22 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



business now is with salmon fishing proper ; such as it has 

 been in Scotland, Ireland, Norway and England. All we 

 shall at present say is, that pleasant and delightful as it 

 is to wander along the devious banks of a pastoral stream, 

 broken into the varieties of sharp falls and smooth deep 

 reaches, to inhale the odours of the blooming thorn, " the 

 wild rose, and the woodbine sweet;" to mark from 

 beneath the overhanging fringed bank, the alarmed flight 

 of the dingy water-hen or painted halcyon : or see hover- 

 ing over the stilly sheltered pool the dragon-fly, proudly 

 arrayed in all his glorious sheen of azure, and tourquois, and 

 emerald, and royal purple, and burnished gold, that the 

 lake, too, has its charms of natural objects and locomotion, 

 of a kind peculiar to itself. The lounging, reclining ease, 

 while borne along the undulating waves, your flies or 

 minnow trolling after you ; the pleasing alarm when the 

 music of your revolving wheel announces a stricken fish ; 

 the action of hope and of exercise while on the active 

 angle ; the varying appearance of the surrounding shores, 

 and the delightful and all-engrossing anxiety felt from the 

 moment one of these jnionstrous fish is hooked until it is 

 safe in the bottom of the skiff, are pleasures of which the 

 true disciple of old Isaac Walton can alone form a compe- 

 tent notion ; then, as advancing from shore to shore, one 

 sees, when the water is clear, the bottom diversified and 

 broken with silvery sand and marl, aquatic vegetation, or 

 ponderous and abrupt rocks, less and less distinct till lost 



