316 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



by the substantial gift of a large bird which happened to be 

 sitting on a tree immediately above my head. This, to me, was 

 most annoying, but many people considered it a good omen. 

 A friend of mine, indeed, before any important race-meeting 

 used to walk slowly up and down under a rookery near the house 

 in the hope of getting a hint about the chances of his selections 

 and the likelihood of their proving remunerative. 



Lastly, my favourite game of patience had several times 

 triumphantly succeeded, to my great astonishment, for as 

 a rule it but rarely came out, and was most irritating in 

 consequence. 



It was not unnatural, therefore, that for these several and 

 diverse reasons so highly thought of by others, I was led to hope 

 for a really good time with the salmon on a river in Norway 

 which a friend and I had taken. He, two years ago, had been 

 very successful there, and consequently thought well of our 

 prospects now. The last season had been a bad one, owing to 

 want of water, but now a large quantity of snow remained as 

 a reserve to keep the river at a fair fishing level for a consider- 

 able time. In a beautiful valley one of the many charming 

 "dais" of Norway, we therefore took up our quarters in the 

 early part of June, 1905. Confined to narrow limits by long 

 mountain ranges running almost parallel to each other and to 

 the river, our valley down-stream extends into the far distance, 

 where apparently, but apparently only, it is closed by high 

 mountains which, during the first part of our stay, were deeply 

 covered with snow. Above the house again another valley opens 

 into ours, bringing a small but rapid river with it, and here the 

 country is more open, the hills lower but thickly wooded, firs 

 and birches surrounding cultivated clearings, with a saeter here 

 and there, painted red or yellow. The white spire with black 

 roof of a village church peeped over a ridge, sharply outlined 

 against the dark greenj needlewood, and here also snow-covered 

 mountains round off the landscape. The view from our windows 

 was very picturesque, especially in a northerly direction. There, 

 between us and the river narrow space though it is were 

 small fields of barley, oats, and grass, green as green can be, 

 shooting up rapidly under the influence of occasional showers 

 and sixteen hours' daily sunshine. The wealth and variety of 

 the wild flowers everywhere was truly marvellous ; the " grass " 



