92 
WILD NORWAY. 
twice tried, proved blank; and the next below— 
Nygaard by name—gave no better result. These long 
pools occupied ns near three hours, and as the evening 
air grew crisp, a great fj eld-eagle slowly flapped across 
the valley, seeking his quarters for the night among 
the crags of the Vindola-dal. 
Our last pool lay a mile below—a deep, black, 
surging torrent, with a terrible, double-barrelled un¬ 
pronounceable Norwegian name; such, at least, I then 
thought it, though at the end of a few weeks I had 
almost mastered this thing, and even make bold to 
spell it, thus:—Nedre Baksnyden. Suffice it here to 
say that this great pool, with its strong double current 
setting in towards a rock-wall, looked big enough and 
black enough to hold a whale. We commenced to 
work it with a phantom minnow, while I tried a few 
casts with a large Namsen fly towards the farther 
bank. Hardly had we cleared the rapids than there 
was seen a swirl even on that troubled surface. A 
short, heavy tug and I was fast. The fish never 
moving from his original position, I thought (in my 
ignorance) that he was a small one, and held him with 
one hand while I reeled in the fly-line and passed the 
second rod forward. We had, however, hardly got 
ashore ere the error of this view and the quality of our 
foe became apparent; for the fish developed a sudden 
force that was almost alarming, and in a single rush 
took off nearly half the reel-line (140 yards), betaking 
himself to the surging torrent beneath the opposite 
rocks. Here, with alternate short runs and long periods 
of heavy bottom-pulling—“ jagging” at the line when¬ 
ever he stopped—the fight proceeded for two hundred 
