Chapter XI: A Song after Sundown (3)

Then I remembered that William Black had described this very fish in A Princess of Thule. I pulled the book from my pocket, and, lighting a pipe, sat down to read that delightful chapter over again. The breeze played softly down the valley. The warm sunlight was filled with the musical hum of insects and the murmur of falling waters. I thought how much pleasanter it would have been to learn salmon-fishing, as Black's hero did, from the Maid of Borva, than from a red-headed gillie. But, then, his salmon, after leaping across the stream, got away; whereas mine was safe. A man cannot have everything in this world. I picked a spray of rosy bell-heather from the bank of the river, and pressed it between the leaves of the book in memory of Sheila.

II.

COMMON HEATHER.

It is not half as far from Albany to Aberdeen as it is from New York to London. In fact, I venture to say that an American on foot will find himself less a foreigner in Scotland than in any other country in the Old World. There is something warm and hospitable--if he knew the language well enough he would call it couthy--in the greeting that he gets from the shepherd on the moor, and the conversation that he holds with the farmer's wife in the stone cottage, where he stops to ask for a drink of milk and a bit of oat-cake. He feels that there must be a drop of Scotch somewhere in his mingled blood, or at least that the texture of his thought and feelings has been partly woven on a Scottish loom--perhaps the Shorter Catechism, or Robert Burns's poems, or the romances of Sir Walter Scott. At all events, he is among a kindred and comprehending people. They do not speak English in the same way that he does--through the nose---but they think very much more in his mental dialect than the English do. They are independent and wide awake, curious and full of personal interest. The wayside mind in Inverness or Perth runs more to muscle and less to fat, has more active vanity and less passive pride, is more inquisitive and excitable and sympathetic--in short, to use a symbolist's description, it is more apt to be red-headed--than in Surrey or Somerset. Scotchmen ask more questions about America, but fewer foolish ones. You will never hear them inquiring whether there is any good bear-hunting in the neighbourhood of Boston, or whether Shakespeare is much read in the States. They have a healthy respect for our institutions, and have quite forgiven (if, indeed, they ever resented) that little affair in 1776. They are all born Liberals. When a Scotchman says he is a Conservative, it only means that he is a Liberal with hesitations.

And yet in North Britain the American pedestrian will not find that amused and somewhat condescending toleration for his peculiarities, that placid willingness to make the best of all his vagaries of speech and conduct, that he finds in South Britain. In an English town you may do pretty much what you like on a Sunday, even to the extent of wearing a billycock hat to church, and people will put up with it from a countryman of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show. But in a Scotch village, if you whistle in the street on a Lord's Day, though it be a Moody and Sankey tune, you will be likely to get, as I did, an admonition from some long-legged, grizzled elder:

"Young man, do ye no ken it's the Sawbath Day?"

I recognised the reproof of the righteous, an excellent oil which doth not break the head, and took it gratefully at the old man's hands. For did it not prove that he regarded me as a man and a brother, a creature capable of being civilised and saved?

It was in the gray town of Dingwall that I had this bit of pleasant correction, as I was on the way to a fishing tramp through Sutherlandshire. This northwest corner of Great Britain is the best place in the whole island for a modest and impecunious angler. There are, or there were a few years ago, wild lochs and streams which are still practically free, and a man who is content with small things can pick up some very pretty sport from the highland inns, and make a good basket of memorable experiences every week.

The inn at Lairg, overlooking the narrow waters of Loch Shin, was embowered in honeysuckles, and full of creature comfort. But there were too many other men with rods there to suit my taste. "The feesh in this loch," said the boatman, "iss not so numerous ass the feeshermen, but more wise. There iss not one of them that hass not felt the hook, and they know ferry well what side of the fly has the forkit tail."

At Altnaharra, in the shadow of Ben Clebrig, there was a cozy little house with good fare, and abundant trout-fishing in Loch Naver and Loch Meadie. It was there that I fell in with a wandering pearl-peddler who gathered his wares from the mussels in the moorland streams. They were not of the finest quality, these Scotch pearls, but they had pretty, changeable colours of pink and blue upon them, like the iridescent light that plays over the heather in the long northern evenings. I thought it must be a hard life for the man, wading day after day in the ice-cold water, and groping among the coggly, sliddery stones for the shellfish, and cracking open perhaps a thousand before he could find one pearl. "Oh, yess," said be, "and it iss not an easy life, and I am not saying that it will be so warm and dry ass liffing in a rich house. But it iss the life that I am fit for, and I hef my own time and my thoughts to mysel', and that is a ferry goot thing; and then, sir, I haf found the Pearl of Great Price, and I think upon that day and night."

Under the black, shattered peaks of Ben Laoghal, where I saw an eagle poising day after day as if some invisible centripetal force bound him forever to that small circle of air, there was a loch with plenty of brown trout and a few salmo ferox; and down at Tongue there was a little river where the sea-trout sometimes come up with the tide.

Here I found myself upon the north coast, and took the road eastward between the mountains and the sea. It was a beautiful region of desolation. There were rocky glens cutting across the road, and occasionally a brawling stream ran down to the salt water, breaking the line of cliffs with a little bay and a half-moon of yellow sand. The heather covered all the hills. There were no trees, and but few houses. The chief signs of human labour were the rounded piles of peat, and the square cuttings in the moor marking the places where the subterranean wood-choppers had gathered their harvests. The long straths were once cultivated, and every patch of arable land had its group of cottages full of children. The human harvest has always been the richest and most abundant that is raised in the Highlands; but unfortunately the supply exceeded the demand; and so the crofters were evicted, and great flocks of sheep were put in possession of the land; and now the sheep-pastures have been changed into deer-forests; and far and wide along the valleys and across the hills there is not a trace of habitation, except the heaps of stones and the clumps of straggling bushes which mark the sites of lost homes. But what is one country's loss is another country's gain. Canada and the United States are infinitely the richer for the tough, strong, fearless, honest men that were dispersed from these lonely straths to make new homes across the sea.

It was after sundown when I reached the straggling village of Melvich, and the long day's journey had left me weary. But the inn, with its red-curtained windows, looked bright and reassuring. Thoughts of dinner and a good bed comforted my spirit--prematurely. For the inn was full. There were but five bedrooms and two parlours. The gentlemen who had the neighbouring shootings occupied three bedrooms and a parlour; the other two bedrooms had just been taken by the English fishermen who had passed me in the road an hour ago in the mail-coach (oh! why had I not suspected that treacherous vehicle?); and the landlord and his wife assured me, with equal firmness and sympathy, that there was not another cot or pair of blankets in the house. I believed them, and was sinking into despair when Sandy M'Kaye appeared on the scene as my angel of deliverance. Sandy was a small, withered, wiry man, dressed in rusty gray, with an immense white collar thrusting out its points on either side of his chin, and a black stock climbing over the top of it. I guessed from his speech that he had once lived in the lowlands. He had hoped to be engaged as a gillie by the shooting party, but had been disappointed. He had wanted to be taken by the English fishermen, but another and younger man had stepped in before him. Now Sandy saw in me his Predestinated Opportunity, and had no idea of letting it post up the road that night to the next village. He cleared his throat respectfully and cut into the conversation.

"Ah'm thinkin' the gentleman micht find a coomfortaible lodgin' wi' the weedow Macphairson a wee bittie doon the road. Her dochter is awa' in Ameriky, an' the room is a verra fine room, an' it is a peety to hae it stannin' idle, an' ye wudna mind the few steps to and fro tae yir meals here, sir, wud ye? An' if ye 'ill gang wi' me efter dinner, 'a 'll be prood to shoo ye the hoose."

So, after a good dinner with the English fishermen, Sandy piloted me down the road through the thickening dusk. I remember a hoodie crow flew close behind us with a choking, ghostly cough that startled me. The Macpherson cottage was a snug little house of stone, with fuchsias and roses growing in the front yard: and the widow was a douce old lady, with a face like a winter apple in the month of April, wrinkled, but still rosy. She was a little doubtful about entertaining strangers, but when she heard I was from America she opened the doors of her house and her heart. And when, by a subtle cross examination that would have been a credit to the wife of a Connecticut deacon, she discovered the fact that her lodger was a minister, she did two things, with equal and immediate fervour; she brought out the big Bible and asked him to conduct evening worship, and she produced a bottle of old Glenlivet and begged him to "guard against takkin' cauld by takkin' a glass of speerits."

It was a very pleasant fortnight at Melvich. Mistress Macpherson was so motherly that "takkin' cauld" was reduced to a permanent impossibility. The other men at the inn proved to be very companionable fellows, quite different from the monsters of insolence that my anger had imagined in the moment of disappointment. The shooting party kept the table abundantly supplied with grouse and hares and highland venison; and there was a piper to march up and down before the window and play while we ate dinner--a very complimentary and disquieting performance. But there are many occasions in life when pride can be entertained only at the expense of comfort.

Of course Sandy was my gillie. It was a fine sight to see him exhibiting the tiny American trout-rod, tied with silk ribbons in its delicate case, to the other gillies and exulting over them. Every morning he would lead me away through the heather to some lonely loch on the shoulders of the hills, from which we could look down upon the Northern Sea and the blue Orkney Isles far away across the Pentland Firth. Sometimes we would find a loch with a boat on it, and drift up and down, casting along the shores. Sometimes, in spite of Sandy's confident predictions, no boat could be found, and then I must put on the Mackintosh trousers and wade out over my hips into the water, and circumambulate the pond, throwing the flies as far as possible toward the middle, and feeling my way carefully along the bottom with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on the bank in an agony of apprehension lest his Predestinated Opportunity should step into a deep hole and be drowned. It was a curious fact in natural history that on the lochs with boats the trout were in the shallow water, but in the boatless lochs they were away out in the depths. "Juist the total depraivity o' troots," said Sandy, "an' terrible fateegin'."

Sandy had an aversion to commit himself to definite statements on any subject not theological. If you asked him how long the morning's tramp would be, it was "no verra long, juist a bit ayant the hull yonner." And if, at the end of the seventh mile, you complained that it was much too far, he would never do more than admit that "it micht be shorter." If you called him to rejoice over a trout that weighed close upon two pounds, he allowed that it was "no bad--but there's bigger anes i' the loch gin we cud but wile them oot." And at lunch-time, when we turned out a full basket of shining fish on the heather, the most that he would say, while his eyes snapped with joy and pride, was, "Aweel, we canna complain, the day."

Then he would gather an armful of dried heather-stems for kindling, and dig out a few roots and crooked limbs of the long-vanished forest from the dry, brown, peaty soil, and make our campfire of prehistoric wood--just for the pleasant, homelike look of the blaze--and sit down beside it to eat our lunch. Heat is the least of the benefits that man gets from fire. It is the sign of cheerfulness and good comradeship. I would not willingly satisfy my hunger, even in a summer nooning, without a little flame burning on a rustic altar to consecrate and enliven the feast. When the bread and cheese were finished and the pipes were filled with Virginia tobacco, Sandy would begin to tell me, very solemnly and respectfully, about the mistakes I had made in the fishing that day, and mourn over the fact that the largest fish had not been hooked. There was a strong strain of pessimism in Sandy, and he enjoyed this part of the sport immensely.

But he was at his best in the walk home through the lingering twilight, when the murmur of the sea trembled through the air, and the incense of burning peat floated up from the cottages, and the stars blossomed one by one in the pale-green sky. Then Sandy dandered on at his ease down the hills, and discoursed of things in heaven and earth. He was an unconscious follower of the theology of the Reverend John Jasper, of Richmond, Virginia, and rejected the Copernican theory of the universe as inconsistent with the history of Joshua. "Gin the sun doesna muve," said he, "what for wad Joshua be tellin' him to stond steel? 'A wad suner beleeve there was a mistak' in the veesible heevens than ae fault in the Guid Buik." Whereupon we held long discourse of astronomy and inspiration; but Sandy concluded it with a philosophic word which left little to be said: "Aweel, yon teelescope is a wonnerful deescovery; but 'a dinna think the less o' the Baible."

III.

WHITE HEATHER.

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of

"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

She has her own scale of values for these mementos, and knows nothing of the market price of precious stones or the costly splendour of rare orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt that the most important things are always the best remembered; only we must learn that the real importance of what we see and hear in the world is to be measured at last by its meaning, its significance, its intimacy with the heart of our heart and the life of our life. And when we find a little token of the past very safely and imperishably kept among our recollections, we must believe that memory has made no mistake. It is because that little thing has entered into our experience most deeply, that it stays with us and we cannot lose it.

You have half forgotten many a famous scene that you travelled far to look upon. You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mont Blanc, the roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of Patti's crystalline voice has left no distinct echo in your remembrance, and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of a dream. But there is a nameless valley among the hills where you can still trace every curve of the stream, and see the foam-bells floating on the pool below the bridge, and the long moss wavering in the current. There is a rustic song of a girl passing through the fields at sunset, that still repeats its far-off cadence in your listening ears. There is a small flower trembling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath the open sky, that never withers through all the changing years; the wind passes over it, but it is not gone--it abides forever in your soul, an amaranthine blossom of beauty and truth.

White heather is not an easy flower to find. You may look for it among the highlands for a day without success. And when it is discovered, there is little outward charm to commend it. It lacks the grace of the dainty bells that hang so abundantly from the Erica Tetralix, and the pink glow of the innumerable blossoms of the common heather. But then it is a symbol. It is the Scotch Edelweiss. It means sincere affection, and unselfish love, and tender wishes as pure as prayers. I shall always remember the evening when I found the white heather on the moorland above Glen Ericht. Or, rather, it was not I that found it (for I have little luck in the discovery of good omens, and have never plucked a four-leaved clover in my life), but my companion, the gentle Mistress of the Glen, whose hair was as white as the tiny blossoms, and yet whose eyes were far quicker than mine to see and name every flower that bloomed in those lofty, widespread fields.

Ericht Water is formed by the marriage of two streams, one flowing out of Strath Ardle and the other descending from Cairn Gowar through the long, lonely Pass of Glenshee. The Ericht begins at the bridge of Cally, and its placid, beautiful glen, unmarred by railway or factory, reaches almost down to Blairgowrie. On the southern bank, but far above the water, runs the high road to Braemar and the Linn of Dee. On the other side of the river, nestling among the trees, is the low white manor-house,

"An ancient home of peace."

It is a place where one who had been wearied and perchance sore wounded in the battle of life might well desire to be carried, as Arthur to the island valley of Avilion, for rest and healing.

I have no thought of renewing the conflicts and cares that filled that summer with sorrow. There were fightings without and fears within; there was the surrender of an enterprise that had been cherished since boyhood, and the bitter sense of irremediable weakness that follows such a reverse; there was a touch of that wrath with those we love, which, as Coleridge says,

"Doth work like madness in the brain;"

flying across the sea from these troubles, I had found my old comrade of merrier days sentenced to death, and caught but a brief glimpse of his pale, brave face as he went away into exile. At such a time the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after rain. But through those clouds the Mistress of the Glen came to meet me--a stranger till then, but an appointed friend, a minister of needed grace, an angel of quiet comfort. The thick mists of rebellion, mistrust, and despair have long since rolled away, and against the background of the hills her figure stands out clearly, dressed in the fashion of fifty years ago, with the snowy hair gathered close beneath her widow's cap, and a spray of white heather in her outstretched hand.

There were no other guests in the house by the river during those still days in the noontide hush of midsummer. Every morning, while the Mistress was busied with her household cares and letters, I would be out in the fields hearing the lark sing, and watching the rabbits as they ran to and fro, scattering the dew from the grass in a glittering spray. Or perhaps I would be angling down the river, with the swift pressure of the water around my knees, and an inarticulate current of cooling thoughts flowing on and on through my brain like the murmur of the stream. Every afternoon there were long walks with the Mistress in the old-fashioned garden, where wonderful roses were blooming; or through the dark, fir-shaded den where the wild burn dropped down to join the river; or out upon the high moor under the waning orange sunset. Every night there were luminous and restful talks beside the open fire in the library, when the words came clear and calm from the heart, unperturbed by the vain desire of saying brilliant things, which turns so much of our conversation into a combat of wits instead of an interchange of thoughts. Talk like this is possible only between two. The arrival of a third person sets the lists for a tournament, and offers the prize for a verbal victory. But where there are only two, the armour is laid aside, and there is no call to thrust and parry.

One of the two should be a good listener, sympathetic, but not silent, giving confidence in order to attract it--and of this art a woman is the best master. But its finest secrets do not come to her until she has passed beyond the uncertain season of compliments and conquests, and entered into the serenity of a tranquil age.

What is this foolish thing that men say about the impossibility of true intimacy and converse between the young and the old? Hamerton, for example, in his book on Human Intercourse, would have us believe that a difference in years is a barrier between hearts. For my part, I have more often found it an open door, and a security of generous and tolerant welcome for the young soldier, who comes in tired and dusty from the battle-field, to tell his story of defeat or victory in the garden of still thoughts where old age is resting in the peace of honourable discharge. I like what Robert Louis Stevenson says about it in his essay on Talk and Talkers.

"Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain considerations overlooked by youth. They have matter to communicate, be they never so stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is great literature; classic by virtue of the speaker's detachment; studded, like a book of travel, with things we should not otherwise have learnt . . . where youth agrees with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies; and it is when the young disciple finds his heart to beat in tune with his gray-haired teacher's that a lesson may be learned."

The conversation of the Mistress of the Glen shone like the light and distilled like the dew, not only by virtue of what she said, but still more by virtue of what she was. Her face was a good counsel against discouragement; and the cheerful quietude of her demeanour was a rebuke to all rebellious, cowardly, and discontented thoughts. It was not the striking novelty or profundity of her commentary on life that made it memorable, it was simply the truth of what she said and the gentleness with which she said it. Epigrams are worth little for guidance to the perplexed, and less for comfort to the wounded. But the plain, homely sayings which come from a soul that has learned the lesson of patient courage in the school of real experience, fall upon the wound like drops of balsam, and like a soothing lotion up on the eyes smarting and blinded with passion.

She spoke of those who had walked with her long ago in her garden, and for whose sake, now that they had all gone into the world of light, every flower was doubly dear. Would it be a true proof of loyalty to them if she lived gloomily or despondently because they were away? She spoke of the duty of being ready to welcome happiness as well as to endure pain, and of the strength that endurance wins by being grateful for small daily joys, like the evening light, and the smell of roses, and the singing of birds. She spoke of the faith that rests on the Unseen Wisdom and Love like a child on its mother's breast, and of the melting away of doubts in the warmth of an effort to do some good in the world. And if that effort has conflict, and adventure, and confused noise, and mistakes, and even defeats mingled with it, in the stormy years of youth, is not that to be expected? The burn roars and leaps in the den; the stream chafes and frets through the rapids of the glen; the river does not grow calm and smooth until it nears the sea. Courage is a virtue that the young cannot spare; to lose it is to grow old before the time; it is better to make a thousand mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses than to refuse the battle. Resignation is the final courage of old age; it arrives in its own season; and it is a good day when it comes to us. Then there are no more disappointments; for we have learned that it is even better to desire the things that we have than to have the things that we desire. And is not the best of all our hopes--the hope of immortality--always before us? How can we be dull or heavy while we have that new experience to look forward to? It will be the most joyful of all our travels and adventures. It will bring us our best acquaintances and friendships. But there is only one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to love this life, and live it as bravely and cheerfully and faithfully as we can.

So my gentle teacher with the silver hair showed me the treasures of her ancient, simple faith; and I felt that no sermons, nor books, nor arguments can strengthen the doubting heart so deeply as just to come into touch with a soul which has proved the truth of that plain religion whose highest philosophy is "Trust in the Lord and do good." At the end of the evening the household was gathered for prayers, and the Mistress kneeled among her servants, leading them, in her soft Scottish accent, through the old familiar petitions for pardon for the errors of the day, and refreshing sleep through the night and strength for the morrow. It is good to be in a land where the people are not ashamed to pray. I have shared the blessing of Catholics at their table in lowly huts among the mountains of the Tyrol, and knelt with Covenanters at their household altar in the glens of Scotland; and all around the world, where the spirit of prayer is, there is peace. The genius of the Scotch has made many contributions to literature, but none I think, more precious, and none that comes closer to the heart, than the prayer which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for his family in distant Samoa, the night before he died:--

"We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof: weak men and women subsisting under the covert of thy patience. Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer--with our broken promises of good, with our idle endeavours against evil--suffer us a while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns to us--our sun and comforter--call us with morning faces, eager to labour, eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion, and, if the day be marked to sorrow, strong to endure it. We thank thee and praise thee; and, in the words of Him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblation."

The man who made that kindly human prayer knew the meaning of white heather. And I dare to hope that I too have known something of its meaning, since that evening when the Mistress of the Glen picked the spray and gave it to me on the lonely moor. "And now," she said, "you will be going home across the sea; and you have been welcome here, but it is time that you should go, for there is the place where your real duties and troubles and joys are waiting for you. And if you have left any misunderstandings behind you, you will try to clear them up; and if there have been any quarrels, you will heal them. Carry this little flower with you. It's not the bonniest blossom in Scotland, but it's the dearest, for the message that it brings. And you will remember that love is not getting, but giving; not a wild dream of pleasure, and a madness of desire--oh no, love is not that--it is goodness, and honour, and peace, and pure living--yes, love is that; and it is the best thing in the world, and the thing that lives longest. And that is what I am wishing for you and yours with this bit of white heather."

1893.

THE RISTIGOUCHE FROM A HORSE-YACHT

Dr. Paley was ardently attached to this amusement; so much so that when the Bishop of Durham inquired of him when one of his most important works would be finished, he said, with great simplicity and good humour, 'My Lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over.'--SIR HUMPHRY DAVY: Salmonia.

The boundary line between the Province of Quebec and New Brunswick, for a considerable part of its course, resembles the name of the poet Keats; it is "writ in water." But like his fame, it is water that never fails,--the limpid current of the river Ristigouche.

The railway crawls over it on a long bridge at Metapedia, and you are dropped in the darkness somewhere between midnight and dawn. When you open your window-shutters the next morning, you see that the village is a disconsolate hamlet, scattered along the track as if it had been shaken by chance from an open freight-car; it consists of twenty houses, three shops, and a discouraged church perched upon a little hillock like a solitary mourner on the anxious seat. The one comfortable and prosperous feature in the countenance of Metapedia is the house of the Ristigouche Salmon Club--an old-fashioned mansion, with broad, white piazza, looking over rich meadow-lands. Here it was that I found my friend Favonius, president of solemn societies, pillar of church and state, ingenuously arrayed in gray knickerbockers, a flannel shirt, and a soft hat, waiting to take me on his horse-yacht for a voyage up the river.

Have you ever seen a horse-yacht? Sometimes it is called a scow; but that sounds common. Sometimes it is called a house-boat; but that is too English. What does it profit a man to have a whole dictionary full of language at his service, unless he can invent a new and suggestive name for his friend's pleasure-craft? The foundation of the horse-yacht--if a thing that floats may be called fundamental--is a flat-bottomed boat, some fifty feet long and ten feet wide, with a draft of about eight inches. The deck is open for fifteen feet aft of the place where the bowsprit ought to be; behind that it is completely covered by a house, cabin, cottage, or whatever you choose to call it, with straight sides and a peaked roof of a very early Gothic pattern. Looking in at the door you see, first of all, two cots, one on either side of the passage; then an open space with a dining-table, a stove, and some chairs; beyond that a pantry with shelves, and a great chest for provisions. A door at the back opens into the kitchen, and from that another door opens into a sleeping-room for the boatmen. A huge wooden tiller curves over the stern of the boat, and the helmsman stands upon the kitchen-roof. Two canoes are floating behind, holding back, at the end of their long tow-ropes, as if reluctant to follow so clumsy a leader. This is an accurate description of the horse-yacht. If necessary it could be sworn to before a notary public. But I am perfectly sure that you might read this page through without skipping a word, and if you had never seen the creature with your own eyes, you would have no idea how absurd it looks and how comfortable it is.

While we were stowing away our trunks and bags under the cots, and making an equitable division of the hooks upon the walls, the motive power of the yacht stood patiently upon the shore, stamping a hoof, now and then, or shaking a shaggy head in mild protest against the flies. Three more pessimistic-looking horses I never saw. They were harnessed abreast, and fastened by a prodigious tow-rope to a short post in the middle of the forward deck. Their driver was a truculent, brigandish, bearded old fellow in long boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black sombrero. He sat upon the middle horse, and some wild instinct of colour had made him tie a big red handkerchief around his shoulders, so that the eye of the beholder took delight in him. He posed like a bold, bad robber-chief. But in point of fact I believe he was the mildest and most inoffensive of men. We never heard him say anything except at a distance, to his horses, and we did not inquire what that was.

Well, as I have said, we were haggling courteously over those hooks in the cabin, when the boat gave a lurch. The bow swung out into the stream. There was a scrambling and clattering of iron horse-shoes on the rough shingle of the bank; and when we looked out of doors, our house was moving up the river with the boat under it.

The Ristigouche is a noble stream, stately and swift and strong. It rises among the dense forests in the northern part of New Brunswick--a moist upland region, of never-failing springs and innumerous lakes--and pours a flood of clear, cold water one hundred and fifty miles northward and eastward through the hills into the head of the Bay of Chaleurs. There are no falls in its course, but rapids everywhere. It is steadfast but not impetuous, quick but not turbulent, resolute and eager in its desire to get to the sea, like the life of a man who has a purpose

"Too great for haste, too high for rivalry."

The wonder is where all the water comes from. But the river is fed by more than six thousand square miles of territory. From both sides the little brooks come dashing in with their supply. At intervals a larger stream, reaching away back among the mountains like a hand with many fingers to gather

"The filtered tribute of the rough woodland,"

delivers its generous offering to the main current.

The names of the chief tributaries of the Ristigouche are curious. There is the headstrong Metapedia, and the crooked Upsalquitch, and the Patapedia, and the Quatawamkedgwick. These are words at which the tongue balks at first, but you soon grow used to them and learn to take anything of five syllables with a rush, as a hunter takes a five-barred gate, trusting to fortune that you will come down with the accent in the right place.

For six or seven miles above Metapedia the river has a breadth of about two hundred yards, and the valley slopes back rather gently to the mountains on either side. There is a good deal of cultivated land, and scattered farm-houses appear. The soil is excellent. But it is like a pearl cast before an obstinate, unfriendly climate. Late frosts prolong the winter. Early frosts curtail the summer. The only safe crops are grass, oats, and potatoes. And for half the year all the cattle must be housed and fed to keep them alive. This lends a melancholy aspect to agriculture. Most of the farmers look as if they had never seen better days. With few exceptions they are what a New Englander would call "slack-twisted and shiftless." Their barns are pervious to the weather, and their fences fail to connect. Sleds and ploughs rust together beside the house, and chickens scratch up the front-door yard. In truth, the people have been somewhat demoralised by the conflicting claims of different occupations; hunting in the fall, lumbering in the winter and spring, and working for the American sportsmen in the brief angling season, are so much more attractive and offer so much larger returns of ready money, that the tedious toil of farming is neglected. But for all that, in the bright days of midsummer, these green fields sloping down to the water, and pastures high up among the trees on the hillsides, look pleasant from a distance, and give an inhabited air to the landscape.

At the mouth of the Upsalquitch we passed the first of the fishing-lodges. It belongs to a sage angler from Albany who saw the beauty of the situation, years ago, and built a habitation to match it. Since that time a number of gentlemen have bought land fronting on good pools, and put up little cottages of a less classical style than Charles Cotton's "Fisherman's Retreat" on the banks of the river Dove, but better suited to this wild scenery, and more convenient to live in. The prevailing pattern is a very simple one; it consists of a broad piazza with a small house in the middle of it. The house bears about the same proportion to the piazza that the crown of a Gainsborough hat does to the brim. And the cost of the edifice is to the cost of the land as the first price of a share in a bankrupt railway is to the assessments which follow the reorganisation. All the best points have been sold, and real estate on the Ristigouche has been bid up to an absurd figure. In fact, the river is over-populated and probably over-fished. But we could hardly find it in our hearts to regret this, for it made the upward trip a very sociable one. At every lodge that was open, Favonius (who knows everybody) had a friend, and we must slip ashore in a canoe to leave the mail and refresh the inner man.

An angler, like an Arab, regards hospitality as a religious duty. There seems to be something in the craft which inclines the heart to kindness and good-fellowship. Few anglers have I seen who were not pleasant to meet, and ready to do a good turn to a fellow-fisherman with the gift of a killing fly or the loan of a rod. Not their own particular and well-proved favourite, of course, for that is a treasure which no decent man would borrow; but with that exception the best in their store is at the service of an accredited brother. One of the Ristigouche proprietors I remember, whose name bespoke him a descendant of Caledonia's patron saint. He was fishing in front of his own door when we came up, with our splashing horses, through the pool; but nothing would do but he must up anchor and have us away with him into the house to taste his good cheer. And there were his daughters with their books and needlework, and the photographs which they had taken pinned up on the wooden walls, among Japanese fans and bits of bright-coloured stuff in which the soul of woman delights, and, in a passive, silent way, the soul of man also. Then, after we had discussed the year's fishing, and the mysteries of the camera, and the deep question of what makes some negatives too thin and others too thick, we must go out to see the big salmon which one of the ladies had caught a few days before, and the large trout swimming about in their cold spring. It seemed to me, as we went on our way, that there could hardly be a more wholesome and pleasant summer-life for well-bred young women than this, or two amusements more innocent and sensible than photography and fly-fishing.

It must be confessed that the horse-yacht as a vehicle of travel is not remarkable in point of speed. Three miles an hour is not a very rapid rate of motion. But then, if you are not in a hurry, why should you care to make haste?

The wild desire to be forever racing against old Father Time is one of the kill-joys of modern life. That ancient traveller is sure to beat you in the long run, and as long as you are trying to rival him, he will make your life a burden. But if you will only acknowledge his superiority and profess that you do not approve of racing after all, he will settle down quietly beside you and jog along like the most companionable of creatures. That is a pleasant pilgrimage in which the journey itself is part of the destination.

As soon as one learns to regard the horse-yacht as a sort of moving house, it appears admirable. There is no dust or smoke, no rumble of wheels, or shriek of whistles. You are gliding along steadily through an ever-green world; skirting the silent hills; passing from one side of the river to the other when the horses have to swim the current to find a good foothold on the bank. You are on the water, but not at its mercy, for your craft is not disturbed by the heaving of rude waves, and the serene inhabitants do not say "I am sick." There is room enough to move about without falling overboard. You may sleep, or read, or write in your cabin, or sit upon the floating piazza in an arm-chair and smoke the pipe of peace, while the cool breeze blows in your face and the musical waves go singing down to the sea.

There was one feature about the boat, which commended itself very strongly to my mind. It was possible to stand upon the forward deck and do a little trout-fishing in motion. By watching your chance, when the corner of a good pool was within easy reach, you could send out a hasty line and cajole a sea-trout from his hiding-place. It is true that the tow-ropes and the post made the back cast a little awkward; and the wind sometimes blew the flies up on the roof of the cabin; but then, with patience and a short line the thing could be done. I remember a pair of good trout that rose together just as we were going through a boiling rapid; and it tried the strength of my split-bamboo rod to bring those fish to the net against the current and the motion of the boat.

When nightfall approached we let go the anchor (to wit, a rope tied to a large stone on the shore), ate our dinner "with gladness and singleness of heart" like the early Christians, and slept the sleep of the just, lulled by the murmuring of the waters, and defended from the insidious attacks of the mosquito by the breeze blowing down the river and the impregnable curtains over our beds. At daybreak, long before Favonius and I had finished our dreams, we were under way again; and when the trampling of the horses on some rocky shore wakened us, we could see the steep hills gliding past the windows and hear the rapids dashing against the side of the boat, and it seemed as if we were still dreaming.

At Cross Point, where the river makes a long loop around a narrow mountain, thin as a saw and crowned on its jagged edge by a rude wooden cross, we stopped for an hour to try the fishing. It was here that I hooked two mysterious creatures, each of which took the fly when it was below the surface, pulled for a few moments in a sullen way and then apparently melted into nothingness. It will always be a source of regret to me that the nature of these fish must remain unknown. While they were on the line it was the general opinion that they were heavy trout; but no sooner had they departed, than I became firmly convinced, in accordance with a psychological law which holds good all over the world, that they were both enormous salmon. Even the Turks have a proverb which says, "Every fish that escapes appears larger than it is." No one can alter that conviction, because no one can logically refute it. Our best blessings, like our largest fish, always depart before we have time to measure them.

The Slide Pool is in the wildest and most picturesque part of the river, about thirty-five miles above Metapedia. The stream, flowing swiftly down a stretch of rapids between forest-clad hills, runs straight toward the base of an eminence so precipitous that the trees can hardly find a foothold upon it, and seem to be climbing up in haste on either side of the long slide which leads to the summit. The current, barred by the wall of rock, takes a great sweep to the right, dashing up at first in angry waves, then falling away in oily curves and eddies, until at last it sleeps in a black deep, apparently almost motionless, at the foot of the hill. It was here, on the upper edge of the stream, opposite to the slide, that we brought our floating camp to anchor for some days. What does one do in such a watering-place?

Let us take a "specimen day." It is early morning, or to be more precise, about eight of the clock, and the white fog is just beginning to curl and drift away from the surface of the river. Sooner than this it would be idle to go out. The preternaturally early bird in his greedy haste may catch the worm; but the salmon never take the fly until the fog has lifted; and in this the scientific angler sees, with gratitude, a remarkable adaptation of the laws of nature to the tastes of man. The canoes are waiting at the front door. We step into them and push off, Favonius going up the stream a couple of miles to the mouth of the Patapedia, and I down, a little shorter distance, to the famous Indian House Pool. The slim boat glides easily on the current, with a smooth buoyant motion, quickened by the strokes of the paddles in the bow and the stern. We pass around two curves in the river and find ourselves at the head of the pool. Here the man in the stern drops the anchor, just on the edge of the bar where the rapid breaks over into the deeper water. The long rod is lifted; the fly unhooked from the reel; a few feet of line pulled through the rings, and the fishing begins.

First cast,--to the right, straight across the stream, about twenty feet: the current carries the fly down with a semicircular sweep, until it comes in line with the bow of the canoe. Second cast,--to the left, straight across the stream, with the same motion: the semicircle is completed, and the fly hangs quivering for a few seconds at the lowest point of the arc. Three or four feet of line are drawn from the reel. Third cast to the right; fourth cast to the left. Then a little more line. And so, with widening half-circles, the water is covered, gradually and very carefully, until at length the angler has as much line out as his two-handed rod can lift and swing. Then the first "drop" is finished; the man in the stern quietly pulls up the anchor and lets the boat drift down a few yards; the same process is repeated on the second drop; and so on, until the end of the run is reached and the fly has passed over all the good water. This seems like a very regular and somewhat mechanical proceeding as one describes it, but in the performance it is rendered intensely interesting by the knowledge that at any moment it is liable to be interrupted.

This morning the interruption comes early. At the first cast of the second drop, before the fly has fairly lit, a great flash of silver darts from the waves close by the boat. Usually a salmon takes the fly rather slowly, carrying it under water before he seizes it in his mouth. But this one is in no mood for deliberation. He has hooked himself with a rush, and the line goes whirring madly from the reel as he races down the pool. Keep the point of the rod low; he must have his own way now. Up with the anchor quickly, and send the canoe after him, bowman and sternman paddling with swift strokes. He has reached the deepest water; he stops to think what has happened to him; we have passed around and below him; and now, with the current to help us, we can begin to reel in. Lift the point of the rod, with a strong, steady pull. Put the force of both arms into it. The tough wood will stand the strain. The fish must be moved; he must come to the boat if he is ever to be landed. He gives a little and yields slowly to the pressure. Then suddenly he gives too much, and runs straight toward us. Reel in now as swiftly as possible, or else he will get a slack on the line and escape. Now he stops, shakes his head from side to side, and darts away again across the pool, leaping high out of water. Don't touch the reel! Drop the point of the rod quickly, for if he falls on the leader he will surely break it. Another leap, and another! Truly he is "a merry one," and it will go hard with us to hold him. But those great leaps have exhausted his strength, and now he follows the rod more easily. The men push the boat back to the shallow side of the pool until it touches lightly on the shore. The fish comes slowly in, fighting a little and making a few short runs; he is tired and turns slightly on his side; but even yet he is a heavy weight on the line, and it seems a wonder that so slight a thing as the leader can guide and draw him. Now he is close to the boat. The boatman steps out on a rock with his gaff. Steadily now and slowly, lift the rod, bending it backward. A quick sure stroke of the steel! a great splash! and the salmon is lifted upon the shore. How he flounces about on the stones. Give him the coup de grace at once, for his own sake as well as for ours. And now look at him, as he lies there on the green leaves. Broad back; small head tapering to a point; clean, shining sides with a few black spots on them; it is a fish fresh-run from the sea, in perfect condition, and that is the reason why he has given such good sport.