed in or out of the Tyrol. It will suit 

 you. The valley of the Traun is a glorious place, and 

 the river is the only river my eyes ever saw which is in- 

 disputably superior in beauty of water to our White Mount- 

 ain streams. The delicate apple-green tint does not harm 

 its transparency. You can see bottom in twenty feet of 

 water. It flows like a liquid chrysoprase, and the trout 

 and grayling in it are superb. Mr. Sarsteiner controls 

 all the fishing in the valley, and is himself an angler, a 

 man of reading and extensive travel, and is interested in 

 fish-breeding. The fishing is close at hand too. I went 

 out of the house one evening about seven o'clock, and 

 walked in five minutes to the other side of the Traun, just 

 above the bridge and opposite the promenade, where the 

 river glides swiftly down over a pebble bottom. It was 

 nearly dark, but in fifteen minutes I had a half-dozen good 

 trout which the boy stowed safely in a barrel; for in 

 Switzerland and the Tyrol, when you go a-fishing, you 



