The reader of Mr. Colquhoun’s delightful old book, “The Moor and the Loch,” must not expect Loch Awe to be what it once was.  The railway, which has made the north side of the lake so ugly, has brought the district within easy reach of Glasgow and of Edinburgh.  Villas are built on many a beautiful height; here couples come for their honeymoon, here whole argosies of boats are anchored off the coasts, here do steam launches ply.  The hotels are extremely comfortable, the boatmen are excellent boatmen, good fishers, and capital company.  All this is pleasant, but all this attracts multitudes of anglers, and it is not in nature that sport should be what it once was.  Of the famous salmo ferox I cannot speak from experience.  The huge courageous fish is still at home in Loch Awe, but now he sees a hundred baits, natural and artificial, where he saw one in Mr. Colquhoun’s time.  The truly contemplative man may still sit in the stern of the boat, with two rods out, and possess his soul in patience, as if he were fishing for tarpon in Florida.  I wish him luck, but the diversion is little to my mind.  Except in playing the fish, if he comes, all the skill is in the boatmen, who know where to row, at what pace, and in what depth of water.  As to the chances of salmon again, they are perhaps less rare, but they are not very frequent.  The fish does not seem to take freely in the loch, and on his way from the Awe to the Orchy.  As to the trout-fishing, it is very bad in the months when most men take their holidays, August and September.  From the middle of April to the middle of June is apparently the best time.  The loch is well provided with bays, of different merit, according to the feeding which they provide; some come earlier, some later into season.  Doubtless the most beautiful part of the lake is around the islands, between the Loch Awe and the Port Sonachan hotels.  The Green Island, with its strange Celtic burying-ground, where the daffodils bloom among the sepulchres with their rude carvings of battles and of armed men, has many trout around its shores.  The favourite fishing-places, however, are between Port Sonachan and Ford.  In the morning early, the steam-launch tows a fleet of boats down the loch, and they drift back again, fishing all the bays, and arriving at home in time for dinner.  Too frequently the angler is vexed by finding a boat busy in his favourite bay.  I am not sure that, when the trout are really taking, the water near Port Sonachan is not as good as any other.  Much depends on the weather.  In the hard north-east winds of April we can scarcely expect trout to feed very freely anywhere.  These of Loch Awe are very peculiar fish.  I take it that there are two species—­one short, thick, golden, and beautiful; but these, at least in April, are decidedly scarce.  The common sort is long, lanky, of a dark green hue, and the reverse of lovely.  Most of them, however, are excellent at breakfast, pink in the flesh, and better flavoured, I think, than