68 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



be kept up to dry wet clothes, to keep off musquitoes, and 

 fo r culinary purposes ; that trees must be cut down to feed 

 these fires; that cooking for three or four hungry men, two or 

 three times a day, making beds, cleaning knives, plates, &c., 

 will occupy a good deal of time ; that if your party consists of 

 more than two, at least two cots or skiffs will be requisite ; 

 and that while you are fishing you will require at least one 

 man in each cot to paddle, pole, and gaff for you. 



The best cot or skiff for this sort of work is that which 

 is used on the rapids of the Shannon at Castleconnel in 

 Ireland * ; it is light, draws very little water, steady, so that 

 the fisherman can stand up to fish from it, can be held in 



* SALVESTYR. 



CASTLECONNEL is a beautiful village on the southern shore of the Shannon, 

 about six miles eastward of Limerick. Before the Continent was open to 

 wealthy wanderers, it was a fashionable watering place, and annually 

 attracted large numbers of visitors in search of health, or fun, or fishing ; 

 but latterly it is almost deserted, except by the favoured few who are 

 admitted to the noble sport of sahnon fishing, which is to be found in the 

 preserved waters of a few proprietors, in as great perfection as in any other 

 place in the kingdom of Ireland ; and by still fewer who occasionally resort 

 to it, attracted by the beauty of the scenery and the calm of its retirement, 

 which cause it to be peculiarly suited for newly-married couples on their 

 wedding tour. Nevertheless, up to a late period, there were a number of 

 lazy, idle boatmen resident there, who gained a scanty and precarious 

 subsistence, by acting as guides to the different points of view, and by 

 inducing visitors to hire their frail cots for fishing purposes ; though, to say 

 truth, they were generally far more skilful in inventing stories and amusing 

 their victims than in luring the silvery salmon from his rocky lair. 

 Amongst them was a brawny, able-bodied, red-haired fellow, whose sobriquet 

 was " the Lamb," I suppose because he was the least innocent and the 

 most cunning of his confreres, and who really possessed the talent of 

 telling a yarn in an amusing manner. One of his narratives suggests itself 



