“Bah,” said my Scotch friend, joining in the conversation, “did you ever kill a salmon, man? I hate gudgeon and such small fry; give me the river Isla, about the ‘Brig o’ Riven,’ a good stout rod with no end of tackle, and an angry seventeen-pound fish sulking behind a big stone—then you may have sport; or favour me with good trolling-tackle and a boat on deep Loch Awe, with the castle of Kilchurn glooming its great shadow over us, and the eternal hills rising tall around, and I will take out trout that will outweigh a hundred gudgeon; or give me a trout-rod and a pleasant ramble along the picturesque Shochy, and I will manage to fill my basket with fish worth taking home; but away with your Thames gudgeon, they can only satisfy a Cockney linendraper.” Verily my shrewd Scottish friend, with his reminiscences of monster fish and his fervid manner, waxed eloquent; he even startled the priest; and as for the Englishman he looked quite chapfallen. I had to come to the rescue, and defended as well as I could Thames angling, and reminded the enthusiastic Caledonian that they once had very fine salmon in the Thames, and would some day, if all goes well, have them again; and that gudgeon-fishing in the midst of such fine scenery was at least a healthy and happy way of having a pleasant day’s “out,” even if the sport was not quite so fierce as hunting for salmon in the river Isla at the “Brig o’ Riven.” The salmon of the Tay, it was also hinted to the news-agent, were not so famous as those of the Severn. “But we have twenty for your one,” was the quick reply, “and at the Stormontfield breeding-ponds we are raising them by the hundred thousand. The rental of the Tay, sir, is equal to what the whole revenue of the French fisheries was a year or two ago.” “Very likely, sir,” I replied; “but then the Tay is what you may call a Highland stream—good for fish, no doubt; and the Thames is a splendid river in its own way, but no one pretends that it is a fish river; it is the highway of the greatest commerce in the world, and——” “Pooh, man,” said the Scotchman, “the Tay is as celebrated for commerce as for fish. Have you ever been to Dundee?” And then, chuckling to himself at his rather rich idea of comparing Dundee to London, my friend sank back in his corner of the carriage and looked as if he could have slain a thousand London gudgeon-fishers, and the twinkle in his eye waxed brighter and brighter as he continued his chuckle.