Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/62

48 deep pools, or rather holes, black from their very depth, and now rattles the pebbles over the shallow bottom with a hoarse, but not unpleasing music,—presents the prey that form his prizes. The scenery is wild and magnificent. The lofty mountain has to be climbed, often, it is true, with weary feet; but the air is fresh and invigorating, every step, as he rises higher and higher, makes him tread more proudly; the heather is soft and elastic, and its purple bloom is both beautiful and fragrant; and what a prospect does the summit reveal! He looks abroad over many leagues of country, all varied with hill and dale; he sees villages and towns, fields and woods, lakes and winding rivers, spread out like a map at his feet. Beneath, perhaps, he sees a yawning chasm of a thousand feet, at the bottom of which sleeps the unruffled tarn, with waters as black as ink to the beholder, yet of crystal clearness when examined in a glass, in which the crimson Charr play. The mountains, peak above peak, many of them crowned with caps of snow, stretch away in the distance, among which, like threads of burnished silver, gleam the little rivulets which the fly-fisher is seeking.

The Salmon, the various species of Trout, some of them little inferior in magnitude or strength to that kingly fish; the brilliant Grayling, with his dorsal like a butterfly's wing, and the Charr, with its refulgent sides, "the aristocracy of the finny race," inhabit these elevated streams and lakes; and for these does the enterprising fly-fisher visit the most remote and least accessible parts of our country. When we reflect that the first of these attains the weight of forty, fifty,