Another drawback—which, though common to most lands, is specially pronounced in metalliferous Spain—lies in the noxious effusions from mines, which are freely discharged, for private profit, into public waters. This evil was forcibly brought home by our first day's experience in Cantabria. Hour after hour we had plied most lovely water without success—fly, worm, and phantom alike failed to elicit a single response. On returning with empty creel to the posada, to us our host, "Hombre, have you been fishing the Tesarco? Que disparate! there is a copper-mine two leagues further up: there have been no fish in that river for years." Considering that we had employed a local guide, furnished by the said host, the occasion appeared to justify a protest of not unmeasured wrath. But there is no use losing one's temper in Spain: no quality there so valuable as patience: and the reward of a modicum of reasoned restraint was that the rough, but kind-hearted Asturian insisted next morning on accompanying us himself to another river, seven miles away, where we enjoyed, for Spain, excellent sport.
Under the adverse conditions above outlined, it would be irrational to look for any very great measure of success in Spanish trouting—though, were it possible (which it is not) to secure fair play for the Salmonidæ, there is no physical or other reason why the Basque and Biscayan provinces might not rival either Scotch or Scandinavian waters. The following brief records of a few experiences in Northern Spain will serve to illustrate what may be expected, in a sporting sense, of the Cantabrian trout.
Santandér (Provincia).
The Province of Santandér, hardly less wild and mountainous than the Asturias, presents somewhat similar conditions of water, fish, and sport. The Cantabrian range, extending from Pyrenees to Atlantic, the common southern boundary of all the Biscayan provinces, attains in Santandér some of its greatest elevations, including the celebrated Picos de Europa (9,000 feet), the home of the Spanish bear and chamois. The trend of the land dips gradually from these inland heights towards the sea: yet even on the coast the scenery is savage and grand, some of the altitudes being very great. The view looking across the magnificent harbour of Santandér recalls in the "Sunny South" the scenery of Arctic Norway, with all the fantastic tracery of snow-mountains and jagged peaks vividly reflected in the unruffled breadths of the fjord.
The rivers, of course, reflect the characteristics of the land. Born of the mountain and the snow-field, they come leaping and surging seawards, dancing to their own wild music, as they crush through narrow gorges, by crag and hanging wood, hurrying ever northward towards the Biscayan sea. The angler's path along their banks is no made road: often for miles, ay, leagues, he may be constrained to follow the goatherds' upland path—a camino de perdices in native phrase—and only able to gaze down, like Tantalus, on tempting streams, perhaps close beneath, yet far beyond his reach.
Here, as elsewhere, success, we found, was not to be had for the wooing, nor at the first time of asking. Rivers that offered fair promise—beautiful waters, such as Besaya and Saja, embedded amidst ilex and chestnut, where moss-grown rocks impended darkly pools, whereon foam-flakes slowly revolved, or the more rapid streams of Reinosa, full of cataracts and tearing "races" that eat away their steep gravel-banks—all these may prove blank, or a long day's work be only rewarded by a few insignificant troutlets or par.
While fishing in the Reinosa district, we were told by our host that there lived some few leagues away un Inglés muy aficionado—a fishing enthusiast. Thither we moved our quarters: our new-made friend was one of those Anglo-Saxon Crusoes whom one meets with, self-buried, for one reason or another, in the recesses of wild lands, where sport or solitude may be enjoyed in degrees not possible at home. Retired from a public service through an infirmity begotten by the incidence of his duties, he was spending the prime of life in this remote spot, satisfied with an environment of Nature's purest scenes and with a modicum of sport to reconcile him to exile. A type of the British sportsman abroad was X., keen almost to a fault, little apt to measure success solely by results, a hard day's work was not deemed ill-rewarded by a brace or two of red-legs, or half a dozen quail, while for the chance of a boar he would walk well-nigh half the night, to reach by dawn the point where the retreat of some old tusker, which was ravaging the peasants' crops, might perchance be cut off.
There were six or eight miles to walk on the morrow ere a line was wetted—at first along a highway, whence X. plunged in medias res, that is into a rough strath, horrid with shifting shingle and thorny scrub, where progress was painful enough: but our companion never slacked speed, and when he continued his wild career, unchecked, through a brawling torrent full of boulders and well-nigh waist-deep, with a current like a mill-race, doubts of his sanity began to arise: or was he only testing us? Soon afterwards, providentially, we reached the main stream: fair trouting water, with rather too much current, the runs being almost continuous, and leaving scant space of "slack." Here we set up our rods: the first seething pool yielded a brace, besides false rises, and in half an hoar we had "creeled" several and began to hope for better things. But it was not to be.
The trout here were white, or silvery in colour, more like salmon-smolts—none of the deep greens, violets and gold of our home fish—and rose extremely shy, coming so short that hardly one in three gave a chance of getting fast. It was not that they rolled over the flies, or merely "flicked" at them—they simply came so short that, unless self-hooked, they were gone almost ere they had come. A dozen trout was the result of this day, yet our companion told us he had not, during two years, made a better basket. Oh, tantalizing streams and provoking troutlets of Biscaya!