322 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 
it correctly the connecting link between river-trout and 
lordly salmon. 
Where mountain peak and inland loch, bubbling stream 
and placid lake combine to make a picture worthy of an 
artist’s eye, or a landscape to be beloved by the Celt, I 
made my début in taking the life of the silver-sheened, 
gracefully-built beauty, whose home is indifferently the pel- 
lucid burn or the storm-tossed ocean. Of the spot where 
my maiden effort was made history has no story to tell of 
ruthless slaughter or blighted ambition; still it is a bonny 
place, and such as once gazed upon is likely not easily to 
be forgotten. 
T allude to the head of Loch Long, in Argyleshire, where 
the river, or rather brook, Lyon, enters the mountain- 
fringed loch on which stands the village of Arrochar. The 
month of August had hardly passed away when the clear 
skies and mountain peaks became overcast with that dark, 
drifting, humid mass of clouds that betoken a heavy fall of 
rain. The weather-wise were not wrong in their conjec- 
tures, for truly the gates of heaven were opened, and hill- 
sides and glens for two successive days were pelted with 
the pitiless rains till the burns became brimful, and the 
surplus water waxed wrath against the inclosing banks 
as if the yellow, turbid stream would burst its boundary. 
Impatient youth proverbially is, and I fretted at the im- 
prisonment that the weather imposed upon me; but to 
some extent I was consoled by learning that when the 
spate cleared out the sea-trout would be on the take, 
and that I should have a chance of trying my skill with 
a nobler foe than those that had previously fallen to my 
prowess. 
At length the late rain-gorged hill-sides had returned to 
their normal condition, and the mud-stained stream had 
gradually reverted to its proper color. The time had come 
