A more
unpropitious day for the angler can scarcely be imagined; for a cold
east wind blew, and from time to time a thin drizzling rain beat in our
faces. Still we determined to make the attempt, and truly we had no
cause to repent of our resolution. In the course of four hours, which
we devoted to the sport, we caught upwards of ten pounds of trout; the
number of fish killed being at the same time only eleven,--a clear
proof that the Bohemian Iser deserves just as much praise as Sir
Humphry Davy, in his charming little book, has bestowed upon its
namesake near Munich. But killing the trout constituted by no means the
sole amusement which we that day enjoyed. An English fishing-rod and
English tackle were objects quite as novel to the good folks of
Eisenhammer, as they had been to the citizens of Gabel; and the
consequence was, that we had the entire population of the village and
hamlets round, in our train. And the astonishment of these simple
people, first at the machinery, and then at our mode of using it, I
have no language to describe. When first I hooked a trout, there was a
general rush to the river-side,--the movement being produced,
manifestly enough, by alarm lest the line should break; and though the
animal was floundering and springing about in twelve feet of water at
least, two or three young men could scarcely be restrained from jumping
in. But when they saw the monster, and a very large fellow he was,
after running away with some fathoms of line, and bending the rod like
a willow-wand, gradually lose his strength, and sail reluctantly
towards the shore, I really thought they would have gone crazy with
delight. They jumped about, swore, and shouted like mad people, and
made such a plunge into the shallows, to bring him out, that we had
well-nigh lost him. The scene was altogether quite irresistible.

There was no work performed that day in the iron foundry. Every soul
belonging to it, from the superintendent down to the errand-boy, came
forth to swell our train; and we walked up the Iser, attended as never
Highland chief was, even in the good old times of heritable
jurisdictions. Nor was this all. A religious procession, that is to
say, a numerous body of peasants from some of the villages near, bound
on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Starkenbach, happened to
descend the hill just as I was playing a fish, and the effect produced
upon them was quite as miraculous as could have been brought about