We immediately started for the river—a really fine stream, well stocked with trout and other fish. You already know something of my enthusiasm, as well as my bad luck, in matters piscatorial. I caught no trout, but you will perhaps be surprised to hear I brought home half-a-dozen half-pound fish called "White fish." I caught these with a large black fly with a red body. The fish takes this fly freely, but he has no pluck whatever; no sooner is he hooked than he succumbs at once, and one has nothing to do but pull him out of the water—there is no sport or fight in him. Our jolly landlord had taken us to a favourite spot, where he himself fished with a pole and twine, sitting on the stump of a tree; "There sat my friend with patient skill, Attending of his trembling quill." SIR H. WOTTON. he baited his hook with grasshoppers and locusts, and with this bait he was usually very successful, but on that particular evening he caught nothing, and soon gave up. [Illustration: FISHING IN THE WEST GALLATIN.] My own success had so much surprised me that next morning I was up at six o'clock, and had caught six more white fish before breakfast. They were cooked for us, and certainly if they afford poor sport, they are very pleasant, delicate eating. I cannot honestly take much credit to myself for these feats. Our hostess, a very severe hard-featured Calvinistic person, took all the conceit out of me at once by solemnly telling the company at the breakfast table that she could go down to the river and catch as many white fish as she wanted with a worm hooked on to a pin. I was reminded of the angler in "The Sketch Book":— "I recollect that after toiling and watching and creeping about ... with scarcely any success, in spite of all our admirable apparatus, a lubberly country urchin came down from the hills with a rod made from a branch of a tree, a few yards of twine, and, as Heaven shall help me! I believe a crooked pin for a hook, baited with a vile earthworm—and in half-an-hour caught more fish than we had nibbles throughout the day!" Our host, a wealthy rancher as well as innkeeper, was of a more jovial turn, especially when he was not awed by the presence of his austere wife. He had been a slave-owner in pre-emancipation days, and so had his fathers before him; and he vowed the niggers were far better off then than they are now. "God Almighty," said he, "made the niggers black and unthrifty, and do what you will you can never make them anything else. The utmost height of a nigger's ambition is to drive a coach or to be a waiter in an hotel; and it is just all he is good for."