Pisc. And a precious catch you have of him; pull him out! I see you have a tender hand: this is a diminutive gentleman, e'en throw him in again, and let him grow till he be more worthy your anger.

Viat. Pardon me, sir, all's fish that comes to the hook with me now. Another !

Pisc. And of the same standing.

Viat. I see I shall have good sport now: another! and a grayling. Why, you have fish here at will.

Pisc. Come, come, cross the bridge, and go down the other side lower, where you will find finer streams and better sport, I hope, than this. Look you, sir, here is a fine stream now; you have length enough, stand a little farther off, let me entreat you, and do but fish this stream like an artist, and peradventure a good fish may fall to your share.-How now ! what is all gone?

Viat. No, but I touched him; but that was a fish worth taking.

Pisc. Why now, let me tell you, you lost that fish by your own fault, and through your own eagerness and haste; for you are never to offer to strike a good fish, if he do not strike himself, till first you see him turn his head after he has taken your fly, and then you can never strain your tackle in the striking, if you strike with any manner of moderation. Come, throw in one again, and fish me this stream by inches; for I assure you here are very good fish; both trout and grayling lie here; and at that great stone on the other side, it is ten to one a good trout gives you the meeting.

Viat. I have him now, but he is gone down towards the bottom: I cannot see what he is, yet he should be a good fish by his weight; but he makes no great stir.

Pisc. Why then, by what you say, I dare venture to assure you it is a grayling, who is one of the deadest-hearted fishes in the world, and the bigger he is, the more easily taken. Look you, now you see him plain; I told you what he was; bring hither that landing-net, boy: and now, sir, he is your

own; and believe me a good one, sixteen inches long, I warrant him I have taken none such this year.

Viat. I never saw a grayling before look so black.

Pisc. Did you not? Why then, let me tell you, that you never saw one before in right season; for then a grayling is very black about his head, gills, and down his back; and has his belly of a dark grey, dappled with black spots, as you see this is; and I am apt to conclude that from thence he derives his name of umber. Though I must tell you this fish is past his prime, and begins to decline, and was in better season at Christmas than he is now. But move on: for it grows towards dinner-time; and there is a very great and fine stream below, under that rock, that fills the deepest pool in all the river, where you are almost sure of a good fish.

Viat. Let him come, I'll try a fall with him. But I had thought that the grayling had been always in season with the trout, and had come in and gone out with him.

Pisc. Oh, no! assure yourself a grayling is a winter fish ; but such a one as would deceive any but such as know him very well indeed; for his flesh, even in his worst season, is so firm, and will so easily calver, that in plain truth he is very good meat at all times: but in his perfect season (which, by the way, none but an overgrown grayling will ever be), I think him so good a fish as to be little inferior to the best trout that ever I tasted in my life.

Viat. Here's another skip-jack; and I have raised five or six more at least whilst you were speaking. Well, go thy way, little Dove! thou art the finest river that ever I saw, and the fullest of fish. Indeed, sir, I like it so well, that I am afraid you will be troubled with me once a year, so long as we two live.

Pisc. I am afraid I shall not, sir: but were you once here a May or a June, if good sport would tempt you, I should then expect you would sometimes see me; for you would then say it were a fine river indeed, if you had once seen the sport at the height.

Viat. Which I will do, if I live, and that you please to give me leave. There was one, and there another.

Pisc. And all this in a strange river, and with a fly of your own making! why, what a dangerous man are you!

Viat. I, sir: but who taught me ? and as Damætas says by his man Dorus, so you may say by me :

"If my man such praises have,

What then have I, that taught the knave?"

But what have we got here? A rock springing up in the middle of the river! this is one of the oddest sights that ever I saw.

Pisc. Why, sir, from that pike that you see standing up there distant from the rock, this is called Pike Pool. And young Mr. Izaak Walton was so pleased with it, as to draw it in landscape, in black and white, in a blank book I have at home, as he has done several prospects of my house also, which I keep for a memorial of his favour, and will show you when we come up to dinner.

Viat. Has young Master Izaak Walton been here too?

Pisc. Yes, marry has he, sir, and that again and again, too, and in France since, and at Rome and at Venice, and I can't tell where but I intend to ask him a great many hard questions so soon as I can see him, which will be, God willing, next month. In the meantime, sir, to come to this fine stream at the head of this great pool, you must venture over these slippery, cobling stones; believe me, sir, there you were nimble, or else you had been down; but now you are got over, look to yourself: for, on my word, if a fish rise here, he is like to be such a one as will endanger your tackle: how now?

Viat. I think you have such command here over the fishes, that you can raise them by your word, as they say conjurors can do spirits, and afterward make them do what you bid them, for here's a trout has taken my fly,—I had rather have

lost a crown. What luck's this! he was a lovely fish, and turned up a side like a salmon.

Pisc. O, sir, this is a war where you sometimes win, and must sometimes expect to lose. Never concern yourself for the loss of your fly, for ten to one I teach you to make a better, Who's that calls?

Servant. Sir, will it please you to come to dinner?

Pisc. We come, You hear, sir, we are called; and now take your choice, whether you will climb this steep hill before you, from the top of which you will go directly into the house, or back again over these stepping-stones, and about by the bridge.

Viat. Nay, sure, the nearest way is best; at least my stomach tells me so; and I am now so well acquainted with your rocks, that I fear them not.

Pisc. Come, then, follow me; and so soon as we have dined, we will down again to the little house, where I will begin at the place where I left off about fly-fishing, and read you another lecture; for I have a great deal more to say upon that subject.

Viat. The more the better: I could never have met with a more obliging master, my first excepted; nor such sport can all the rivers about London ever afford, as is to be found in this pretty river.

Pisc. You deserve to have better, both because I see you are willing to take pains, and for liking this little so well; and better I hope to show you before we part.

CHARLES COTTON.

BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Extract from a Speech at the Government House, Victoria.

Now that I have returned from my wanderings through your country, it may perhaps interest you to learn what are the impressions I have derived during my journey. Well, I may frankly tell you that I think British Columbia a glorious

province, a province which Canada should be proud to possess, and whose association with the Dominion she ought to regard as the crowning triumph of federation. Such a spectacle as its coast line presents is not to be paralleled by any country in the world. Day after day, for a whole week, in a vessel of nearly 2000 tons, we threaded a labyrinth of watery lanes and reaches, that wound endlessly in and out of a network of islands, promontories, and peninsulas for thousands of miles, unruffled by the slightest swell from the adjoining ocean, and presenting at every turn an ever-shifting combination of rock, verdure, forest, glacier, and snow-capped mountains of unrivalled grandeur and beauty.

When it is remembered that this wonderful system of navigation, equally well adapted to the largest line-of-battle ship and the frailest canoe, fringes the entire seaboard of your province, and communicates at points sometimes more than a hundred miles from the coast, with a multitude of valleys stretching eastward into the interior, at the same time that it is furnished with innumerable harbours on either hand, one is lost in admiration at the facilities for intercommunication which are thus provided for the future inhabitants of this region. It is true that at the present moment they lie unused except by the Indian fisherman and villager, but the day will surely come when the rapidly diminishing stores of pine upon the Continent will be still further exhausted, and when the nations of Europe, as well as of America, will be obliged to resort to British Columbia for a material of which you will by that time be the principal depositary. Already from an adjoining port on the mainland, a large trade is being carried on in lumber with Great Britain, Europe, and South America, and I venture to think that ere long the ports of the United States will perforce be thrown open to your traffic. I had the pleasure of witnessing the overthrow by the woodmen of one of your forest giants, that towered to the height of 250 feet above our heads, and whose rings bore witness that it dated its