156 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST 



the place of the more aristocratic, but not less pungent, 

 reek of wood pavement. (There are zones in London — 

 and the environs of Euston form one of them — where at 

 all hours of the day and night fish seems to be a-frying.) 

 No ; my purpose was a very material one, and connected 

 immediately with fish. As ' the stork in the heaven 

 knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the 

 crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming,' 

 so not less faithfully do the great sea-trout — advanced 

 guard of the annual host of their smaller fellows — keep 

 their unwritten tryst and move up the streams shortly 

 after midsummer. He who squanders July in London 

 forfeits his prospect of prime sport with the gamest of all 

 fish, for the trout that follow in the wake of the first run 

 seldom attain more than two pounds in weight, being mostly 

 ' herlings ' or ' finnocks ' of less than a pound each. Indus- 

 trious netting has sadly impaired the angler's chances 

 with big sea-trout in most rivers — has destroyed it alto- 

 gether in some — for the legal mesh allows nothing above 

 two pounds to escape. It is only here and there in the 

 great playgrounds of the North that streams, mostly 

 small, are still kept sacred to the mystery of angling, and 

 that the fish still move up each summer from the tide in 

 almost incredible throngs. 



Well, within two-and-twenty hours of leaving Euston — 

 so aptly does modern transport pander to our pleasures 

 by facilitating sharpness of contrast — we were steaming 

 smoothly between the mountain buttresses which shut 

 off the winding fjord from the Atlantic. Drought was six 

 hundred miles in our rear. It was a hot evening, but 

 deliciously fresh; the green mountain slopes and dark 

 crags were seamed with milky veins, for every burn was 



