AN ALBANIAN TROUT-STREAM 



THIS is an old memory, almost as old as 

 that of my first trout, a memory of 

 the Mediterranean Flagship, sailing sometimes 

 literally sailing without the aid of steam in 

 summer seas " up the Straits." We anchored 

 in Avlona Bay, that wonderful land-locked 

 harbour in Albania. The chart showed a little 

 stream running into the sea near the entrance 

 of the bay, and the word was passed to the 

 uninitiated that that stream held trout, and 

 good ones. The weather was blazingly hot ; 

 day after day a hot sun had shone in a hard 

 blue sky, and there was no prospect of a cloud 

 therein for several months ; we are so seldom 

 troubled in that way in the British Isles that 

 it is difficult to imagine the longing for a cloudy 

 sky, and for the smell of a shower striking on 

 parched earth. In those days the ships of OUT 

 Mediterranean Fleet were painted black, and 

 although we had spread an awning-curtain, like 



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