JULY 183 



the land-names are chiefly in the old Norse language; 

 there, too, the sun of summer succeeds in banishing night 

 almost as effectively as in Norway itself. Brief in pro- 

 portion are the winter days ; even at the end of February, 

 within a month of the equinox, a full hour of daylight is 

 filched by the envious shades more than in the latitude of 

 London. Wherefore it behoves him who would do justice 

 to his luck to be astir betimes, and it was that feeling 

 which took me to my beat that morning on the Helms- 

 dale before a forbidding rime-frost had risen off the land. 

 The Helmsdale has much the character of a Norse river, 

 rolhng swift and strong so long as the snow-field lasts; 

 dwindling to insignificance when that is exhausted. It 

 bears the name given to its strath by the Norse con- 

 querors — Helmsdale — the old Gaelic title being Amhuin 

 and Strath UUie. 



Well, I began operations in the frost, and in the first 

 passage down the pool three fish came to the fly, but not 

 one would take hold. About ten o'clock the sun came 

 over the shoulder of the Ord; the unkindly cold fled 

 before it, and straightway ensued a phenomenon, the like 

 of which I have never seen before. Eleven spring-salmon 

 rose in succession, each one went as near swallowing a 

 large ' snow-fly ' as he could, and each one paid the penalty 

 of death for his curiosity. 



Now set against that the experience of this very day on 

 which I scribble these desultory lines. It is in Romsdal, 

 at the very cream of the season — the first week in July. 

 A week of cold wet weather, accounted very unfavourable 

 for sport, has just passed away, during which we got fish 

 daily, and good ones too. The oracle of the river — the 

 excellent old boatman Tostern — bade us wait till the river 



