Pg. 607

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Charles Dickens.] THE LIFE OF A SALMON. 607

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 it is over the Falls of the Bann, and beginning, to feel what the salt water is like. Still the old fish promise that it shall see its native cove again. It must be done by leaping this barrier of rocks; but thousands of salmon do that every year. What fish has done, fish may do.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 And now, a shroud of mystery encloses the life of the salmon. During the first year its age is known by the state of its scales; and its generation is then called grilse, or grailse, or grawls. After that, its mode of living is so com­pletely lost sight of that there is not a natu­ralist, nor a fisherman, along the whole north coast of Ireland who can tell when or how the trout passes into the salmon, (if indeed it be the trout which certainly becomes the salmon,) or how old, the salmon may live to be; or at what age its savoury flakes make the best eating; or, in short, anything whatever beyond this:—that the same fish return every season to the same river; the salmon of the Bann being short and thick, and those of the Bush river long and slim in comparison; and so on. So we must: treat salmon as we do ladies—neglect all considerations of age—make no inquiries on that obscure pointy and sympathise in their activities and pleasures without asking whether they had a beginning, or will ever come to an end.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 1 It is the fashion to talk of every body’s “sphere.” What a sphere is that of the salmon of the Bann! What a coast has it to range, whether, when carried out to sea with the- rush of waters, it turns to the right hand or to the left! That it does range along the coast is certain, as the watcher on many a promontory can avouch. Let the observer stand on the precipice of Fairhead—the salient point of the Antrim coast. At first, he will be curious about the little lake which dis­charges its waters by a fissure in the rock, making a waterfall down that steep—more than six hundred feet above the busy surge. Already, on the face of this rock, are there traces of that strange architecture of Nature which comes out to more perfection further to the west. If the observer looks out to sea, his eye will be fixed by the outlines of the Scotch islands, as they lie calmly anchored in the deep blue sea, or the Mull of Cantire closing in the eastern horizon. He sees more: than their outlines. In clear weather he sees the bright eminences and dark ravines on the: mountain sides. Now let him look below— sheer down into the transparent waters. Are there not silvery flickerings, bright glancings, which show that the salmon are there at play? There they are; and near a great danger. A rock stands out, an islet separated by sixty feet of roaring tide from the shore, directly in the path that the salmon take off the coast. Not knowing that enemies may come there and waylay them, the fish do not. make a good sweep out to sea, but just swim unsuspiciously round Carrick-a-rede. For a good part of the year, they may do this safely; during the months when salmon are not allowed to be taken; but, when the doom day comes, the bold fishermen do a great feat. They sling two ropes from the shore to the islet, at a height of ninety feet above the tossing waves; and, by laying short planks across, they make a bridge,—a suspension bridge with a vengeance—with no guard but a single rope: for a hand-rail. The stranger usually declines being swung in mid air on such a bridge as this: but the fisherman—who lives, during; the salmon season, in a cottage on the islet—runs backwards and; forwards as tranquilly as if he were passing London Bridge; and so do his comrades. If the salmon did but know their own case, they would glance up from amidst the waters, and, warned by that great inverted arch in their sky, would strike off,—well out to the north, and not approach the coast again for miles. But all that the salmon know of their own case is that they want to go up the rivers, to deposit their spawn and milt; so they hug the shore, in search of the rivers’ mouths.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1 Soon they come to that strange place, where, as we are informed, the great giant, Fin McCoul, had a mind to make a path for himself and his wife to pass over to Scotland, without getting their feet wet. Were any salmon present to. see that causeway begun? and did they fear that it would bar them out from the Bush and the Bann? There are the wonderful paving-stones at this day—cut so neatly to fit into one another, like the cells in a bee-hive, and built in so firmly that the winter surge, in all these thousands of years, has never washed them asunder. Were there any salmon to see the accident by which those stones were spilled, which are now seen lying, all in a heap, toppled all manner of ways. Giantesses who act as masons’ labourers to their husbands, should see, before they go out to work, that: they have strong strings to their aprons. Fin McCoul’s wife forgot this. She brought him plenty of stones in her apron, and he paved them in; jammed them firm: into the bottom of the sea with a stamp of his heel. But, one day, her apron-string broke, and her load of stones fell out—where they now lie. Whether her husband was put out of humour by so small an accident as this, as does happen to husbands sometimes, or whether his attention was called- off by some pressure of business elsewhere, we can­not say; but the causeway certainly never was finished. A beginning was made at the opposite end—at Staffa–that Scotch islet where the giant had a cave where he liked to be cool at. noonday (and a green, cool cave it is); but? the path never stretched very far out, at either end; and the salmon get round, quite easily, at this day.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Some salmon seem to have no eye for cork floats. They swim in among them, without a thought of a trap. But they find themselves in one; and, after floundering among ropes and cords, perhaps from Monday to Saturday,