322 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



it correctly the connecting link between river-trout and 

 lordly salmon. 



Where mountain peak and inland loch, bubbling stream 

 and placid lake combine to make a picture worthy of an 

 artist's eye, or a landscape to be beloved by the Celt, I 

 made my debut in taking the life of the silver -sheened, 

 gracefully-built beauty, whose home is indifferently the pel- 

 lucid burn or the storm-tossed ocean. Of the spot where 

 my maiden effort was made history has no story to tell of 

 ruthless slaughter or blighted ambition ; still it is a bonny 

 place, and such as once gazed upon is likely not easily to 

 be forgotten. 



I allude to the head of Loch Long, in Argyleshire, where 

 the river, or rather brook, Lyon, enters the mountain- 

 fringed loch on which stands the village of Arrochar. The 

 month of August had hardly passed away when the clear 

 skies and mountain peaks became overcast with that dark, 

 drifting, humid mass of clouds that betoken a heavy fall of 

 rain. The weather-wise were not wrong in their conjec- 

 tures, for truly the gates of heaven were opened, and hill- 

 sides and glens for two successive days were pelted with 

 the pitiless rains till the burns became brimful, and the 

 surplus water waxed wrath against the inclosing banks 

 as if the yellow, turbid stream would burst its boundary. 

 Impatient youth proverbially is, and I fretted at the im- 

 prisonment that the weather imposed upon me; but to 

 some extent I was consoled by learning that when the 

 spate cleared out the sea -trout would be on the take, 

 and that I should have a chance of trying my skill with 

 a nobler foe than those that had previously fallen to my 

 prowess. 



At length the late rain-gorged hill-sides had returned to 

 their normal condition, and the mud -stained stream had 

 gradually reverted to its proper color. The time had come 



