heir opalescent rapids and eddying pools was an
invitation to that gentle sport which is said to have the merit of
growing better as the weather grows worse.

I laid this fact before the landlord of the hotel of the Erzherzog
Johann, as poetically as I could, but he assured me that it was of no
consequence without an invitation from the gentleman to whom the streams
belonged; and he had gone away for a week. The landlord was such
a good-natured person, and such an excellent sleeper, that it was
impossible to believe that he could have even the smallest inaccuracy
upon his conscience. So I bade him farewell, and took my way, four miles
through the woods, to the lake from which one of the streams flowed.

It was called the Grundlsee. As I do not know the origin of the name,
I cannot consistently make any moral or historical reflections upon it.
But if it has never become famous, it ought to be, for the sake of a
cozy and busy little Inn, perched on a green hill beside the lake and
overlooking the whole length of it, from the groups of toy villas at the
foot to the heaps of real mountains at the head. This Inn kept a thin
but happy landlord, who provided me with a blue license to angle, for
the inconsiderable sum of fifteen cents a day. This conferred the right
of fishing not only in the Grundlsee, but also in the smaller tarn of
Toplitz, a mile above it, and in the swift stream which unites them. It
all coincided with my desire as if by magic. A row of a couple of miles
to the head of the lake, and a walk through the forest, brought me to
the smaller pond; and as the afternoon sun was ploughing pale furrows
through the showers, I waded out on a point of reeds and cast the artful
fly in the shadow of the great cliffs of the Dead Mountains.

It was a fit scene for a lone fisherman. But four sociable tourists
promptly appeared to act as spectators and critics. Fly-fishing usually
strikes the German mind as an eccentricity which calls for remonstrance.
After one of the tourists had suggestively narrated the tale of seven
trout which he had caught in another lake, WITH WORMS, on the previous
Sunday, they went away for a row, (with salutations in which politeness
but thinly veiled their pity,) and left me still whipping the water in
vain. Nor was the fortune of the day much better in the stream below. It
was a long and wet wade for three fish too small to keep. I came out on
the shore of the lake, where I had left the row-boat