176 WILD SPAIN. 



the simple Lusitanian peasant, who, seeing, or thinking 

 that he saw, an undreamed source of wealth in his rivers, 

 borrowed of his Basque and Galician neighbours their 

 deadly systems of poison and dynamite, and proceeded 

 forthwith to kill the goose that laid this golden egg. As a 

 natural result, at the present day many of the waters 

 of Northern Portugal are all but depopulated — hardly a 

 sizeable fish can now be taken where four or five-pounders 

 swam of yore. 



It is, however, the northern provinces of Spain, the 

 Asturias and Cantabrian highlands, and the rivers that 

 run into Biscay, that form the true home of Iberian 

 Salmonida. Here, in a land of towering mountains, 

 pine-clad and mist-enshrouded, and of rushing, rapid 

 streams, are found both the salmon, the sea-trout, and 

 the yellow trout.* 



Of the Salmon (Salmo salar) in Spain, we have had no 

 experience, and will say nothing more than that the 

 southernmost limit of its range appears to be the river 

 Minho, on the frontier of Portugal, and that the resist- 

 less energy of British sportsmen has succeeded (despite 

 the local difficulties referred to later) in acquiring fish- 

 ing rights of no small excellence. Nor have we fished 

 specially for the sea-trout, which are killed with fly and 

 other sporting lures, both in the upper streams and in the 

 brackish waters of the tideways, all along the Biscayan 

 coast, commencing to " run " in February. Some of their 

 habits appear here to differ from what we observe at home ; 

 but, without more precise knowledge, we prefer to pass them 

 by for the present. 



No more lovely trouting waters can angling introspect 

 conceive than some of those in Northern Spain. Now 

 surging through some tortuous gorge in successive 

 pools, dark, and foam-flecked, each of which look like 

 "holds" for monsters; now opening out on a hill- 

 girt plateau, where the current broadens into rippled 

 shallows, with long-tailed runs and hollowed banks, the 

 Cantabrian rivers offer promises all too fan. For the 

 * Specific names not guaranteed. 



