82 ANGLING FOR OUANANICHE 



land. The ill-humor of Roland Graeme was never of an obstinate 

 character. It rolled away like a mist before the sun, aud he was 

 easily engaged in a new and animated dissertation about Loch 

 Leven trout, and sea-trout, and river-trout, and red trout, and char, 

 which never rise to a fly ; and parr, which some suppose infant 

 salmon ; and hidings, which frequent the Frith ; and veudaces, 

 which are only found in the Castle Loch of Lochmaben." 



Roland was undoubtedly a true Waltonian, and the 

 Loch. Leven trout, like his near kinsman the Canadian 

 ouananiche, is a fish fit for a queen. 



The calm beauty of the crystal Loch, with its dis- 

 mantled and storied castle, is in strange contrast with 

 the native wildness, turbulent grandeur, and unknown 

 antecedents of the Grande Decharge of Lake St. John. 

 What record of heroic deeds and daring might not be 

 read, what halo of romance be seen, could the forest- 

 crowned banks and rocky islets of these impetuous 

 rapids but unfold the story of their long - forgotten 

 past! 



It is next to impossible to do justice to the wild 

 grandeur of the scenery below the grande chute. 

 Heavy gneiss, hornblende, and granite boulders are 

 scattered about on every hand, and besides them there 

 is nothing but water and sky and virgin forest to be 

 seen. Looking up the Decharge one sees only the 

 rush of the rapids and the steady fall of the grande 

 chute, while the waters surging down below are never 

 at rest, and the angler who stands fishing with his 

 feet one moment upon a rock thirty inches above their 

 surface, may, the next, find himself more than knee- 

 deep in the rising and falling swell produced by the 

 force and volume of yonder chute. It is necessary 



