I may just name another mode of obtaining sport, which is by spearing flat fish, such as flounders, dab, plaice, etc. No rule can be laid down on this method of fishing. It has been carried on successfully by means of a common pitchfork, but some gentlemen go the length of having fine spears made for the purpose, very long and with very sharp prongs; others, again, use a three-pronged farm-yard “graip,” which has been known to do as much real work as more elaborate utensils specially contrived for the purpose. The simplest directions I can give to those who try this style of fishing are just to spear all the fish they can see, but the general plan is to stab in the dark with the kind of instrument delineated above. At the mouths of most of the large English rivers there is usually abundance of all the minor kinds of flat fish.
Lobsters and crabs can be taken at certain rocky places of the coast; mussels can be picked from the rocks, and cockles can be dug for in the sand. Shrimps can also be taken, and various other wonders of the sea and its shores may be picked up. After a storm a great number of curious fishes and shells may be gathered, and some of these are very valuable as specimens of natural history. The apparatus for capturing lobsters and crabs is like a cage, and is generally made of wicker work, with an aperture at the top or the side for the animal to enter by; it can be baited with any sort of garbage that is at hand. Having been so baited, the lobster-pot is sunk into the water, and left for a season, till, tempted by the mess within, the game enters and is caged. Those who would induce crabs to enter their pots must set them with fresh bait; lobsters, on the other hand, will look at nothing but garbage. Very frequently rock-cod, saithe, and other fish, are found to have entered the pots, intent both on foul and fresh food. Shell-fish for bait can be taken by means of a wooden box or old wicker basket sunk near a rocky place, and filled with garbage of some kind; the whelks and small crabs are sure to patronise the mass extensively, and can thus be obtained at convenience. It is impossible to tell in the limits of a brief chapter one-half of the fishing wonders that can be accomplished during a sojourn at the seaside. A visit to some quaint old fishing town, on the recurrence of “the year’s vacation sabbath,” as some of our poets now call the annual month’s holiday, might be made greatly productive of real knowledge; there are ten thousand wonders of the shore which can be studied besides those laid down in books.
As will be noted, I have avoided as much as possible the naming of localities, preferring to state the general practice. In all seaside towns and fishing villages there are usually three or four old fishermen who will be glad to do little favours for the curious in fish lore—to hire out boats, give the use of tackle, and point out good localities in which to fish. For such as have a few weeks at their disposal, I would suggest the western sea-lochs of Scotland as affording superb sport in all the varieties of sea-angling. Fish of all kinds, great and small, are to be found in tolerable quantity, and there is likewise the still greater inducement of fine scenery, cheap lodgings, and moderate living expenses. But the entire change of scene is the grand medicine; nothing would do an exhausted London or Manchester man more good than a month on Lochfyne, where he could not only angle in the great water for amusement, but also watch the commercial fishers, and enjoy the finely-flavoured herring of that loch as a portion of his daily food. If persons in search of sea-angling wish to combine the enjoyment of picturesque scenery with their pleasant labours on the water, they cannot do better than select, as I did, the rural village of Corry, on the Island of Arran, as a centre from which to conduct their operations.
May I be allowed to say a few words about this wonderful island, just by way of a whet to the eye-appetite of those who have never seen it? Our angler, having arrived at Glasgow, can go down the Clyde by steamboat direct to Arran. There is another and a quicker way—viz. by railway to Ardossan and steamboat to Brodick, but most strangers prefer the river; and let me say here, without fear of contradiction, there is no pleasure river equal to the Clyde, especially as regards accessibility. The steamers from Glasgow peer at stated intervals into every nook and cranny of the water, and, on the Saturdays especially, deposit perfect armies of people at various towns and villages below Greenock, who are thus enabled to pass the Sunday in the bright open air by the clear waters of this great stream. Any kind of lodging is put up with for the sake of being “down the water;” and all sorts of people—merchants even of high degree and “Glasgow bodies” of lower social standing—are contented, chiefly no doubt at the instigation of their better halves, to sojourn in places that when at home they would think quite unsuitable for even the Matties of their households. The banks of the Clyde have become wonderfully populous within the last twenty-five years—villages have expanded into towns, hamlets have grown into villages, and single cottages into hamlets. Now the railway to Greenock is insufficient as a daily travelling aid to persons whose half hours are of large commercial value; and as a consequence, a new line of rails has been constructed to come upon the water at Wemyss Bay, about twelve miles below Greenock. To your thorough business man time is money, and if he is alternately able to leave his place of business and his place of pleasure half an hour later each way, he is all the better pleased with both. To speculators in want of an idea I would say: Rush to the Clyde, and buy up every inch of land that can be had within a mile of the water, build upon it, and from the half million of human beings who tenant Glasgow and the surrounding towns I will engage to find two competing occupants for every house that can be put up. Building has progressed even in Arran, and this too in despite of the late Duke of Hamilton’s dislike to strangers, so that there is now a population on the island of about 6000. A friend of mine says that such an important entity as a duke has no right to do as he likes with his own, and consequently that Arran ought to be built upon, and the blackcocks and other game birds be left to take their chance. Even with such limited accommodation as can be now obtained, Arran is a delightful summer residence; were it to be generally built upon, it would realise from ground-rents alone an annual fortune to his Grace the Duke of Hamilton, who owns the greater part of it, and he might have capital shooting into the bargain.
Arran, I may state to all who are ignorant of the fact, is a very paradise for geologists; and amateur globe-makers—persons who think they are better at constructing worlds than the Great Architect who preceded them all—are particularly fond of that island, being, as they suppose, quite able to find upon it materiel sufficient for the erection of the largest possible “theories.” Figures, it is said, can be made to prove either side of a cause; so can stones. Each geologist can build up his own pet world from the same set of rocks; and so active geologists proceed to stucco over with their own compositions—“adumbrate” a friend calls the process—the sublime works of the greatest of all designers. None of the sciences have given rise to so much controversy as the science of geology. I make no pretensions to much geologic knowledge, although I do know a little more than the man who wondered if the granite boulders which he saw on a brae-side were on their way up or down the hill, and argued that it was a moot point. What I would like to see would be a good work on geology, divested entirely of the learned and scientific slang which usually make such books entirely useless to ninety-nine out of every hundred persons who attempt to read them. I would like, moreover, a work that would not bully us with a ready-made theory.
Arran is a rugged island, and, as I have said, is full of interesting and almost unique geologic features. There is a mountain upon it which it is a kind of necessity for all visitors to ascend. It is called Goatfell—its proper name being Goath-Bhein, or hill of winds. At Corry I was told of persons who had ascended Goatfell and come down again—the mountain is 2865 feet high—in less than three hours; but I very soon found that I could not do the going up from Corry in that period of time, not to speak of the coming down, which to some people, especially if, like myself, they carry about with them a solid weight of fourteen stones, is still more fatiguing; but then I had the disadvantage of a wet forenoon, necessitating an occasional sojourn beneath a granite boulder in order that we—that is, myself and a friend who essayed the ascent with me—might keep ourselves tolerably dry. It was toilsome, too, wading up to the knees in heather, even although the heather was in its fullest bloom; but by perseverance and the good guiding of an intelligent shepherd whom we took with us as a guide, and who knew the best paths, we did in time reach the top, and must confess that we obtained upon our arrival an exceeding rich reward, the view from the summit being very grand and extensive, embracing what I may be allowed to call a sublimely-painted diorama of portions of the three kingdoms.
It would be commonplace indeed to say of the view from the top of Goatfell that it was either beautiful, picturesque, or sublime, for it is grand—I might say a mysterious combination of all these qualities; for it cannot be contemplated without a certain feeling of awe gradually becoming incidental to the situation. We obtain, first of all, in the distance, a faint and dreamlike view of mountains in Ireland,—away, however, over a far expanse of sea. Nearer at hand, looking another way, the giant crag of Ailsa rises perpendicular from the water, and we can almost hear the screaming of the myriads of wild fowl which float over it like a cloud. Then at our feet lie in rich profusion the green islands of the Clyde—Bute and the Cumbraes close at hand; Argyle, with its lovely bays of glassy water, farther away; and more distant still, the cragged peaks of Skye. Opening up from all parts of the river, which glitters brilliantly in the sun, there may be discovered glimpses of lovely scenery—hill-tops melting into clouds, and lofty mountains so abundantly clothed with wood that the very branches dip into the water. Here and there, distance no doubt lending enchantment to the view, we can see deep glens and gloomy ravines, with trickling brooks and a rare wealth of foliage, penetrated ever and anon by flashing sunbeams that light up the picture for a moment and then leave it darker and grander than before. Pastoral hill-sides too we can see covered with kine; while every here and there steamboats dot the water and show their hazy trail of smoke. Lochfyne, covered with tiny skiffs, is in view, the waters yielding up their wealth of nourishment to the industrious fisherman. There too are the winding Kyles of Bute, as much worthy of being immortalised in verse as the well-sung Isles of Greece. The eye loves to linger on the soft-looking waters of the inland seas; and again and again we gaze upon the Cobbler as he keeps watch over the waters of Loch Long, or scan the placid expanse of Lochfyne.
The late Miss Catharine Sinclair very happily said that a portion of Lochfyne is fine only in name, and I can well agree with her while looking at the rocky sides of Cantyre; but giving reins to the imagination, we can fill up the scene and picture the savages of a few thousand years ago fishing from the rocks with their bone-tipt spears, and hauling the produce of their skill out of the waters with rough branches of trees; and, as time flies onward, we can note in our mind’s eye the rude canoes as they progress into ships becoming instruments of commerce and tokens of civilisation. At our very feet are the immense masses of granite that form the mountain on which we stand; and near at hand, towering up alongside, are the cones of two other hills, forming with Goatfell a silent council of three that seem to be ever engaged in mysterious communing. The silence on the mountain-tops is wonderful, indeed oppressive: there is not a sound to relieve the ear except perhaps a roar of water, howling and hissing and boiling in endless torture in one of the valleys; and as the wind fitfully moans as it soughs adown some weird vale, half hidden from us by the clouds that float over it, the scene looks
“So wondrous wild, the whole might seem