WESTERN TROUT-FISHING 275 



for stocking purposes in preference to the inferior 

 kinds of fish. I am not aware, however, that any- 

 thing of the kind was formerly done. 



But this is a digression from the main subject- 

 matter of my chapter. Fishing, as I have already 

 said, is a sporting relaxation that only seems to grow 

 in fascination, and in the hold it exercises over its 

 devotees, with the growth of years. There are times 

 when it is good for a man to be alone with Nature 

 when the best holiday he can take in this busy, 

 strenuous city-living age of ours is, now and then, to 

 pass out into the wilderness. And by the wilderness, 

 if it be well chosen, we here desire to indicate the 

 lonely moorland loch or the side of the mountain- 

 stream : where man's only companions are the curlew 

 and the plover overhead ; the natural wild life of the 

 green forest ; or maybe the wild-deer on the open 

 hillside. Around him are the everlasting hills, and 

 in his ears the soothing, murmuring noises of wind 

 and tree and stream. Then, amid such surroundings 

 give our lonely fisherman a trout* rod to handle, and, 

 as objects of pursuit and capture with cunning fly 

 and light-thrown line, the speckled, gleaming beauties 

 of loch or burn, and so the picture is complete. 



It has been my fortune to enjoy for a space all 

 these conditions of a perfect fishing holiday in the 

 heart of the Wyoming Rockies, and the recollection 

 of that holiday is with me still. In the year 1898 I 

 was in Wyoming on ranching and other business, but 

 managed to snatch six weeks for a hunting-trip to the 

 head of Green River, which rises in some of the 

 wildest mountain-ranges of the Great Divide. South 

 and west of the National Park, in the north-west 

 corner of Wyoming, are a series of rocky, snow-clad 



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