so we scrambled along as best we could on our ten toes, getting bathed by showers from every bough we touched. Oh, how wet it was, and what a contrast to our previous expedition! The bushes of juniper and birch, and the thick beds of heather, held innumerable douches, which they never failed to shed upon us as we passed; the bogs had trebled their depth and juiciness in a day, and had spread in every direction; the stepping-stones at the various fords had sunk out of sight - rivulets had become brooks, and brooks rivers. The grey fustian of the Norseman was plainly soaked through and through before we reached the boat; but when I asked him, sympathetically, if he was at all wet, he rubbed his knees and denied the imputation; but he looked chilled, despite the chest-protector. For my part, I was so numbed while fishing that, when we landed, I could not fasten a button of my macintosh until half a mile of brisk walking had restored my circulation. Flies proved of no avail in the peaty water under that leaden sky; and it was not until I tried a small silvery revolving minnow that I killed my first fish, which

was of a goodly size, but again very black. Afrer rowing up and down for a couple of hours with occasional moments of anxiety and satisfaction, I declared myself too cold for more, and, with only a small bag, decided to consider the season over. As we tied up the boat for the last time, I indicated briefly to my companion that it was an opportunity not to be lost of cutting the record for pedestrians between Foss-sjö and home; he acquiesced, and we cut it.

XV.

Lyngen Fjord.

"Send precepts to the leviathan

To come ashore."

Henry V.

AN Easter holiday on a Devonshire trout stream is not, as a rule, like daily cold pork to those that love cold pork, "one long round of delirious joy," unless they have been so long in populous city pent that they are thankful for a breath of pure air; and, while contemplating a brace or two of tiny trout at the close of an arduous day, I am always strongly reminded of a very different fishing adventure in a very different place. You cannot hold a fire in your hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus; but there is a grain of consolation in reflecting that all angling is not

equally unremunerative, and that to the patient sportsman the whirligig of time brings about its revenges. To-day the stream runs low and clear, and the unclouded sun throws your shadow with undesirable emphasis over the water, so that casting is but a weariness, and the fish laugh silently to themselves as they remark, in their proverbial philosophy, "in vain is the fly cast in the sight of any fario," but you peacefully reflect on past success and future chances, and possess possess your soul in

patience.

The adventure to which I so naturally look back on these occasions took place in the extreme north of Norway; and as I killed on the morning in question pretty nearly a ton of fish with my own right arm, I think I am justified in considering it a day of large things.

The Lyngen Fjord is too remote for much traffic; and though the hardy fisher-folk know well how its snow-clad mountains rise sheer from the sea, strangers are rare, and only one little coasting steamer disturbs the serenity of the landlocked bay as it goes to meet its larger neighbours plying from Tromsö to the

North Cape.

The scenery is strikingly grand even for those wild parts, for the cliffs are abrupt, and an immense glacier, embedded among competing peaks, rolls almost to the unbeached margent of the sea.

One bright morning in September we were awakened in our bare-walled chamber by the voice of a fellow-lodger at the farm: he did not know much English, but, making the most of his slender vocabulary, he repeatedly shouted, "We have much-fish," a phrase sufficiently suggestive to make us dress quickly and hurry downstairs for explanations. Our host spoke German fluently, and told us, as we accompanied him to the shore, that the fishing-boats were making a great haul. About a score of the clumsy, but seaworthy, vessels were visible in the offing, and of these a dozen or so were holding up a net half a mile long, in the middle of which was a bag measuring, I should say, thirty feet by ten.

We were immediately rowed out by a handsome, fair-haired and blue-eyed Norseman, a son of our farmer, and I was given a small gaff, with the simple direction that I was to strike