But we are making slow progress with our intended exposition of Mr Scrope's beautiful and instructive volume. Although salmon and salmon streams form the subject and "main region of his song," he yet touches truthfully, albeit with brevity, upon the kindred nature of sea-trout, which are of two species—the salmon-trout and the bull-trout. The fry of the former, called orange fins, (which, like the genuine parr, remain two continuous years in the river,) greatly resemble the young of the common fresh-water trout. "Like the grilse, it returns to the river the summer of its spring migration, weighing about a pound and a half upon an average."—P. 63. We think our author rather over-estimates their weight at this early period. Herlings (for so they are also named on their first ascent from the sea) rarely weigh one pound, unless they remain for a longer time than usual in salt water. In this state they bear the same relation to adult sea-trout as grilse do to salmon, and they spawn while herlings. They afterwards increase about a pound and a half annually, and in the summer of their sixth year (from the ovum) have been found to weigh six pounds.[[16]] Whether this is their ordinary ultimate term of increase, or whether, having every year to pass up and down the dangerous, because clear and shallow waters, exposed to many mischances, and, it may be, the "imminent deadly breach" of the cruive-dyke, and thus perish in their prime, we cannot say: but this we know, that they are rarely ever met with above the weight of six or seven pounds.
Of the generation and growth of the other and greater sea-trout (Salmo eriox,) we have not yet acquired the same precise knowledge, but its history may fairly be inferred to be extremely similar.
"These fish," says Mr Scrope, "are found in many salmon rivers, but not in all. It is very abundant in the Tweed, which it visits principally at two seasons; in the spring about the month of May, and again in the month of October, when the males are very plentiful; but the females are scarce till about the beginning or middle of November. With salmon it is the reverse, as their females leave the sea before the males. The bull trout is also more regular in his habits than the salmon; for the fisherman can calculate almost to a day when the large black male trout will leave the sea. The foul fish rise eagerly at the fly, but the clean ones by no means so. They weigh from two to twenty-four pounds, and occasionally, I presume, but very rarely indeed, more. The largest I ever heard of was taken in the Hallowstell fishing water, at the mouth of the Tweed, in April 1840, and weighed twenty-three pounds and a half. The heaviest bull trout I ever encountered myself weighed sixteen pounds, and I had a long and severe contest with his majesty. He was a clean fish, and I hooked him in a cast in Mertoun water called the Willow Bush, not in the mouth but in the dorsal fin. Brethren of the craft, guess what sore work I had with him! He went here and there with apparent comfort and ease to his own person, but not to mine. I really did not know what to make of him. There never was such a Hector. I cannot say exactly how long I had him on the hook; it seemed a week at least. At length John Halliburton, who was then my fisherman, waded into the river up to his middle, and cleeked him whilst he was hanging in the stream, and before he was half beat."—P. 66.
Many simple-minded people, with something of a sentimental turn, (they are almost always fond of raw oysters, and gloat over a roasted turkey, although they know that it was bled to to death by cutting the roots of its tongue,) look upon angling as a "cruel sport." Let us see, with Mr Scrope, how this matter really stands.
"I take a little wool and feather, and tying it in a particular manner upon a hook, make an imitation of a fly; then I throw it across the river, and let it sweep round the stream with a lively motion. This I have an undoubted right to do, for the river belongs to me or my friend; but mark what follows. Up starts a monster fish with his murderous jaws, and makes a dash at my little Andromeda. Thus he is the aggressor, not I; his intention is evidently to commit murder. He is caught in the act of putting that intention into execution. Having wantonly intruded himself on my hook, which I contend he had no right to do, he darts about in various directions, evidently surprised to find that the fly, which he hoped to make an easy conquest of, is much stronger than himself. I naturally attempt to regain this fly, unjustly withheld from me. The fish gets tired and weak in his lawless endeavours to deprive me of it. I take advantage of his weakness, I own, and drag him, somewhat loth, to the shore, when one rap on the back of the head ends him in an instant. If he is a trout, I find his stomach distended with flies. That beautiful one called the May fly, who is by nature almost ephemeral—who rises up from the bottom of the the shallows, spreads its light wings, and flits in the sunbeam in enjoyment of its new existence—no sooner descends to the surface of the water to deposit its eggs, than the unfeeling fish, at one fell spring, numbers him prematurely with the dead. You see, then, what a wretch a fish is; no ogre is more bloodthirsty, for he will devour his nephews, nieces, and even his own children, when he can catch them; and I take some credit for having shown him up. Talk of a wolf, indeed a lion, or a tiger! Why, these, are all mild and saintly in comparison with a fish! What a bitter fright must the smaller fry live in! They crowd to the shallows, lie hid among the weeds, and dare not say the river is their own. I relieve them of their apprehensions, and thus become popular with the small shoals. When we see a fish quivering upon dry land, he looks so helpless without arms or legs, and so demure in expression, adding hypocrisy to his other sins, that we naturally pity him; then kill and eat him, with Harvey sauce, perhaps. Our pity is misplaced,—the fish is not. There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name of Salmo ferox. I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and give him the coup-de-grace. Is this cruel? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff."—P. 83.
Mr Scrope is known as an accomplished artist as well as an experienced angler, and we need not now to tell our readers that he is also a skilful author. It does not fall to the lot of all men to handle with equal dexterity the brush, the pen, and the rod—to say nothing of the rifle—still less of the leister, under cloud of night. There is much in the present volume to interest even those who are so unfortunate as to have never seen either, grilse or salmon, except as pupils or practitioners in the silver-fork school. His reminiscences of his own early life and manlier years, under the soubriquet of Harry Otter, are pleasantly told, and his adventurous meetings with poachers and painters are amusing in themselves, as well as instructive in their tendency to illustrate, not only the deeper mysteries of piscatorial art, but the life and conversation of the amphibious people who dwell by the sides of rivers. His first arrival in "fair Melrose," the moonlight lustre of which was then unsung, is thus described—
"It was late, and I looked forth on the tranquil scene from my window. The moonbeams played upon the distant hilltops, but the lower masses slept as yet in shadow; again the pale light caught the waters of the Tweed, the lapse of whose streams fell faintly on the ear, like the murmuring of a sea-shell. In front rose up the mouldering abbey, deep in shadow; its pinnacles, and buttresses, and light tracery, but dimly seen in the solemn mass. A faint light twinkled for a space among the tomb-stones, soon it was extinct, and two figures passed off in the shadow, who had been digging a grave even at that late hour. As the night advanced, a change began to take place. Clouds heaved up over the horizon; the wind was heard in murmurs; the rack hurried athwart the moon; and utter darkness fell upon river, mountain, and haugh. Then the gust swelled louder, and the storm struck fierce and sudden against the casement. But as the morrow dawned, though rain-drops still hung upon the leaf, the clouds sailed away, the sun broke forth, and all was fair and tranquil."—P. 97.
The fisherman was sent for express, and his general garb and fly-bedizened hat, are soon portrayed; while the "waxing" of the Tweed, and how the Eildon Hills were of old cloven by the art of grammarye, conclude the fourth chapter, and bring us only to the hundredth page.
The ensuing section of the work opens with some general observations on the scenery of that now noted district of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, are ever mingling with all those ongoings of human life and action which we call enjoyments! How mixed in their effects are even the natural glories of this our fair creation! What golden sunset casts not its far-beaming splendour, not only on the great mountains and the glittering sea, but also breaks, as if in mockery, into ghastly chambers where the desolation of death, "the wages of sin," is miserably brooding! And yet how solemnizing, how elevating in their influences, are all the highest beauties both of art and nature, notwithstanding the awe, approaching to fearfulness, with which they not seldom affect our spirits. The veneration with which we gaze even on insensate walls which once formed the loved abode of genius and virtue, is a natural tribute to a noble nature, and flows from one of the purest and most sustaining sources of emotion by which our humanity is distinguished. It almost looks as if, in accordance with the Platonic philosophy, there remained to man, from an original and more lofty state of existence, some dim remembrance of perfection.
"This inborn and implanted recollection of the godlike," says Schlegel, "remains ever dark and mysterious; for man is surrounded by the sensible world, which being in itself changeable and imperfect, encircles him with images of imperfection, changeableness, corruption, and error, and thus casts perpetual obscurity over that light which is within him. Wherever, in the sensible and natural world, he perceives any thing which bears a resemblance to the attributes of the God-head, which can serve as a symbol of a high perfection, the old recollections of his soul are awakened and refreshed. The love of the beautiful fills and animates the soul of the beholder with an awe and reverence which belong not to the beautiful itself—at least not to any sensible manifestation of it—but to that unseen original of which material beauty is the type. From this admiration, this new-awakened recollection, and this instantaneous inspiration, spring all higher knowledge and truth. These are not the product of cold, leisurely, and voluntary reflection, but occupy at once a station far superior to what either thought, or art, or speculation, can attain; and enter into our inmost souls with the power and presence of a gift from the divinity."