ywhere, except in a small segment on the eastern side, is begirt with
reeds of great height. These reeds, again, grow in a peculiarly
uncomfortable, quaggy bottom, which rises and falls, or rather which
jumps and sinks when you step on it, like the seat of a very luxurious
arm-chair. Moreover, the bottom is pierced with many springs, wherein if
you set foot you shall have thrown your last cast.

By watching the loch when it is frozen, a man might come to learn
something of the springs; but, even so, it is hard to keep clear of them
in summer. Now the wind almost always blows from the west, dead against
the little piece of gravelly shore at the eastern side, so that casting
against it is hard work and unprofitable. On this day, by a rare chance,
the wind blew from the east, though the sky at first was a brilliant
blue, and the sun hot and fierce. I walked round to the east side, waded
in, and caught two or three small fellows. It was slow work, when
suddenly there began the greatest rise of trout I ever saw in my life.
From the edge of the loch as far as one could clearly see across it there
was that endless plashing murmur, of all sounds in this world the
sweetest to the ear. Within the view of the eye, on each cast, there
were a dozen trout rising all about, never leaping, but seriously and
solemnly feeding. Now is my chance at last, I fancied; but it was not
so--far from it. I might throw over the very noses of the beasts, but
they seldom even glanced at the (artificial) fly. I tried them with
Greenwell's Glory, with a March brown, with "the woodcock wing and hare-
lug," but it was almost to no purpose. If one did raise a fish, he meant
not business--all but "a casual brute," which broke the already weakened
part of a small "glued-up" cane rod. I had to twist a piece of paper
round the broken end, wet it, and push it into the joint, where it hung
on somehow, but was not pleasant to cast with. From twelve to half-past
one the gorging went merrily forward, and I saw what the fish were rising
at. The whole surface of the loch, at least on the east side, was
absolutely peppered with large, hideous insects. They had big grey-white
wings, bodies black as night, and brilliant crimson legs, or feelers, or
whatever naturalists call them. The trout seemed as if they could not
have too much of these abominable wretches, and the flies were blown
across the loch, not singly, but in populous groups. I had never seen