I

'My dear, you might have knocked me down with a feather. rushed hither, thither: every one was asking; no one could tell. I went to my lord's town house; my lord was not in town. I ascertained by result of much trouble that my lord was not at any of his many mansions in the country; that he was not visiting the Dowager Lady his mother, or any of his other friends; but that he was gone abroad. No one could say where, and no one could say either when he would return.

'I tried to see mademoiselle herself, in vain. I failed to procure even one glimpse except upon the stage. Yes-she re-appeared. Once more the divine voice, once more the superb walk. Again the curtsey, the grace whereof had almost become historical. A second time she appeared, and I heard her then also. After which the papers stated she had been attacked by sudden illness, and would be unable to fulfil her engagement.

'So time went by. I could learn nothing reliable about her, till one night I was sent for suddenly to the house of a good and wise physician, and-but no, I will not tell you the tragedy which had occurred.

Her husband was sent for, and returned too late. She was dead when he came home, happily for herself.'

Whether Herr Droigel's reticence was induced by a desire to spare my feelings, or a consciousness that if he divulged the whole circumstances of the case, it might have spoiled the effect of his argument, I can only conjecture.

Certain it is, had I known then,

as I knew afterwards, that the poor lady was insane when she returned to the stage; that her mania, previously unsuspected, declared itself positively after her second appearance; that she subsequently fell into a state of profound melancholy, and was placed under the care of that good and wise physician Herr Droigel mentioned; that the tragedy he referred to was the murder of her baby by the poor demented creature, I should stoutly have denied that at the door of either art or marriage so terrible a catastrophe could be laid; but I am not so certain now that my contradiction would have been right.

The life she had to lead in her husband's house was enough to kill any one who knew the meaning of the word 'liberty.' Cold though her nature was, small though her Bohemian proclivities were, still the bars of her golden cage must have broken the heart that beat in vain against them.

But of the true incidents of the lady's life I was then ignorant, and consequently Herr Droigel's narrative and conversation left me with these questions wandering through my mind, none of which I could

answer.

What was the nature of the tragedy that he had so darkly indicated? Why had he, usually so reticent on such matters, introduced the subject of matrimony, and persisted in discussing the imprudence of art committing bigamy, to make use of his own idea? And third, who in the world could he imagine I should want to marry, or would wish to marry me?

'WHAT do you say to a few days' fishing?' said Harry W to me one evening towards the end of August, as we sat smoking our pipes after a bachelor dinner in his little frame shanty at New Westminster -a place more commonly and most. appropriately called the 'City of Stumps; for remnants of the primeval forest trees, cut off some few feet from the ground, stuck up in every direction, far outnumbering the lumber-built houses which some half-dozen years since constituted the capital city' of British Columbia.

'Just the very thing, old boy,' answered I. 'I should enjoy it amazingly; but where did the sudden happy thought come from? The salmon cutlet you polished off just now must have got into your head.'

'Well,' said Harry, a fellow who has come down from Hope tells me the streams there are crammed full of fish, fat and voracious.'

'That's good news,' said I; 'let's hope 'tis veracious, and not a case of "Hope told a flatt'ring tale.""

'You're a tremendously funny fellow, no doubt, in the old world,' gravely observed my friend Harry, who was a Scotchman, and unable to comprehend what a joke meant; 'but,' continued he, 'this is a new country, and old jokes don't suit the locality; so go ahead with business, and tell me when it will suit you to make a piscatorial break.'

'What do you say to next Monday, then?' said I.

Well, that will give us the week clear, certainly,' said Harry; 'but light another pipe, and fill your glass, and we'll talk the matter over.'

So we filled our glasses and our pipes, and we talked; and the result was, after the consumption of the contents both of the glasses and the pipes, it was arranged that we should go by steamer the following Monday to Hope, a little onehorse' place (as Harry called it), composed of a couple of dozen shanties, and fish the streams in the neighbourhood.

Before, however, starting on our fishing excursion, I may as well say a few words on the subject of British Columbian fish; though of course any reader uninterested in colonial pisceology can easily avoid what he considers too dry, and get into a more moist locality by at once taking a jump from the fishy part to the more congenial fishing party he will find a little farther on.

The principal kinds of fish frequenting the fresh waters are sturgeon, salmon, trout, round-fish, and candle-fish. The sturgeon (Accipenser transmontanus), though of the same species as those caught on the coasts of England, are vastly superior as an article of food. In London, I have many times tried the fish dressed in various ways, and invariably found it dry and utterly tasteless; but on the Pacific coast a sturgeon cutlet is a very different thing. I never was more surprised than when, after eating my first one at New Westminster, my host informed me what it was. I had imagined it to be extremely tender and gamey-flavoured veal. The sturgeon abounds on the northwest coast between the 46th and 54th degrees of north latitude, and grows to an immense size-how

large, I cannot say; but I have known them caught in the Fraser considerably over six hundred pounds in weight. They ascend the rivers nearly to their sources, going up the Fraser as far as the Rocky Mountains, and nearly two thousand miles up the Columbia; but those which get to these distances from the sea generally stay for a long time in the fresh water. The usual way of catching the sturgeon is by trolling with a dead bait, either a small fish or a part of a brightish-coloured one tied on to the hook. This is dragged along the bottom of the most likely spots, generally the sides of mud-banks, where the fish are in the habit of feeding. The moment one is hooked, up he rushes to the surface, and is immediately speared by the Indian who stands at the bow of the canoe; down goes the monster again, and off as fast as he can swim, the Indian in the stern paddling with all his might trying to keep up, and the one in the bow paying out the line, so as to prevent the canoe being pulled under water. Something like fishing, that is! A five-and-twenty-pound salmon or a fifteen-pound pike at the end of one's line is pretty good sport; but after having played and landed a few five-hundred-pound sturgeon, every other kind of fishing seems tame, like snipe-shooting after bagging Bengal tigers.

The salmon comes next, and is the chief article of food amongst the Indians. Prevent the salmon running up the Columbia and Fraser rivers, and every Indian inland would starve.

There are three runs of salmon up the Fraser during the year-the first in June, which is called the spring run; the second in July, or summer run; and the third the latter end of September and part of October, which is the autumn run. Two sorts arrive in June-one a

large thick fish, weighing sometimes as much as eighty pounds; the other a much smaller salmon, with a shorter head and thinner body, seldom weighing more than ten or a dozen pounds; the former is called the quinnat, and the latter chachalool. The summer salmon (Paucidens), which ascends the Fraser towards the end of July, is only about halfa dozen pounds in weight, but is an extremely beautiful and well-shaped fish. Towards the end of September the autumn run commences, and continues the greater part of October. This salmon (Lycaodon), although large, is very inferior in every respect to either of the preceding kinds. It has no spots, and is of a dirty grayishgreen colour, and the males have large teeth and a hooked nosenot the kind of hook very aged salmon in Great Britain sometimes have, where the under jaw projects and turns over the upper one, but a real Roman nose, formed by the upper jaw (which is greatly elongated) hanging down over the lower lip like the upper mandible of a parrot's beak. These autumn fish remain in the fresh water all the winter, returning to the sea as soon as the snow begins to melt the following spring; and as far as is known, or at all events proved, as yet, this is the only kind of salmon which is thought to return to salt water. Of all the millions of fish which ascend the Fraser during the spring and summer runs, not one has ever been seen going down again alive. The Indians maintain that every salmon which goes up the river to spawn dies; and, with the exception of the last-named, I believe such to be the fact. They swim up to spawn, and, having accomplished that, still swim onward, until bruised and torn, starved and ragged, and eaten up with sores, they die from utter exhaustion. Strange to say, they never feed in

the fresh water, and consequently will take no kind of bait. The most perfectly tied salmon-flies and the most tempting of live or artificial baits will all be tried in vain. When caught in salt water, food of some sort is usually found in the stomach; but of all the thousands taken and split open inland, not one ever showed a sign of having taken any kind of nourishment.

The salmon-trout (Spectabilis) is of a different habit, and does return to the sea after having spawned. This fish averages about two pounds in weight, and, unlike the salmon, will take a fly and other baits, the favourite one being dried salmon

roe.

We now come to the trout of British Columbia (Fario stellatus), a fish which swarms in almost every stream of that country. They differ much in size according to the nature of the locality, in some waters varying from four ounces to as many pounds, and again in others. running to nearly three times that weight. But I will say no more here concerning trout, as I trust the reader will presently join our trout-fishing party.

The round-fish (Coregonus quadrilateralis), one of the salmonidæ, ranks next to the salmon as a foodsupplying fish to the British Columbian Indian. Immense shoals ascend the Fraser during the summer, and are caught, split, and dried in the same way as the salmon. After spawning, they return to the sea about the end of autumn, though many which (like a few of the sturgeon) happen to get up to the far inland lakes seem too contented with their quarters to care to take the trouble of returning, and remain in the fresh water all the winter. These fish may be caught (like the salmon-trout) with either flies or other baits. They are rarely over three pounds in weight, but strong and handsome, of a kind of dun

colour, with bright scales, and show capital sport, while on the table they are quite equal in flavour to the famed white-fish of Canada.

Last on the list, and least in size, comes the candle-fish (Thaleichthys Pacificus) or, as the Indians call it, 'Eulachon,' which is something like a sardine, only larger and very much more oily; in fact it is all oil, and with a wick of cypress bark stuck through it, is used by the natives as a candle, hence its name.

It is, without doubt, the fattest fish that swims, and is much too oily to be eaten, for when put over the fire in a frying-pan it completely melts away, and in this form is drunk by the Indians with great relish. It is just the same when dried for months; heat turns it entirely to oil. During moonlight nights the eulachon come up to sport, and the surface of the water seems alive with them; then, the Indian quietly paddling amongst the glistening shoals, sweeps a long pole, studded with bone teeth two or three inches long, through the mass of little fish, and at each sweep brings into the canoe numbers of these curious marine candles.' Since the waters round Vancouver Island have been disturbed so much by steamboats, the candlefish has become very much scarcer; and by the time the red man has learnt the use of gas and coal-oil, I expect his native luminary will have entirely forsaken the British Columbian coast.

Having given this slight description of a few of the fish found in the colony, I will return to the company of my friend, Harry W

Our rods, fly-books, kill-devils, &c. being all in order, and a small stock of provisions packed up, we embarked on board the steamer Alliance a little before ten o'clock A.M. on Monday; the heavier portion of our baggage consisting of a

change of clothes, a ridge-pole tent, and an Indian to carry it and cook for us. We arrived at Hope, seventy miles up the Fraser, late in the afternoon, and without loss of time proceeded towards the place where we intended first to camp. This was about three miles from Hope by the side of a little mountain stream, named by some most stupid individual, 'Hope Creek.’ The creek' was in reality a very picturesque rocky mountain torrent, which tumbled in the most charming manner down the western slope of the cascade range, and fell into the Fraser a little more than a mile below the town of Hope. After pushing our way through the thick underwood of the forest, stumbling amongst roots and scrambling over fallen trees, we reached the so-called creek, not far from its mouth, and then had to climb along the bank for another couple of miles; the forest being so dense, and overhanging the banks so much, that until we got to that point fishing was almost an impossibility. At length we came to something of a plateau, where the pools were rather larger, and here we determined to pitch our camp. The Indian was soon at work cutting fire-wood, whilst I put up the tent, and Harry put his rod together to see if he could entice a trout or two to come on shore and give us the pleasure of their company at supper.

The stream reminded me somewhat of the Devonshire Dart above the town of Ashburton, though the rocks were many times bigger, and the fall of the river very much greater. Waterfalls, rapids, and pools of various sizes and depths, composed this pretty little stream; and as it rushed and foamed, cutting its way through the mighty forest, whose many-tinted autumnal foliage was reflected from the depths of the still pools, and the setting

sun cast wondrous lights and shadows on the scene, I thought I had rarely gazed on anything more lovely.

'Hurrah, I've got a whopper!' sang out Harry, who was standing some thirty yards off, taking the fly from the mouth of a fish he had just landed. I was very soon by his side, and ascertained the trout had taken the fly (a light moth) at the very first cast, and fought for his life most bravely; it was in firstrate condition, and weighed a trifle over four pounds. A very different sort of fish from the little Devonian ones, I thought to myself as I was preparing the British Columbian beauty for the frying-pan; none of your little Dartmoor things, with huge heads out of all proportion to their bodies, but a splendidlyshaped fish, with most perfectlydefined though rather dark-coloured spots, and as fat as a young Banting. I cooked that fellow myself, leaving the frying of the potatoes and the 'slap-jacks' to the Indian; and what a glorious supper we did have! A freshly-caught broiled trout, followed by a brace of grouse (which we had brought with us ready-cooked), is a dinner fit for the best man that ever lived, and I can truly say that of all the dainty banquets of which I have in my time partaken, I never enjoyed one more than that supper

under the greenwood tree;' and I don't think I ever experienced a feeling of more thorough contentment and lazy happiness than when (having handed the remains of the 'feed' to our Indian) I reclined on a couch of the tops of elastic pine branches, smoking my pipe and chatting to Harry of the sport we hoped to have on the

morrow.

In due time we rolled ourselves in our blankets under cover of the tent; the murmur of the water and the sighing of the breeze