226 FORESTRY IN LITHUANIA. 



from one to eight pounds in weight. Upon one occasion, 

 in June, I had sailed slowly, by the aid of a gentle breeze, 

 from one side of the lake to the other, trolling as I went 

 along; and had just started upon my return, when the 

 bait was voraciously seized by a monster of a fish, that 

 came right up to the top of the water, and darted off 

 instantly with it. I let him have the line as quickly as 

 possible. But the wind sprang up at this moment, and 

 carried my boat off in one direction ; whilst the fish was 

 rushing madly away in another. I only had forty yards 

 of line upon the reel ; and, as soon as it had all run out, 

 it of course snapped, and away went the only trolling 

 gorge-hook that I possessed, with twenty yards of line. 



' Thus abruptly and disastrously ended, as I thought, all 

 my trolling speculations. But, upon returning to Mas- 

 salani, a fortnight afterwards, the boatman brought me 

 my hook and line, extracted from the fish, which be had 

 found lying dead upon the water, a few days after my 

 former visit. The fish, he told me, weighed more than 

 twenty pounds. Behold ! the old fable of the ring of Poly- 

 crates over again stripped, indeed, of much of its miracu- 

 lous character ; for a sharp gorge-hook was much more 

 likely to lead to the discovery of the fish that swallowed 

 it, than a precious jewel ; and the narrow circuit of a 

 small inland lake a far more favourable place for such 

 discovery than the waves of the open sea that washed the 

 shores of Samos. Nevertheless, the incident could hardly 

 fail to remind me, as it did, of the story, which has been 

 told with such inimitable simplicity by Herodotus, and 

 sung in inmortal verse by Schiller.' 



