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.

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 point, and
sympathise in their activities and pleasures
without asking whether they had a beginning,
or will ever come to an end.

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.

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.

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,