126 “GOD BLESS ME, WHAT N’A FISH!” [PART I. 
away from the boat, and brought him quietly up 
into shallow water, when John Cameron waded in 
round him, and, getting his hands well under his 
gills, hauled him bodily out, and with a “God 
bless me, what n’a fish!” brought him on shore in 
his arms. I had entreated him to employ the gaff, 
but he seemed so uncertain as to its use, and so 
confident of being able to do it in his own way, 
that I let him “gang his ain gait.’ The fish pro- 
ved to be a magnificent male Salmo jferox, which 
our steelyards agreed in returning about two 
ounces under twenty pounds. His dimensions 
were,—length, two feet eight inches and three- 
quarters; girth, one foot ten inches and a half. 
Anything like his condition I never saw, but it 
may be judged of by the fact that he was com- 
pared by the first three people we met, to a pig, 
a whale, and a pair of bellows. 
On looking to see how he had been hooked, 
I found that the lower part of the flight of hooks 
had caught him in the side of the mouth, but that 
the lip-hook had also, no doubt as he went away 
in one of his long rushes, got fast in one of his 
gill-covers, behind the eye. Thus I had through- 
out been labouring under the disadvantage of 
having a cross-pull on him, which, coupled with 
