Pleasant days, nevertheless, were those spent by this wild riverside. The love of sport is strong in our breasts, but it is not the sole, or an all-potent factor therein. Other things are strong to charm, and here the scenery and accompaniments lacked nothing of beauty and interest—the grand hills, not high but severe in jagged skylines and escarpments that shone like marble in the sun. The air resounded with the music of leaping waters, with the merry carol of Sandpiper and gentler warble of Whinchat: and further off the soaring flight of Buzzard and Raven lent life to the silent hills.[40] From rock-crannies, splashed with the spray of trickling rivulets from above, peeped bouquets of gentian and maiden-hair: the stony "haughs" glowed with bloom of purple iris and asphodel, anemones and wild geraniums, orchids, heaths, ferns, and wild-flowers of a hundred kinds unknown to us.
The weather of the Cantabrian spring-time is strangely variable: every day we had spells of sunshine and shower, wind and calm, fog and fair alternately, often culminating in a sudden clap of thunder that rolled majestically along the deep ravines. Then, for an hour, came down the rain in torrents, and we sought the shelter of some village venta where, for a peseta, we fared sumptuously on good white bread and the delicious cream-like cheese known as queso de Burgos, washed down with the rough red wine of Rioja, cheaper than "smallest beer," and most refreshing.
In every hamlet hung fishing-nets: every day we saw the "fishermen" fixing them, and heard of two-pounders. Yet to us, striving with all the skill we possess, appeared none of these leviathans. Nothing we could do availed to cajole them—that is, assuming their existence. A basket of one to two dozen trout daily, including sundry half-pounders, appeared to be the measure of the river's capacity, or of our skill.
Our best basket in this Province of Santandér was twenty-eight trout, weighing eight and a half pounds, and the best fish a fine trout of just over the pound. Him we killed in a deep pool so embedded amidst crags and so difficult of access, that it may be doubted whether feathered fly had ever before flown over its virgin depths. Our friend rose boldly to a small "red palmer": and within a few minutes two more, of hardly inferior weight, had joined him in the basket.
CHAPTER XV.
TROUTING IN THE ASTURIAS AND IN LEON.
The wide pastoral province of Leon, with its unexplored wilds of the Vierzo and the Maragateria, and many another savage region bordering on the southern slopes of the Galician and Cantabrian highlands, is practically a terra incognita to British sportsman and naturalist. Well would Leon repay either of these for the enterprise expended on its exploration. Mountain and plain afford shelter for game—large and small—of all the kinds native to Spain; while the rivers flowing southwards from the Asturian ranges probably afford as good trout-fishing as any in the Peninsula.
Our own experiences in Leon were limited, as regards its trouting capacities, to a mere flying visit, when we alighted one morning in mid-May, at a wayside station in North Leon, tempted to break a monotonous journey by the trout-like appearance of a stream that, for some distance, had run more or less parallel with the railway.
The country immediately adjacent was not attractive; flat, tawny, and arid, with few trees and very partial cultivation. On either bank, at a mile or two's distance, rose ranges of low broken hills, gradually increasing in height as they closed in upon the river. Here and there stood scattered hamlets, all built of the yellowish sun-baked brick characteristic of Leon; the houses huddled together, and usually enclosed by the remnants of a former wall or fortification.