Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV CONJURING SALMON )HE Gheira river flows out of a small loch some ten miles from the sea, cuts a very deep, narrow channel through the thick peat, forming at every bend a small pool, where salmon lie late in the season. Then, gaining volume by the addition of many tributary burns, it spreads somewhat, rippling over a rocky bed, until it comes within sight of the Bay, when, leaving the higher moors, it descends through a narrow gorge by a series of leaps—resting between each in a swirling pool—and finally calms down, as it winds through the flat alluvial lands below, and mingles its peat- stained waters with the billows of the Minch. While awaiting spates, salmon and sea-trout collect in the tidal portions (or ' flats,' as they are called), the trutta giving very fair sport. Sometimes the salmon, on which it is said the crofters levy a heavy toll, rise to the fly, but that does not often happen on the flats. With the first July spate the fish push up into the series of rockbound pools caused by the somewhat abrupt descent of the river from the moor, and here they mostly stay until the middle or end of August, fresh fish joining them from time to time. Gradually a few begin to work higher up the stream, some, perhaps, even reaching the loch. By degrees the pools in the gorge become un- tenanted, the fish crowding into the highest and largest of the series, where the bulk of them wait until nature's promptings and a September spate send them rollicking up towards the spawning- grounds. Then it is that the narrow, deep runs between the high peat banks, three or four miles below the loch, become well stocked with salmon, and, given a good rough wind to stir up the surface of these sheltered waters, the angler who ascends the river so far is often well reward...