MAY 147 



taking hold. Voluptuaries of a philosophic turn, who 

 have been at pains to analyse and compare the quality 

 of various forms of pleasure at the moment of fruition, 

 have been known to declare that there is no thrill so 

 delicious as that conveyed to the angler at the instant 

 a salmon closes his mouth on the fly. It happens, then, 

 that, inasmuch as this supreme moment is eliminated 

 by the process of harling, some profess they would 

 rather not fish at all than go a-harling. 



Howbeit, harling is a pastime not devoid of excite- 

 ment and more placid merits, and in some moods, and 

 at certain parts, of a great river recourse must be had 

 to it, or fishing be left alone. Nobody knows what a 

 really great river is, the rush and the swirl of it, till he 

 is embarked on its surface. It rolls along between 

 towering cliffs, here receiving the waters of one great 

 affluent and there those of another, which have no 

 more apparent effect on its volume than the tribute of 

 a conquered province or two have on the outward 

 splendour of a great ruler. Your two boatmen (one 

 pair of oars could not hold a boat on such a flood) 

 receive you at the top of a long reach. You have 

 brought three rods with you, which, being duly set 

 up and a choice fly attached to each line a Dusty 

 Miller, say, and a Black Dog and a Smith you seat 

 yourself facing the stern, and launch forth into the 

 deep. You let out thirty or forty yards of line from 

 each reel, and arrange the rods, the ends of the butts 

 inserted in holes, on the floor of the boat below your 

 thwart one rod pointing directly over the stern, the 



