82 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



Think of this, ye anglers, who have been all your lives 

 pacing the margin of some over-fished river in England ! 

 think of this, ye persevering labourers on the well-beaten 

 waters of the Tweed, the Tay, the Esk, the Don, the Spey, 

 the Ness and the Beuly ! think of this, ye tired thrashers 

 of the well-netted streams of Erne, Moy, and Shannon ! 

 think that within less than a fortnight's steaming from 

 your hall doors, there are as yet twenty-five virgin rivers 

 in one small portion of Canada, and that of the ten which 

 have been tried, they have all, with one single exception, 

 been found not only to abound in salmon, but to afford 

 ample facilities for taking that noble fish with the rod and 

 the fly. 



I do not mean to say that none of them present diffi- 

 culties to the fisherman, they would not be pleasant rivers 

 to fish if they did not. They have their sharp rapids, 

 their heavy falls, their impassable barriers, their sunken 

 rocks : in many of them it will be impossible, until civi- 

 lisation smooths the paths, to approach near enough to the 

 very best casts to fish them ; in others, the rough nature 

 of the volcanic rocks which hang over their pools, and the 

 impracticable state of the forests on their borders, throw 

 obstacles in the way of conveying cots or canoes to the 

 best stands, which are all but insurmountable. In many 

 of them a bright gravelly bottomed pool, with a lively 

 stream rippling through its centre, in which the fish per- 

 petually disport themselves, is terminated by a rocky and 



