have been so all the season so far, and that there can
be no really good sport until there is a change. To be sure, even a
single thunderstorm does help a little, but in my case it has wrought
harm; the rolling of thunder in the hills day after day, and the
surcharged atmosphere have had an undoubted influence in sulkifying the
fish, and there is a worse thing than that.

This worse thing is the modest pine log of commerce. Driving, last
Sunday, from Christiansand over the hills and down into the Mandal
Valley, a distance of twenty-eight miles through most beautifully
typical South Norway scenery, in which, with the towering mountains of
rock timbered with dark sentinels to the very skyline, alternate
verdant, peaceful, prosperous, valleys glowing with wild flowers, in
which the bonny harebell is more assertive by the waysides, I was much
interested in the cut timber strewing the half-dried river bed whose
course we followed. The logs are of no great size, mere sticks of
pine, averaging a foot diameter and in lengths varying between twelve
and forty feet. It was obvious that these spars, like the anglers,
were waiting for a spate. How nice it would be for the hardy, honest
natives engaged in this all-important lumber industry if these prepared
sticks, each well ear-marked for recognition leagues perchance
down-stream, were swept offhand to market.

My sentiments changed somewhat yesterday and the two previous days. I
may explain that there was a violent thunderstorm on Monday night, and
the Mandal river, a noble type of the rocky Norwegian salmon stream,
rose, perhaps, a couple of feet in the wider portions, and considerably
more where the bed contracted. Even such an addition to the volume of
water gave these logs a friendly lift, and brought them tumbling and
grinding along in hundreds without the aid of man; but on Thursday they
appeared in endless battalions, for by this time the timbermen had been
ordered out in force to give a friendly shove to the masses that had
jammed in some eddy or rocky corner. It is astonishing what a mere
touch will effect. With my pocket gaff last evening I lightly nudged a
floating spar in the ribs, and he set off right heartily, very gently,
yet firmly, cannoned without temper against a neighbour, and in less
than five minutes a block of perhaps 150 logs had started off,
scattering irregularly over the stream, and making a noise like distant
thunder as they charged over the b