Fly-Fi/hing. 



me indeed. There was firft the wild rufhing of 

 the water over a natural declivity in the bed of 

 the river, rendered ftill more rapid by the tem- 

 porary check it received from a few fragments of 

 rock that kept their place there in fpite of the 

 winter's torrents ; then the rolling of the ftream 

 over the pebbly bottom, that roughened the fur- 

 face, though with lefs of the wild fury that fumed 

 and fretted above; and then the gradual fubfi- 

 dence of the whole into a wide expanfe of unruf- 

 fled, though ftill fwift-running water. 



Of the eye, the centre, and the tail of a ftream 

 like this, I ufually find the fifh in May congrega- 

 ting in the laft. Still, it is not feldom that you 

 fall in with a trout (almoft invariably a good one) 

 in the very eye of the boiling water. 



Though a new river to a fly-fifher is like no- 

 velty in almoft everything elfe, very captivating 

 to the imagination, the firft throw on the one in 

 queftion difturbed me not a little in the dream of 

 the mighty doings I was about to achieve. I had 

 juft wetted my line in the flack water, and com- 

 menced with, as I fancied, a very fkilful lodgment 

 of my flies in an eddy caufed by one of the large 

 ftones that appeared above the furface. For an 

 inftant I caught fight of the white belly of a 



