88 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



right side of the river, motioned to me by signs — for we 

 could not exchange a word — Trinity College Dublin, not 

 ha-sdng educated me in the Indian tongues, that I should 

 disembark and proceed to fish, which I was previously 

 burning to do. Soon, was the single splice in my eighteen ^ 

 feet of Irish ash, with one foot of hickory and two inches 

 of tortoise shell at the top, tied together with a strong and > 

 well waxed thread of hemp. Quickly was my gold-tinselled 

 fiery brown, with claret hackle and mixed wings, attached 

 to my single gut casting-line ; for very rarely have I used ' 

 any other : rapidly did I make my first three throws in 

 the very jaws of the gorge, and just as rapidly, on the third 

 throw, did an animated mass of molten silver, as it ap- 

 peared, rush along the surface of the water, engulph my 

 fiery brown in his wide-spread jaws, and turn to descend 

 into the depths beneath him, when he received, from some 

 involuntary and indescribable turn of my WTist, which is 

 called the " strike," such a twinge in the lower part of his 

 tongue, as made him believe that he was held fast by some- 

 thing amazingly hot, which it was his duty to extinguish 

 and resist by every means that was afforded to him by 

 water, tail, and fins. His nishes to and fro, his dives deep 

 and long, his leaps many and rapidly repeated; the 

 adroitness with which the Indian received rae into his frail 

 and unsteady canoe at the very moment when the last 

 foot of line was rolling off my reel ; the steadiness and 

 ({uietude with which he brought me over my fish; the 



