106 'TWIXT SPRING AND SUMMEK 



to his own bulk, is one of those problems which still 

 await solution. 



It may be safely predicated of the salmon that he has 

 no eye for the picturesque. That salmon-pools of good 

 repute are often part of a lovely prospect is a mere 

 accident, arising out of the beauties which running water 

 carves out of the solid earth. Just as often as not the 

 favourite lodge is known to the angler by some such land- 

 mark as a barbed-wire fence of evil aspect separating a 

 vulgar turnip-field from a flat, uninteresting pasture. But 

 here, in the upper waters of the Cree, no fish could find an 

 unlovely lodging if he would. Of all Scottish salmon- 

 rivers known to me, if it be not the Findhorn, none 

 excels these half-dozen miles of water in romantic beauty 

 and charming association of rocks and trees, ferns and 

 flowers. We are scarcely one hundred and thirty feet 

 above the sea, nor a dozen miles from a railway, yet the 

 solitude is perfect; no plough has profaned the virgin 

 moor; of houses, after passing the little kirkyard and 

 manse of Bargrennan, deeply cushioned in a coppice of 

 native oak, there are none to be seen, save a farmhouse 

 on the distant sky-line and a far-off shepherd's cot or 

 two. The very flowers are different from those of the 

 lower ground ; here no marsh-marigold gilds the marges 

 of the burns; its place is taken by the globe-flower 

 (2VoMi«s), prized by tasteful gardeners among the choicest 

 alpines. Its blossoms are of pure, true gold, without the 

 ruddy alloy which tinges the sovereigns of our mint and 

 the flowers of marigold. Primroses and blue hyacinth 

 sheet the banks here, as on the plain, but it is the little 

 mountain cudweed that stars the rocks with snowy 

 plumelets, closely resembling in miniature its near 



