THE ANGLER IN WALES, ou DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SPORTSMEN. BY THOMAS MEDWIN, ESQ. LATE OF THE FIRST LIFE GUARDS, AUTHOR OF "THE CONVERSATIONS OP LORD BYRON. SI QUID EST IN LIBELLIS MEIS QUOD PLACEAT, DICTAVI AVDITA. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, in 0>i oiinni to JIM* iH,r,r.li> 1834. LOVDON : PRIKTED BY SAMUEL BCXTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. /I I 3 v,\ TO ROBERT ALLEN, ESQ. In gratitude for most of the Illustrations, and some of the best materials of these Volumes, they are inscribed by his affectionate friend and Brother of the Angle, THE EDITOR. LIBRARf PREFACE. HAVING sought in vain for companionship by turning over and over again the leaves of the tattered, dog's-eared, dirty, margin-annotated album, at Tal 'y Llyn, in Merionethshire, on a wet, cold day, as I had often done at Cha- mouny, Interlaken, and Grendelwald, I rang for the landlord, and asked him if he had no book he could lend me ? " Eze, sure, sir, a Welsh Bible." "A Welsh Bible!" I shook my head. He saw I was disappointed. " Well, indeed, sir, I don't know," after a pause, said he, in his own idiomatic dialect, (that may be thus translated,) " perhaps you might be able to read some papers, lying in an old trunk in my topsce (attic) that belonged to a ' Goorbinhitheg-o-Lloiger, VI PREFACE. (which being interpreted, means, an idle, or good-for-nothing, or useless Englishman) who died, a year come next 7th of July, at my house, and now lies buried opposite the window (here he pointed to the church-yard). Poor gentleman ! we all loved him as if he had been one of the family ; he was as lively as a trout in our lake, when he first came among us, but grew all at once very melancholy, which was strange, for he was in the prime of life, and, from the free way in which he spent his money, must have had enough to be considered rich, in this country. He came here to angle with two tra- velling companions, who, when they continued their tour, tried all in their power to dissuade him from staying behind ; but he obstinately refused to go with them. I should tell you that he was no great fisherman, for some days before their departure, he had laid up his rods on the pegs of my kitchen, where they now are. His daily custom was, to take long walks on the banks of the lake, and on Cader Idris, never returning till long after sunset, and he would then pass his time till morning in poring over his writings. I shall be glad to get rid of the charge of them, for you may chance to discover pniiFACE. vii by their means, his relations, which I have been unable to do." Thus saying, he left me. No blue-stocking Miss, burning to know what compliment had been paid her beauty by an author, on returning her album with his auto- graph ; no lover waiting for a reply to his billet- doux ; no spendthrift opening a letter with a black seal that might announce the death of an annuitant aunt of ninety-five, could have felt more anxious than myself, (as I heard my host's heavy step descending the stair,) for a sight of this virgin literary treasure. It consisted of two unopened letters, a poem, and a bundle of papers, very illegibly written, and much inter- lined, and interleaved, which at a glance, I saw, were descriptive of a Welsh tour. No little patience, and ingenuity, and a constant reference to Gary's admirable map, were required, before I could trace the route of the anonymous writer. He was evidently no great adept, though an enthusiast, in the gentle art ; I frequently met with very crude ideas, and extremely loose writ- ing, which however, in my peculiar veneration for authorship, and diffidence of my own powers, I thought best to leave untouched ; I discovered also many an ' hiatus ma.iuna dc/lendus,' and there viii PREFACE. were no few passages obscure as those of the Greek tragedians, which, like them, are doubt- less very Jine, if they could be made referable to any mode of construction, or known idiom, in our language ; these also I have not attempted to emendate. Thus the matter, after all the pains I took to reduce it into form, somewhat resembled the cub of a bear, that wanted a bet- ter foster-parent to lick it into shape. One other observation must be made. I disclaim all responsibility as to the sentiments of the writer, and the genuineness of the facts, nor am I philosopher enough to know if his theories have any KOV era. The sketch-book was well supplied. Few di- lettanti arrive at the freedom of outline, the delicacy of touch, and truth to nature, which the drawings, many of them coloured, bespoke. There were no less than five or six of Tal 'y Llyn, from which, though I doubt their being by any means the best, I selected three. As to the poetry, especially that of the Bengalee, all that can be said amounts to this, it was comme $a, yet better than might have been expected from an officer, if Mr. Leigh Hunt's well-known defini- tion is to be trusted. But lest I should chance PREFACE. ix to be considered here one of the tribe of that fiddle-faddling, dull old prosing pedant, Fadla- deen, I intend to reserve my scholia, or running comment, for the text. On my return to town, a few months after my Cambrian trip, I was dining one day with some epicures at our club, and descanting very elo- quently, as I thought, on the merits of this un- known mysterious tourist, and hinting at some half-intention of imparting his lucubrations to the world in the shape of one or two octavos, whichever they would make, (the dual number being certainly most to the purpose,) when I overheard a dandy, an amphibious animal now rare, (a term revived by the late Lord Kinnaird, from the English dandyprat, and that comes from the French word, 'dandiner,') in a sotto voce say to his next neighbour, ' Who would read a book about angling, the poor angling, too, in that terra incognita of goats and barbarians, Wales!" A significant, or insignificant sneer was the only reply, but I perceived certain tele- graphic winks, nods, and becks pass electrically round the table, showing the contempt in which sucli pursuits were held. I threw down the gauntlet in defence of my brethren of the rod. X PREFACE. One of my opponents, as he luxuriated over a * Salmi des Perdrix,' shrugged up his shoulders at the mention of ' Bara couse,' and ' Bukon a guoi :' another gouty young gentleman, as he scraped the Turkey carpet, shuddered at the idea of wet feet : a third, as he inhaled the bouquet of the Burgundy, and imbibed it after the manner of George the Fourth, turned up his nose at ' Cwrw :' a fourth, but I found I might as well attempt to convert Mussulmans, and resolved to 'print and shame' the infidels. Here is the book, ' gentle readers,' and a ( far- rago libelli' it is. The last word, I hope none of you will render Libel. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. FIRST DAY. An old Schoolfellow. His altered appearance. Mutual inquiries. Some account of Julian. The Author deter- mines on an angling excursion to Wales. My friend's habits and eccentricities. His denunciation of the " gen- tle art." Defence of it. An old Company's General. His singular appearance. Human pursuits. Qualities of an Angler. Sir H. Davy's enthusiasm for the Art. Julian consents to accompany the Author. Further addition to the party. Arrival at Hereford. . . . Page 1 SECOND DAY. Jaunting Car to Pennibont. Loquacity of the Driver. -Taming of animals. Conflict between a tiger and a buffalo. Beauty of the tiger's paw. Anecdote of an ele- phant. Breed of dogs in England. King James's spaniels. The Duchess of York's pets. Byron and his bulldog. Anecdote of Rogers. The Lawyer's angling preparations. Imitility of Julian's fishing-tackle. -The may-fly de- xil CONTENTS. scribed. Its history. Extraordinary number of different flies and insects. Angling books. Manufacture of flies. Lines and hooks. . . . . . . .17 THIRD DAY. Our supper. Trolling. Objections to the fly. The fly vindicated. The Ithon. A depopulated jungle. Art of throwing a fly. Rods. Chub not worth catching. Ety- mology. ......... 36 FOURTH DAY. The Wye. Romantic spot. A run. A sewin. Hear- ing of fishes. Voracity of fish. Hooking. Wariness of foxes. Samlets. Dinner. . , . . .49 FIFTH DAY. Our inn. A Fisherman. His advice. Start for Plin- limmon Approach to the mountain. Oriental Hot Spring. Religious Rites. Hindu Baptism. The old Fisherman. A chalet. Its inhabitants. Our noctes. Julian. . 65 SIXTH DAY. Birdlime. Romantic town. Dragging for Salmon. Resorts of Trout. Hooking a Trout. Water-proof boots. Precautions. Wading. Size of Fish. A glorious Pool Enormous Eel. Eels. Their migration. Food of Eels Propagation. Variety of Eels Adders. A strange Sup- per. Stewed Cat. Anecdote 80 SEVENTH DAY. Dejeuner. A Bull. Narrow escape. Boar-hunt in In- dia. Henry's death. . . . . . .101 CONTENTS. Xlll EIGHTH DAY. Arrival of Salmonius. His account of himself. A bet. A Kilkenny story. Lord Byron's faith in abstinence. Ortolans. A poacher's fly. The Duke of Norfolk's milk- punch. Start for Plinlimmon. Our flies. My compa- nion's travels The Fisherman's Tale. . . .114 NINTH DAY. A fine morning. The bet given up Mountain scenery. Annoyance from Flies. Flying Bugs, and other winged nuisances in India. Travelling in Hindoostan. Myriads of White Ants. Their mode of architecture. Their de- vastations. Their King. Grandeur of the Welsh moun- tains. Cader Idris. The Towyn famous for Salmon and Sea-trout. The Pennibont Inn. Colonel Vaughan's libe- rality Destructive sport of three Anglers. A delightful evening 154 TENTH DAY. A Stranger's Invitation. Perpetual Rain. Angling in a Boat. Irish Rods. Metamorphosis of a German Flute. Advantage of a strong Breeze. Sir Humphrey Davy's Flies. Hooking a Trout. He is landed. Description of him. Beautiful scenery. A new comer. Disadvantage of wading in the water while fishing. Deep water not favourable Cormorants Signal for dinner. A Morn- ing's diversion. Digression. .... 171 ELEVENTH DAY. Sketches of Salmonius Musical Phenomenon. Noctes Indiana.'. Delights of a migratory Life in the East. Oriental Field Sports Descriptive Verses. A Shikkaric. XIV CONTENTS. Astonishing feat in the den of an Hyena. Croco- diles and Alligators 182 TWELFTH DAY. Start for Cader Idris. Ascent of the Mountain. Llyn Cay. Mountain-trout. A fall of Frogs. Summit of the Mountain. Vast Prospect. Julian's excitement of spirits. Return to the Inn. Charters meets with ah Adventure. A Female Angler. Her history. . . . 199 THIRTEENTH DAY. Fishing on a Sunday prohibited. National Customs should be respected. The River Lea. Inn at Bow. The Parlour. Representation of a Chub. A consequential Personage. His sanctum sanctorum The Inn Ordinary. Cockney Anglers. Welsh Congregation and Curate. A deserted Village. A Meeting-house. A Publican's piety. Hypocrisy. Welsh Peasantry. Their overreach- ing spirit. ........ 210 FOURTEENTH DAY. Julian's fondness for smoking. Anecdote of Maturin. Swallows. Their habits. Sir Humphrey Davy's Remarks on those Birds. Flying Fish. Atmospheric Evaporation. Fishing in Boats. New arrivals. Angling in Ireland and Switzerland. Piscatory character of the Lake of Geneva. Byron's opinion of Angling. Walton and Sir Humphrey Davy. Colour of Rivers. Geneva Flies and Rods Rhone Trout. Cretins Goitres. Azote. Bridge of St. Maurice on the Rhone. Angling in that river. Bains de Louche Pass of the Gemmi. The Aar. Lago di Guarda. Enchanting View. Swiss Scenery. Traditions. . 227 CONTENTS. XV FIFTEENTH DAY. Colloquy with a Cigar. Anecdote of Glover the Painter. His knowledge of the language of Birds. New Flies Success produced by them. A Decoy Charters and his chaste Mistress. Julian's sporting Reminiscences of India. Juggernaut. Infatuated Pilgrims. Self-immolation. Dangerous bathing. A barren scene. A Herd of Ante- lopes chased. Cheetahs. Lion-hunt. Tiger-shooting. A Lion's lair. Lamentation on leaving India. . . 248 SIXTEENTH DAY. Tal y Llyn. Success on this Pool Dine en petit comite. Lady Holland and Tommy Moore. Return of Charters. His Adventure. Shelley's English-Italian Lines. Buona Notte. . ... 266 SEVENTEENTH DAY. The old Fisherman. His illness. His opinions. A Bard. Transmigration of Souls. Origin of that doctrine. Bardic Poetry. English translation of a Welsh Poem. A Salmon Hunt. Neapolitan method of Fishing. . 279 APPENDIX. The Ephemerus. Maxims and Hints for an Angler. Fishes. Samlets. Eels. Sauce for Salmon. Crimping Fish. The Eagle. Salmon Trouts. The Nightingale. 205 ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. I. Pennibontlnn . Frontispiece. Boat-house at Tal y Llyn Vignette in Title-page. Scene on the Ithon Page 42 Scene on the Wye Another Scene on the Wye Begalen Pool Entrance to Machynlleth River Dovey Weir on the Divlas Begalen Pool, by Moonlight 152 Valley of the Towyn 205 VOL. II. Pont y Garth . Frontispiece. Cockney Fishing . Vignette in Title-page. Tal y Llyn, by Moonlight . 46 Parson's Bridge Valley of the Towyn Aberdovey THE ANGLER IN WALES. FIRST DAY. An old Schoolfellow. His altered appearance. Mutual inquiries. Some account of Julian. The Author deter- mines on an angling excursion to Wales. My friend's habits and eccentricities. His denunciation of the "gen- tle art." Defence of it. An old Company's General. His singular appearance. Human pursuits Qualities of an Angler Sir H. Davy's enthusiasm for the Art. Julian consents to accompany the Author. Further addition to the party. Arrival at Hereford. Cheltenham. WHOM should I hit upon at Cheltenham one burning afternoon in May, but my old school and class-fellow, Julian ? We had not met for nearly twenty years, and all his " quondam acquaint- ances," if they had ever thought of him, consi- dered that he " was dead, or ought to be." In sooth, he was one of the " quantum mutati." VOL. I. B 2 AN OLD SCHOOLFELLOW. His fine features had become marked and hard in their outline, his cheek shrunk and liny, and his figure, once distinguished for a rare beauty, and six upright feet of honest measure without his shoes, was bowed about the shoulders with no classic bend, such as the finest bas-relief in the world, of the Antinous in the Villa Albani, is famous for. Before I stretched out my hand, I was half inclined to say, with Beppo's wife " How 's your liver ?" I addressed him familiarly by his name, but, to my horror, he did not recognize me. How abominably our mirrors do lie ! little are we sensible of the change that day by day takes place in our phizzes ; how complacently can we criticise others' eyes, for his were sunken and crow-footed, and hug ourselves with the conve- nient unbelief that the penciling of time has begun to radiate about the corners of our own. I was so taken aback, as the sailors say, at his want of recognition, so self-reflective grown, that \Jixed on him for some seconds a vacant stare, and at last said : " Don't you know me ? Don't you remember Stanley ? Do I look so very old ?" What a bore it is to put such questions ! MUTUAL INQUIRIES. 3 What a still greater bore, when he to whom they are addressed is too candid to lay a flatter- ing unction on the vanity of the questioner, by undeceiving him in the damning suspicion con- veyed by such an interrogatory as the last. He grasped my hand, whose pressure I did not return so cordially, perhaps, as I had intended, but strolling, arm-in-arm, towards the Mont- pelier Gardens, we soon leaped over space and time ; " And as we walk'd we talk'd, and the swift thought, Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not, But flew from brain to brain ; such glee was ours, Charged with light memories of departed hours None deep enough for sadness." Among other topics, our inquiries turned upon what each had been doing during this long span in our existence, this best part of the life of man; for, of all my acquaintances, I have never known one quite sound at five-and-thirty, and we had both passed that " Mezzo del cammin di nos- tra vita." Julian, I learnt, had left England at eighteen to seek his fortune, and gone to Russia for that purpose, where, not liking the service, he had made his way, with a letter of recommendation in his pocket from Doctor B2 4 ACCOUNT OF JULIAN. C to Lord Moira, through the Don country, over the Caucasus into Georgia, thence traversed the Persian empire, and crossing the Desert to Bushire, finally reached head quarters in the Upper Provinces. There he succeeded in getting a commission, and had just arrived on furlough from Bengal, with the brevet rank of Captain, and half a liver, to pay his devotions to Hygeia, in that paradise of chemists, where a decoction of Epsom salts and soda passes current for the genuine elixir vita?, an unadulterated spa. And your memorialist (as Madame d'Arblay designates herself) What of him? Are you cu- rious to know? after a long* continental tour, (by no means his first), and a short stay in town, he had just descendu at the Imperial. I had been unfortunate in my last trip ; got the mal- aria at Rome, a coup-de-soleil at Naples, a coup- de-vent at Geneva, and made a mauvais-coup at Paris, and, sick of London (as I always am in a * It is evident that the writer had been much on the Continent, and need not have told us so, from his bad taste n constantly interlarding his style with foreign words and Gallicisms, or, as the Roman 'satirist says of the travelled roues of his time " In Tiberim defluxit Orontes." ED. HIS HABITS AND ECCENTRICITIES. 5 week), was on my way to Wales, to make a new constitution amidst its mountains, its lakes, and rivers, and to seek a remedy for that tadium vita: doing nothing and having nothing to do, in what had always been " my passion and my enjoyment/* angling. I found my old friend a person neither Eng- lish nor Indian, Christian nor Hindu. In diet he was a rigid disciple of Brama, confining it exclusively to such esculents as are enjoined by the Shastras. They consisted of fish, rice, pota- toes, and other vegetables, and fruit of all kinds. His daily meal (for he took but one) was currie and mulligatawney, the last part of which word well expressed the hue of his countenance. Instead of " ghee," his sauce was olive oil, an ounce of which, he says, is equal to a pound of meat. The only exception he makes to this rigorous Pythagoreanism is, that he indulges in ample potations of the juice of the grape, which, according to him, was first planted in the East by the Indian Bacchus, whose exploits are so celebrated in the "Dionisiad" of Nonnus. He hence, perhaps, considers himself privileged to luxuriate in wine without discretion ; but it " cheer, n t inebriates" him, for he confines 6 JULIAN NO ANGLER. himself solely to claret. He is the same amiable, gentle, and gay creature he ever was; but this latter quality he attributes to an absti- nence from animal food, and looks upon the slaughter of a cow as only next to the murder of a human being. " Nee distare putat humana carne bovinam." His tongue ran on " antres vast and deserts idle," on jackal-hunting, on hog-hunting, on " anthropophagi" in the shape of tigers and alligators; on cobra de capelli, wild elephants and rhinoceroses, and other nondescript ani- mals, uncatalogued even by the wonder-relating Othello. It would have made unquiet the ghost of old Isaac Walton to hear Julian's disparage- ment of " the gentle art," which, I told him, had been lately designated by the " Ultimus piscatorum" the philosophic one. He repeated the words " Ultimus piscatorum" with a marked and not very respectful emphasis, and said " It would be well that he were, if you Pis- cators are all as dull fellows. Why, he goes angling in the Colone in a court-dress, bag-wig, and ruffles, and talks of catching trout with the same imperturbable sang froid as he does of crimping them. His book reminds me of the A "QUI HI." 7 * Cours Gastronomique? where the tutor lectures very pedantically, or, as you would say, en phifosophe, on the most approved way, ancient and modern, of dressing ' plats/ Dr. Kitchener strikes me as quite as great a philosopher as your Chemicus." " If you had named," I replied, " the immortal Ude, the greatest of men and first of artists, I might have hesitated before I differed from you. Sublime sciences both, my dear Julian, though, I fear, it will be no easy task to convert you to one or the other. Mais essayons nous. I despise angling where it is practised on the tame and pent-up trout in these Gloucestershire streams, where each is watched by keepers, and every particular inhabitant an old acquaintance of the proprietor. Here I should agree with you in proclaiming angling unworthy, unmanly, and uninteresting. As I was about to put forth all my eloquence, I was attracted by an apparition coming up the avenue, not unusual at that refuge for In- dians, a " qui hi," (a corruption of quis hie.} His high cheek bones, his scimitar-reversed nose, and gris4y red whiskers, where the white had long predominated, marked him for a 8 HIS SINGULAR APPEARANCE. Scotchman, as nine tenths of the Honourable John's servants were during the administration of all the patronage by the Melvilles. His air was anything but military, and had it not been for a part of his accoutrements, viz. scarlet pantaloons, broadly streaked with green, he might have been mistaken for a train -band cap- tain. He was habited in a cerulean-blue frock coat, down to the heels, studded with ranks of large metal buttons, a Leghorn straw hat with a very wide rim lined with green, and round his neck was a leathern stock of two or three inches in height, over which flapped, in un- starched ease, tremendous gills ; a white waist- coat, of true Bengal cut, gave an appropriate finish to his accoutrement. I asked Julian if he knew him ? " Yes," said he ; " he is an old Company's General, Sir " This braw Scot, having never been for thirty years inside a church door, is now Closeted daily with a ranting player in the shape of a parson,* and has ' a conspicuous box and a front row ' in his theatre ; though he has not seen, during all that time, an apostate Hindu who did not turn * Casti.-E. GEORGE THE FOURTH'S SNUFF. 9 out a mauvais sujet, he is a strenuous advocate for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts ;* and, having drunk more wine than any three men in India, is become a member of all the temperance societies. He is a great Church- and-King man, but (and it is out of the way of his calling) puts the last first, as you will find when he offers you a pinch of * " A pinch of " " Yes," he whispered, for he was now close to us; and I could perceive that in the folds of his enormous frill, (out, as Colman says,) was lodged snuff enough to fill an ordinary mull. Julian presented me to this original, who said, extending his tabatiere of ample dimensions, of china-carved tortoise-shell " Sir, this snuff, I am sorry to say, though it is real Masulipatam, is nothing to some, of which I once had the honour of taking a pinch, out of his Majesty George the Fourth's box. It was so * Sir William Jones says "We may assure ourselves that neither Mussulmans nor Hindoos will ever be con- verted by any mission from the Church of Rome, or any other church." One of the old Christians on the Malabar coast is easily known by two circumstances wearing a pair of black silk shorts, that match well with his bare legs, and driving a pig. E. 10 HUMAN PURSUITS. peculiarly exquisite that it has put me out of conceit of tobacco all my life." " But, General," observed Julian, " Stanley and I should be glad of your opinion about angling, which he denominates ' the philosophic art?'" In a pulpit tone he mouthed forth the follow- ing diatribe, being a leaf out of the book of his ghostly preceptor, and a close imitation of his style of performances.* " Man has so short a time to live, that, according to a heathen's definition, he is but the dream of a shade ; ought he not therefore seri- ously to occupy himself in the preservation of his immortal soul, in sowing the good seed, and in extending the diffusion of the Holy Scrip- tures, . with proper note and comment, to the very ends of the earth, that savage tribes may leap for joy, like an infant in the womb, instead of wasting his time in giving importance to trifles and substance to shadows? When four fifths of the human race are unacquainted with, * The constant sneer, and much-to-be condemned ridi- cule of sacred things, cannot but have shocked the editor of this journal, and he will often have occasion to apply an antidote to the poison. E. QUALITIES OF AN ANGLER. 11 and unredeemed by the great Atonement ; when Infidelity and Quietism, fixing their point cfappui in hell, shake the earth, and render man blind to his own destruction, whilst he is only sent into this world to make trial of the miseries incident to his state, and solely that he may hereafter become capable of enjoying ineffable bliss how can those whom Nature has endowed with supe- rior talents, consume the best part of their existence in systematising a set of vain specu- lations and empty theories, in writing Salmo- nias, and teaching their species how to entrap fish ! Fine occupations, in sooth, for a philoso- pher ! I hold a different faith." To this pompous tirade I only replied with a smile " Faith, you will remember, General, is the foundation-stone of our religion, as saith an ancient cockney poet : ' The first is faith, not wavering and unstable, But such as had the Patriarch old Abraham, That to the Highest was so acceptable, As his increase and offspring manifold Exceeded far the stars innumerable ; So must we still a firm persuasion hold.' " But in addition to faith, the qualities of an angler are, hope, love, patience, humility, cou- 12 SIR H. DAVY'S ENTHUSIASM. rage, liberality, knowledge, placidity of temper, and long fasting. These are our cardinal vir- tues." But, seeing something like a sneer playing about the new lamb's countenance, I turned to Julian, and said " Had you been present, as I was, at a con- versazione chez Lydia White, the literary lady in * Beppo,' and heard Sir Humphrey Davy, as I did, dilate so enthusiastically on this his favourite topic, you would have become a convert. There was present her usual coterie; Rose, the trans- lator of 'Ariosto,' and Sotheby, of whom the bard of Beppo makes such honourable mention under the soubriquet of 'Botherby;' Mrs. Siddons, who never could ask for a cup of tea but in a tone theatrical, and a few others. So eloquent was the great chemist that he drew at last the attention of all the party, which was strange where so many were come to shine. He spoke of the buoyancy of spirits that living in the open air never fails to excite, the secret of a lazzaroni- fisherman's happiness ; said, no exercise or pur- suit tended so much to health of body and peace of mind. He expatiated with rapture on the delights of following the windings of some unfre- SIR H. DAVY'S ENTHUSIASM. 13 quented stream, now rapidly rushing among rocks, now winding gently along through rich open pasturage, and now overhung with gnarled oaks, or fringed with alders ; a fresh landscape at every turn of the stream, and a perfect fore- ground to every picture ; the flowers reflect- ing themselves in a clear mirror: above our heads to mark the clouds weaving themselves into a delicate network ; to observe the slow rise of the thunder-clouds, or to see the rack driven tempestuously across, and ' laying bare the heavens !' then to listen to the songs pf the birds, or to behold the myriad insects that swarm in the sunbeam ! But I give a very faint and inadequate idea of his words. These were his joys. To gratify this ruling passion, he would travel a thousand miles to throw a fly in some untried stream, undergo the fatigues of a tedious journey to visit the unexplored rivers of Norway and Sweden, or the Fall of Traun, to fish for the huchen. But I will send you my breviary, one of the most glorious and spirit-stirring pieces of writing in our language, ' Fytte the First' of Blackwood, and refer you to its pages for the further defence of the argument." 14 JULIAN BECOMES AN ANGLER. " Almost thou persuadest me to become a fisherman," said Julian. Not so seemed to think the man of the new light, for he turned upon his heel, having ex- hausted the lesson from his primer ; and we saw him in close confab with an important-looking personage, whom I had no difficulty in distin- guishing for his spiritual vade-mecum. Soon after he had left us, I observed to Julian, that " my object in visiting Wales was to invigorate my health and unbend my mind. Come with me," I added, " and, as Pliny says, perhaps if we do not fill our panniers, we may our tablets." Julian was easily persuaded to try my pre- scription, and the next day we turned our backs on the black-legs, on the look-out whom they could run down, that swarmed before the Plough and the Rooms, the nankined " Pantaloons," in whose gamboge visages Bengal was legibly en- graven, the tall and mincing old maids, blue- stockinging it at Wellers, and the pale-faced exquisites, parading their emaciated persons in the High Street. I forgot (as in a letter the most important part of it is always tagged to the Postscript) to mention, that we made an agreeable addi- ADDITION TO OUR PARTY. 15 tion to our party in a young barrister, whom I had met during the last long vacation at Paris> and there inoculated with the rabies piscatoria, for he had for several months been thinning the Windrush with some mysterious and murderous bait, and having showed that he possessed the organ of combativeness, by sending a cartel to the ex-high sheriff of the county, was a " licensed " man. It was, as I said, his long vacation ; but term and vacation (for his were interminable) were confused with him, like the terms " plaintiff" and " defendant" at the end of an expensive lawsuit. If you should wish to know what he was like, all I can say is, that he was a great man for the ladies (now that is a puzzle), and I would not by any opinion of mine attempt to upset their verdict, which must be right. He was, however, a good musician, sang a good song, and during term-time told a good story, but never at any other, for he made a point of forgetting them, with his gown, at all other times of the year, just as the young par- sons sport mustachios, and drop the "Reverend" on their cards, on the Continent. Though he had never missed a circuit for five years, and not had as many briefs, yet, nevertheless, he had 16 ARRIVAL AT HEREFORD. so strong a developement of Hope (which made him an angler) that he fully expected the Chan- cellorship. And now, reader, after this introduction to my two friends, consider us at Hereford, where, by the by, there is an excellent rod-maker, and where I procured some hanks of gut lately bought from an itinerant Italian. My fishing companions did not know that each filum of gut is a drawn-out silkworm just before it is about to weave its cocoon. In the evening we pro- ceeded to the last town in England, Kington ; where commences our tour. JAUNTING CAR. 17 SECOND DAY. Jaunting Car to Pennibont. Loquacity of the Driver. Taming of animals. Conflict between a tiger and a buffalo Beauty of the tiger's paw. Anecdote of an elephant. Breed of dogs in England. King James's spaniels. The Duchess of York's pets. Byron and his bulldog. Anecdote of Rogers. The Lawyer's angling preparations. Inutility of Julian's fishing-tackle. The may-fly described. Its history. Extraordinary number of different flies and insects Angling books. Manu- facture of flies. Lines and hooks. Kington, Tuesday, 1st June, 1832. WE hired a double-benched cart, a sort of "jaunting car," to take us to Pennibont. The driver was a young savage lately caught, and spoke a patois difficult to be understood, such as a literal translation into English from a lan- guage full of inversions naturally produced. As a specimen of the lucidity of his style and con- struction, his first remark was, at the sight of a drove of pigs coming along the road " A pig is the most difficult thing in the world to drive VOL. i. c 18 A BULL TERRIER. along a road, when there are many of them very." By the side of the vehicle ran a bull- terrier, whose master was very loquacious in de- scribing a fight which the animal (I mean the dog) had gained the day before. The first ex- ploit of the brute now was to kill a goose that crossed the road, and his next to worry a lamb, notwithstanding all our endeavours to choke him off. The lad assured us, that Gellert (as he called him) had never been guilty of such acts before ; but we advised the young lout to hang him on the first tree. Not one presented itself for several miles over the barren downs, and our conversation took the following turn. " Though I am not altogether a disciple of Helvetius, who considers the human mind ori- ginally a sheet of blank paper, no doubt educa- tion does much for us, and is all in all with the animal world. This brute, for instance, has in all likelihood acquired his sanguinary taste from the effect produced on the sensorium of the brain by a recollection of the scene so graphically described by the young Welshman ; and a dog who once takes to worry sheep, never leaves off the habit ; and, as he only sucks the blood, he will destroy several in the course of a night. TAMING OF ANIMALS. 19 " There is no animal that may not be tamed. Kean made a pet of a half-grown lion ; and (another proof) I saw last week, at Kemsey, a greyhound and a fawn course each other recipro- cally over a green paddock, playing together as though they were of the same species. Nothing could be more graceful than the motions of these beautiful creatures, who, after they had made several circuits of the lawn, came and fawned upon their fair mistress." " I remember some half-grown wolves at Cawnpore, who followed their masters about the barracks, and answered to their names ; and I had then a pet leopard, who used to lie about my bungalow, and would purr when stroked, like a cat. His teeth and claws were drawn, I should tell you." " All animals have an instinctive dread of man. I was at Drury Lane at Martin's first ex- hibition. I know not what effect it produced on others, but when I saw him irritating with a spear that monstrous maned brute, who pursued him roaring round the cage, I felt as much for him as I had ever done for a Matadore in Spain. It revived in my mind the spectacles in the Roman amphitheatres." c 2 20 COMBATS BETWEEN WILD BEASTS. " I was present at Cheribon in Java at a fight between a jet-black tiger, peculiar to that island, and a buffalo. The former was conscious of his inferiority, and required rousing with fire before he would make the attack ; the buffalo received him on his horns, and tossing him high in the air, the tiger fell dead in the arena. The Na wab of Lucknow had once the barbarity to turn out twelve English greyhounds against a royal tiger. The contest was quite as unequal as the other. What a subject for Schneiders! or a greater animal-painter still, Rubens ! The dogs, though they fought well, were all dissevered limb from limb. " Did you ever see a tiger's paw dissected ? ' It combines beauty and elegance of propor- tion with immense strength and intricacy of mechanism, beyond the power of human con- trivance. Each claw has a tendinous communi- cation with strong muscles, and is kept in a retractile state, that its sharpness may not be injured by walking. Whenever a tiger strikes at any animal, not only do the claws enter it, but the toes -often follow. I have frequently seen wounds that were made by them probed to DECLINE OF BULLDOGS. 21 the depth of at least five inches.' * Perhaps twelve bulldogs would have had a better chance, for I had one who pinned an elephant by the trunk. You are aware that the elephant is very careful of his proboscis, and when in the vicinity of a tiger, rolls it up in a ball, being aware that, when once injured, it is difficult, if not impossi- ble to heal the wound. Three years after this bulldog had been in the country he lost all his courage, and would not have attacked a pariah dog." " Man is the only animal whose morale (inse- parably united with the physique in other ani- mals) climate does not affect. The race of our bulldogs is getting fast extinct, and it is rare to see one now of a pure and genuine breed. This may be accounted for by the discontinuance of bull-baiting. When I was a boy, a West Indian of my acquaintance showed me a Cuba blood- hound, whose sire had been employed in that horrible war against the Maroons ; he was a fierce and untamable creature, even more so than the Greek dogs, of which Prince Ulysses had several in the caves of Parnassus, when besieged there * This passage, by the inverted commas, seems to be a quotation. E. 22 ENGLISH BREED OF DOGS. for many months, and to whom, probably, he owed his life. They slept around him, and he used to feed them himself. At a word of his they would have torn any one to pieces. It is no joke, I assure you, to enter a Greek village on foot after sunset. In the Pyrenees, too, I was once severely bitten, and could show you the wounds. These Spanish dogs are very sa- vage, but I believe an English mastiff would be a match for any of the three foreign races. Our British dogs were famous in the times of the Romans. Gratius panegyrizes them; and Nemesianus, in his ' Cynegeticon,' mentions a remarkable fact of the instinct of one of them. ' Nam postquam conclusa vidit sua germina flammis, Continuo saltu transcendens fervida zonse Vincla, rapit rictu primum, portatque cubili Mox alium, mox deinde alium. Sic conscia mater Segregat egregiam sobolem virtutis amore.'* " We in England have carried the breed of dogs, no less than that of all other animals, to * For when she saw her offspring girt with flames, Leap after leap, passing the fervid zone's Encircling ring, with opening jaws, first one, And then another to her hutch she bears ; The mother, conscious of their danger, thus With an instinctive fondness saves her young. E. ANECDOTES. 23 the greatest perfection. Till the peace there was scarcely a good pointer or setter in France. Our Marlborough and King James's spaniels are unrivalled in beauty." " The latter breed, that are black and tan, with hair almost approaching to silk in fineness (such as Vandyke loved to introduce into his portraits), were solely in the possession of the late Duke of Norfolk. He never travelled with- out two of his favourites in the carriage. When at Worksop, he used to feed his eagles with the pups ; and a stranger to his exclusive pride in the race, seeing him one day employed in thus destroying a whole litter, told his Grace how much he should be delighted to possess one of them. The old brute's reply was a character- istic one : ' Pray, sir, which of my estates should you like to have T " " You put me in mind of a visit once paid to Oatlands, where we met the old Duchess of York with a perfect pack of spaniels. There is a little pool of water near the grotto, encircled with the graves of her pets, and an inscription on one of the tomb-stones in honour of some Chloe or Daphnis, that gave great offence. The lines were by Monk Lewis, who, I remember, attri- 24 BYRON'S CERBERUS. butes to this canine lady virtues that were de- nied to belong to any of the biped ones in the neighbourhood. " I have always thought Byron had this epitaph in his eye when he wrote that on the Newfound- land dog. Him I never saw, but Tiger was an old acquaintance of mine, and I will tell you a story of the bard, which is very characteristic of his ' malice.' It appeared, some months ago, in a defunct periodical with an unintelligible name, to the editor of which I sent it, and, as only eight copies were sold of the number, it cannot be much known, unless it has been pirated by some thief. At all events, you have not seen it. " Byron had a Cerberus, in the shape of an English bulldog. As I said before, his name was Tiger. He was fastened at the top of the colossal flight of steps in the Casa Lan- franchi, with a rope long enough to enable him to guard the passage to what some, who attri- bute to Byron a cloven foot, might call his inferno. The animal was an intelligent one ; and though little inclined to make new acquaint- ance, soon learned to distinguish his master's habitues, and allowed them the entree, contenting himself with growling at one and wagging his BYRON'S RECEPTION OF ROGERS. 25 tail at another a compliment, however, seldom paid to any but Shelley. Byron was much at- tached to this fine creature, and frequently had him loosed when playing at billiards, his fa- vourite game. An anecdote is told, very charac- teristic of the poet, in which my gruff friend Tiger played a distinguished part. " It has become an historical fact, and one of almost as great importance as the meeting of the Triumvirate to decide the fate of the world, that ' Childe Harold' and the ' Bard of Memory' met at Pisa. Rogers, in one of his sentimental notes, had announced the probability of this in- teresting event, and Byron heard at length that he had descendu at the ' Tre Donzelle.' Know- ing that Rogers was momentarily to appear, Byron gave orders to Tita to introduce the monkey and bulldog. I think I see Byron in his jacket stumping round the billiard-room with the heavy sound that, once heard, could not be mistaken, and, after making some successful hit, bursting out into one of his usual gibes or flashes of merriment, which success always in- spired, or dividing his caresses between Jacko and Tiger. There existed no slight jealousy between the two favourites, which showed itself 26 BYRON'S RECEPTION OF ROGERS. on the part of the latter by a short, loud, angry bark at his rival, whilst the ape sat perched out of reach, grinning and chattering defiance, to the no small amusement of their master. The coming of the expected guest was now an- nounced by a bark of deeper intonation, which Byron made no effort to repress, but returned to the game, to which he affected, with one of his cynic grins, to pay more than common attention. In the mean time Tiger rushed furiously at the stranger, who backed to a corner of the room shivering and breathless with terror. Byron, without casting a look towards the poor bard at bay, contented himself with drawling out, at intervals * T i ger ; Ti i ger,' but in such an accent, as rather to encourage than check the baiter, who continued a furious con- cert of menaces at the ' Death in life, or de- parted Mr. Rogers.' Byron at length pretended to discover the cause of the affray : to kick Tiger aside, and press his * dear friend ' in his arms, was only the affair of an instant. It was a fine piece of acting : the mock fervour of his pro- fession of regard, his upbraidings and threats to Tiger nothing, in stage language, could sur- pass the ' situation.' " THE DOG GELLERT. 27 " This anecdote reminds me of the Swift-like verses in ' Fraser,' on ' The Bard of Mummery/ in which he takes a similar view of the character of his friend to that in the ' Conversations of Lord Byron,' winding up with ' For his virtues, would you know 'em, Once he wrote a pretty poem.' " " Talking of virtues, poetry, and dogs, reminds me of Gellert, whose tomb we will visit, and who gave his name to a town in North Wales. You perhaps have never seen the stanzas, writ- ten, I believe, by the Honourable W. Spencer, on the faithful guardian of the child of Llewellyn. They are among the most beautiful in the ballad style our language possesses." This Gellert trotting by our side, was cer- tainly no relation to Llewellyn's ; and just as we were wishing him condign punishment, and had crossed the Ithon, and reached the inn, two Welsh farmers, on ponies without saddles, came riding at full gallop up to the cart. They were the owners of the goose and lamb, and appeared to be very much disappointed when they found the dog was not our property. They, however, took charge of our Welsh jehu, of whom we heard no more. 28 COSTUME. Peunibont. Julian has brought with him baggage enough to load a camel, among which is a six-dozen hamper of claret, galore of currie-powder, and soluble cayenne (a xai&>, to burn,) many a flask of Florence oil, and some twenty dozen bundles of Trichinopoly cheroots, which he asserts to be the only genuine tobacco, this herb being indigenous in no other part of India, whence it has been transplanted into the Havannas, whose cigars he looks upon as little better than shag. The Ben- galee's costume is characteristic, i. e. Anglo- military-Indian : a white jacket, white nankeen pantaloons (tights), numero tre, Indian leather hessians. A rig-out enough to frighten all the fish out of their skins. But he has promised to mend his attire at Machyntlleth, if such a per- sonage as a " Schneider" can be found ; and I have advised him to send on to that place his impedimtnta. The lawyer is better provided with body than foot gear, for he has boots coming up to his knees, which, he says, are water-proof; but he will soon prove the contrary. Water-proof they are as high as the ankles, into which I prognosticate the " slush," once entered, will remain, as in a cup, FISHING-TACKLE. 29 and act like the sucker of a pump ; and that said boots will not be so easily got off as on, but stick to him like birdlime or cobbler's wax ; and that in order to drain off the bilge- water, he will have to be served as Gulliver was by his Brobdignag- gian nurse, lifted up by the heels a scheme I once saw successfully practised on a half-drowned foxhunter, after he had been fished out of a ditch. His tackle occupies a very small space, consisting of one trolling-rod and apparatus. Not so Julian's ; for he has brought with him half the stock-in-trade of a Cheltenham tackle- vender. He has been triumphantly displaying two splendid blue morocco books of flies, the refuse of the shop ; most of them unlike any- thing in nature but wonderful specimens of art. Several ends (literally ends) of gut, all rotten and flat, were in the pockets ; and he was about to tie one on the line, but did not even know how to make a loop, much less a water-knot. The first dropper was a granam, or green-tail ; the second a willow-fly, and the stretcher, a may-fly. I had angled in Wales in 1824, and knew that neither of these would suc- ceed. As to the second dropper, there are few, if any, willows on the Ithon, or any other of the 30 THE MAY-FLY. Welsh rivers, and the May-fly was not only over, but said I " The may-fly is scarcely known in Wales, at least I have never been able to get a rise at one." " The tackle-man told me it was the most taking of all flies." " Yes, in England ; indeed, perhaps, the supe- rior size of the trout there is in some measure attributable to the enormous meals the trout make of this little ephemera ; and it is worthy of observation, that before its appearance the fish are in general poor, lousy, and smutty ; but, a few days of the may-fly will make so great a difference in their condition as to occasion an incredible increase of bulk. The French fisher- men, I think, call this periodical and providen- tial supply of food, ' La manne des Poissons.' " " I am curious to know something of the history of this little creature T " In the great fall, or, to speak more pro- perly, rise of these animalculae, related by Mr. White as having occurred in the Alresford stream, the air was perfectly crowded, and the surface of the water overspread with them. THE MAY-FLY. 31 Reaumur, also, compares their periodical appear- ance to clouds and rain, so thickly did they cover him. They begin to emerge from their sub- aqueous abodes, and assume the form of nymphse, as soon as the sun has imparted sufficient warmth to the water, that, as an old poet says * Hatches them at last, As well as genial warmth, or hen, or sun ; A thing so strange, so bold, As scarce, perhaps, no author ever told.' They then come forth in myriads, as I said, from their burrows. I have dibbed much with the natural may-fly (which on some of the rivers in Hampshire they will not permit to be used), and towards evening have found them scarce, and, on searching the trees near the stream, discovered what I thought to be the flies with their wings extended, but, on closer examina- tion, perceived that these were their exuviae, or envelopes. Reaumur confines their taking the form of aurelias to between eight and half past eight in the evening. It has been remarked, too, by Swammerdam, that the great periodical rise of ephemerae is confined to three days. This latter entomologist, in a treatise that leaves nothing to 32 EPHEMERAE. be desired, also established, that most of them take three years before they arrive at sufficient maturity to undergo the metamorphosis. " As to the period of their existence, that of some does not exceed above an hour ; many not more than four or five, and none, perhaps, live longer than a day. They divest themselves of two coats; one immediately on emerging from their natal element; and of the other, as I re- marked, they rid themselves before laying their eggs, for which purpose they hover over and sit on the water, and in so doing, if they wet their wings, are instantly drowned. " We may from these ephemerae learn a moral lesson. They are an image of ourselves, the most fortunate of whom, after fretting and toil- ing for years in vain pursuits, the quest of glory and the acquisition of riches, have no sooner obtained the darling objects of our ambition, than we arrive at a period of life when we cease to find in them any enjoyment, and when all that surrounds us is mere vanity and nothingness. " After this homily, I will add that, according to De Geer, there are upwards of one thousand four hundred different flies and insects ; not that I pretend to know a hundred of them. Perhaps ANGLING-BOOKS. 33 also you do not know that the eyes of some are found to be made up of an aggregate of many minute ones, which in some insects amount to six or seven thousand, and spread up and down the body as on the spider and scorpion-fly. But this field is inexhaustible, and I shall not go into it." " I find in the angling-books no exception made as to Wales, and have been reading them attentively during our journey, for I bought all I could find in Weller's catalogue. Here they are : look at the indices yourself." " All the books that have ever been written on angling, all that can be conveyed by words or drawings, will never teach a tyro to make a fly, to throw one, to spin a minnow, or play a fish. One might as well attempt to swim from reading of Leander's or Byron's exploits ; to play at billiards by studying the angles mathema- tically; or at chess (remember Rousseau,*) by fagging at gambits and problems from Walker. Experience and habit are all in all. A single day's instruction from a practised hand is worth * Rousseau mentions, in his " Confessions," having stu- died gambits for several months, and fancied himself be- come bienfort, but the first time he sate down to pluy he was beaten by a very inferior player. E. VOL. I. D 34 MANUFACTURE OF FLIES. all the minute instructions, and woodcuts, how- ever well executed, that are extant. He who learns Alphabets of fishing will never be out of his alphabet. Besides, every lake or river has its particular flies, as you will find during our tour." " What flies do you recommend ?" " There is one at which they will rise here during almost every month in the year, for it abounds in Wales at all seasons. Every even- ing, when k is fine, you will see it swarming about the banks. They call i$ the cocobundy. It is a beetle, and not unlike what we call in England the red spinner. It would be best for us, whilst Charters tries the river, to employ ourselves in dressing a few flies. I have brought with me some Russian hog's bristles : they are round and small, and some of them eleven inches in length, are preferable to any gut or grass, and instead of rotting, as they do, become tougher in the water. I have also got fine swan's down, dyed, by a silk-dyer, of several nuances ; viz. three degrees of yellow, two of green, two of brown ; and feathers for wings, and hackles of the same colours. In the fly-art, every man who has the slightest pretensions to the HOOKS. 35 name of angler should be an adept. He should also know how to stain his line the hue of the particular water in which he may have to throw. Choose gut that is fresh and round ; do not, in economy, cut it too near the ends, and let it soak half an hour before you begin to knot. The hooks I always use are the Kirby-bend. Sir Humphrey Davy talks much in praise of O'Shaughnessy's Limerics ; but they are difficult to be obtained genuine, out of Ireland, and some sold to me for such, were too highly tempered, so that I snapped one or two, and gave them up. The sharpness of their curve is also liable to cut the line. These, I think, you will find perfect. The cocobundy is very simply made. I perceive a fine red or ginger game-cock in the yard ; we will get some of his neck feathers for the hackle, and for dubbing use peacock's hurl. " Now for Lesson I." 36 OUR SUPPER. THIRD DAY. Our supper. Trolling. Objections to the fly. The fly vindicated. The Ithon. A depopulated jungle. Art of throwing a fly. Rods. Chub not worth catching. Etymology. Pennibont, on the Ithon, Thursday, 1st June. WEARY, wet to the skin, hungry (which tries the temper enough of itself), and discontented with his afternoon's sport, Charters is just ar- rived. The landlady gives herself wholly up to the promotion of his comfort, and the servant is frying the fish for our supper a musical sound animus est in patinis. The trout and eels were rather muddy. Chub I never will touch again, for I was told how they feed. But the chickens and ham (not smoke- dried in the chimneys, as in England) were ex- TROLLING. 37 cellent, the ale good, omelet not amiss. Now for a cigar and Charters. " I can't say much for the Ithon. I have followed it at least five or six miles through its serpent-like course. The lower I went, the more sluggish it became, and ended in weeds and rushes. You know I always troll, and I am satisfied that, had there been any good trout in the river, I should have taken some. As it is, I only caught twelve, the largest less than a quar- ter of a pound, and four chub. I lost one of at least four pounds weight, owing to the steepness of the bank, and my indifference whether he got off or not. These chub are poor dastardly things, and, notwithstanding what Walton says, the worst of fish. The eels, and not very large ones either, tormented me sadly, and made great havoc among my hooks. As to my bait, I deem it infallible. Trolling for ever ! say I." " Notwithstanding your predilection for troll- ing, and your boasted lure, whatever it may be, I still believe more fish, at the right season of the year, may be taken by the fly, though it is now late for it here, than by any other process; at all events, you will not deny that the method 38 TROLLING. is more artificial, more ingenious, and more amusing ?" " Agreed ; but the disappointment of seeing a troller take all the large fish, whilst you basket the small ones, is not put into your account." " I had rather land even small fish with my fine tackle, than weigh large ones with your clumsy and coarse machinery ; besides, it does happen (you forget Sir Humphrey's Denham and Downton angling) that we do take large fish." " By accident. The larger fish are not im- pelled by hunger to rise, except for a very few weeks in the year, and even not then, where flies of considerable bodies, such as the stone-fly, the caddew-fly, the May-fly, and a few others, have not emerged from their rough coats, or their state of grubs, and which species, I believe, are rare, even if they exist here ; and I am still inclined to believe, that the best trout, as I said before, only rise in playfulness." " A pretty paradox, a fine specimen of special pleading ; merely for the sake of exercise, per- haps, and to keep their fins in order, eh ! Did you ever open one of their capacious stomachs, and find them gorged with flies ?" " Yes, but only in the early part of the season, OBJECTIONS TO THE FLY. 39 and when, starved by long abstinence, the peri- odical swarms come down, or rather, rise up. When the trout in large waters, and bold rapids, has acquired a certain strength and size, his real, substantial food consists of the smaller class of fish, especially of his own genus. Thus, you will always find him in the deepest hole, or lurk- ing behind some root, or projection, under which he conceals himself in the eddy, till some un- wary youngster, impelled by the torrent into his lurking-place, presents himself. You may pass the fly over his lair (if I may use the expression) fifty times without success ; but offer him my bait, and he is your own." " I should be sorry to become a convert to your doctrines. So you have discarded the fly altogether ?" " I used it at first ; but my objeetions to it were taken from observing that, amongst the most expert fly-fishers, no one was perfectly satisfied. The day was too fine, or too foul ; the water too clear, or too muddy ; the wind too violent, or too low, or in the wrong quarter ; and if none of these vexations could be referred to, there was a never-failing reason for unsuc- cess : it was not the right fly." 40 OBJECTIONS TO THE FLY. " That reason is an obvious one, doubtless. It is essential to hit the exact colour and form of the fly. But go on." " Essential as that point may be, how often is it accomplished ? A trolling bait, such as mine, will answer at all seasons, weathers, and places. The fly can only be thrown on particular spots of a rapid, rocky, wood-fringed river, and these generally are the very spots least frequented by the monarchs of the stream. But should you make a fortunate cast, and find one of them at home, first he is disturbed by the agitation of the surface ; next, you are open to his observa- tion, a circumstance of itself sufficient to scare and banish every trout that has arrived at years of discretion. As to the small trout, you may have them at all times, for age and experience make an extraordinary difference in the habits of fish as of other animals." " Now for my reply, to which, in accordance with the rules of your practice in the courts, I will have no rejoinder. It is the imperfection of the art against which you would inveigh, not against the art itself. Any one may become a troller ; the greatest bungler may, in eddies and falls, but not elsewhere, ensnare the wariest THE FLY VINDICATED. 41 of the finny tribe. I have no curiosity to worm out your secret, and I hope it is liable to none of the objections humanity suggests, against treating frogs d la Marsyas, or impaling live fish or grubs. As to myself, nothing will ever induce me to use aught else than the fly. When the stream is troubled, or the wind and weather unpropitious, I can amuse myself with preparing my flies, or knotting my hanks of gut. When others find the water too clear, with a line of the right colour, and as fine as the threads the spider weaves in her web of gossamer, I can make my fly drop like the parachute of the dande- lion. In salmon-fishing this precaution is unne- cessary, for a splash in the water attracts them. You will one day recant, and, after you have seen me land one out of the Wye or Tivy, dis- card for ever your boasted panacea. You now deem it irresistible, but you will find it other- wise when you have tried the lakes, whose in- mates are too delicate in their tastes, too great epicures, to look at aught else than a fly. Nous verrons another cigar, and then let us part with Juvenal's not inapt 'Tc Nos facimus, Fortuna ! deam, cculoquc locamus.' " THE ITHON. The Ithon, Friday 2nd. IT was our plan to hunt down the Ithon, though with little prospect of much sport, to Rhayader. We found the river what Charters had de- scribed it, a broad and sluggish stream, flowing through a deep, loamy soil, that gave a whitish tinge to the water, sufficiently clear, however, for the fly, though much rain had fallen during the night. Julian, when he saw the open, green pastures through which the river winds, on one side covered with black cattle, and the wooded and high banks on the other, interspersed with A DEPOPULATED JUNGLE. 43 farm-houses, inveighed loudly against civilization, as the bane of sport of all kinds, against game- laws, and game -keepers, arguing, that there could be no property in ihejerce natura. " Even India," said he, " is beginning to be spoiled. On visiting some jungle, that had sup- plied excellent beat, I have often been disap- pointed, to see a new village encroaching on our manor. Tigers there were none, we knew, but expected to console ourselves with abundance of other game, which, in our eagerness for that noble sport, we before had disdained to fire at. What was become of the chicore ? The florikan, that avoids the haunts of men, had forsaken her dis- turbed retreat ; the solitary snipe had sought a more retired haunt, and the nylgau, supposed to be a mule between kine and deer, and partaking of the character of both animals, had disap- peared. You have no idea of the delight of tra- versing one of our untrodden wildernesses, with long, withered grass up to the howdah, and herds of antelopes, hogs, peafowl, quail, and partridges, getting up on all sides. But, if men must fish, let it be ' in society where none intrudes.' " " Wild animals have not an instinctive terror of man ; but when disturbed and shot at, soon 44 ART OF THROWING A FLY. learn caution, and, if Sir Humphrey Davy's ob- servation is correct, teach their offspring to be equally wary, without their having had the same experience. Pheasants know well a preserve, and in time of danger, make for it. Fish are equally knowing, and keep to a guarded part of a stream. After a river has been well whip- ped, it is useless to throw a fly into it, and fish are much shyer near towns than elsewhere. But to business. I perceive that round that point the river must make a considerable fall, and if there is a trout in the place, we shall find him in the eddy. I see Charters at the end of the meadow, posting along at a famous rate, which proves that he has met with nothing to detain him in his bush-fighting." " As I am putting together my rod, I wish you would give me some instructions, though, I fear, I shall make a sorry pupil." " The art of throwing a fly is by many easily learnt, whilst others, with infinite practice, never become very dexterous ; just as some men will never be good whips, or have a good hand in riding. To give you an instance ; a tyro, like yourself, who was fishing with his uncle, took more trout than that practised angler, the RODS. 45 descendant of the celebrated Cotton. Perhaps you will say, his skill was hereditary, or in- tuitive. In Hampshire, last May, whilst Sir H. P was pretending to give instructions to M how to throw, the latter took, and landed, a trout of ten pounds weight. When a boy, I killed more partridges in the same number of shots than I have ever done since, and the first time I ever threw a fly, brought to shore a salmon in the Tivy, under the auspices, it is true, of an experienced veteran, but with a rod made by a village carpenter. It was of moun- tain ash, and spliced ; the most equally balanced machine I ever handled. According to some, the best have ash for the bottom or handle- piece, hickory for the mid-joints, and lance- wood for the top, which seems to me as preposterous as Horace's ' Cervicem pictor equinam Jungere si velit, variasque inducere plumas.' And I cannot help thinking, that it is owing to this very heterogeneous alliance of woods differ- ing in calibre and grain that good implements are so seldom met with. A good cricket-bat, or billiard-cue, is not more rare than a good rod, and the best I ever had was, as I said, of ash. 46 RODS. Hazel is also excellent, and an old angling poet gives these instructions : ' Then go, and in some great Arcadian wood, Where store of ancient hazels do abound, And keep away their springs and tender brood, Such shoots as are the straightest, long, and round, And of them all cut off what you think good, And choose the fairest, smoothest, and most sound, So that they do not two years' growth exceed, In shape and beauty like the Belgian reed.' " Splicing, though somewhat troublesome in travelling, is the best mode to adopt. Such rods run no chance of snapping at the joints, or getting unbent, to which latter evil, in the most critical moment, saturation by wet, and warping in the sun, render others liable. Such are also more pliable the play more even. You may remem- ber that the masts of vessels are always spliced, and a yard that has been so, will go anywhere else. Brass binding, to groove into the joints, I utterly condemn, as affecting elasticity ; but if rods with joints be used, I should recommend the Killarney practice, of having each with a pin to slide into the ferule, and plugs of wood of similar contrivance, to fit afterwards into them, and save their being indented. But this is a long lecture : now for a throw." CHUB, NOT WORTH CATCHING. 47 " I have been used to handle a four-horse whip, but do not find this so easy." " You have too much line out. Take care you do not hook me. There, you have got your flies into a scamble. See, the fish are rising but small. I think I can reach the curl yonder. Yes, I have him ! He is not one of the Colne fish (I think I see myself throwing in a two-pounder). There, he is landed, and does not exceed half a pound a good fish for this water, but in bad condition." " I have had several rises, but they discovered the deception." " You did not check at the right moment. A very practised eye knows the exact time to do so. But I have now got a good fish. He pulls like a log, and I suspect is not a trout. I was right ; it is one of my abhorrence, a chub. It is a poor, cowardly creature, and see, he is lying on the surface, quite impassive. Hand me the net. He is at least three pounds ; but is scarcely worth carriage." As I was saying this, we were warned by a boy off the river. But it was no privation. Chub are not worth catching ; and it may be laid down as an invariable rule, that where they 48 ETYMOLOGY. abound, trout do not ; the latter are too genteel to like such society. The remainder of this day's sport is hardly worth detailing, and Julian was most occupied in watching the ephemerae, and in the way to Rhayader, which we reached at an early hour, in a pelting rain, impromptu'd the following epi- gram, to me the far most amusing thing in this blank day. Say not, their life is but a day : those hours Of love and light would count an age of ours ; From joy to joy in endless change they rove, And die in loving, as they lived on love. A piece of advice to Welsh angling tourists, not to lose their time on the Ithon, though it is a pretty classical tempting word, which Char- ters, who is a great etymologist, will have is derived from Tunnus or Thon, which, he says, was originally a generic name for fish. Credat Jud&us Apella, non ego. We had no nodes, and broke up at an early hour, Julian having first finished his ordinary quantum of claret, two bottles, which he had the precaution of getting sent on. We consoled ourselves with a humbler beverage, poncia. FOURTH DAY. The Wye. Romantic spot. A run. A sewin. Hearing of fishes. Voracity of fish. Hooking. Wariness of foxes. Samlets Dinner. From Rhayacler to Llanidloes, Saturday, 3rd June. THE scenery improves, and becomes wilder in its character. The Wye (the river KUT ^oy^iv} at this distance from the sea, is a noble stream, and deserves the distinction. How precipit- ously it rushes over its deep-worn bed in a con- VOL. i. K 50 ROMANTIC SPOT. tinuation of falls, where the finny tribe, among its rugged and uncertain bottoms, secure in their retreats, defy the net. The morning was warm and cloudy, and the water in admirable order, for scarcely any rain affects it. Yet in the first two miles we scarcely got a rise, which confirms my opinion about the shyness of fish near towns. Julian and myself soon came up to Charters, who this day did not carry the bag so fast. He was posted in a most romantic spot, at the bottom of a cascatella, of at least twenty feet, which he had reached by climb- ing over rocks that the force of torrents in some mighty inundation had thrown together in con- fused and chaotic masses. At his feet was an estuary, ending in a deep, quiet pool, a likely resting-place for a salmon. He beckoned to us to stop and watch his proceedings. He had attached a bullet to his usual quantity of shot, about two feet above the hook, and sunk it gradually in the foam. The plomb gave him a notion when it had reached the ground ; he then drew it gradually upward, the force of the cur- rent keeping the bait in full play. We soon saw he had a run, and heard him exclaim A RUN. 51 " He has darted under the projecting rock, and I shall inevitably lose him ! I might as well attempt to move the rock itself. Ah ! he has broken away, and is gone." As we were moving on we heard the whizzing of his winch, and a halloo : " I have another run ! This is a glorious fish ! Come and help me !". The bending of the rod proved his words true. " Keep him well in hand ; but if he will go down the stream, pass the rod to me from below the rocks." " I cannot stop him ; he has run out all my line; so take the rod. Quick !" " He is safe if I can get his head round against the stream. Now I have reeled up, and have line to spare and give him, if he again peremp- torily demand it." " You may be sure he will leap ; down rod, and slack line when he does." " Well done ! He is a brave fish. That leap has tired him, it is nearly over. Now guide him down the shallows, and I will jump behind him into the water. He is safely netted." " What is it ?" 52 A SEWIN. " A sewin, in fine order. He weighs at least five pounds, and for his size, is possessed of infi- nitely more strength than a salmon. I am delighted with this sport." " You are fortunate, for these fish are scarce, so far from the sea." " And now we may go." " Go ! Why ?" asked Julian ; " surely there must be many more fish in so likely a spot." " Doubtless there are ; but, after all this dis- turbance, for some time not a fish will stir." " I have ever understood that fish have no sense of hearing ; indeed, there is a vulgar pro- verb, the purport of which is, that if they pos- sessed any such sense, no man would become an angler." " I confess there is little known on this intri- cate subject, but I will inform you of the opinion of others, and afterwards give my own. The celebrated Hunter made a very elaborate exami- nation of the organs of fish in general, and his observations are worthy of great respect. He supposes that they are possessed of the perfect power of hearing, and that the organ creating that power consists of a hard substance, resem- HEARING OF FISHES. 53 bling gristle, and in some species crusted over with a thin plate of bone, that admits of no collapse, and which he denominates the ear. He gives also some experimental instance of their possession of this faculty. He describes a pond where the fish were numerous, which at the firing of a gun disappeared, burying them- selves in the mud. Lacepede observes, that the irritability of the muscles in fish is much greater than in any other animals ; and Sir Humphrey Davy says we cannot judge of the senses of animals that breathe water that separate air from water by their gills but that it seems pro- bable, as the quality of the water is connected with their life and health, that they must be exquisitely sensible to changes in the water. The reasoning is, doubtless, well founded, and rather than admit the position that fish hear- that, inhabiting an element so substantial, they should have a sense which seems alone appli- cable to a more subtle element, I would go farther, and assert, that the whole frame of the fish constitutes its ear, and deny that there is, on dissection, found any such distinct organ as an ear, although there is such a hollow bone as 54 HEARING OF FISHES. described by Hunter. Bone, too, is less sensible of sensation than muscle. The human tympa- num is a fine but tense membrane, on which the portio mollis of the eighth pair of nerves is largely distributed, and it is through the medium of this membrane that the nerve receives the vibration of the external media. Now, a bone is certainly very ill calculated to convey this vibra- tory sensation : why should we not, therefore, rather suppose, as I have done, that it acts on the whole frame ? But Anderon, in the ' Philo- sophical Researches/ has written a very elabo- rate treatise on sound with reference to water. Persons immersed in that element have certainly heard, but very indistinctly, so much so that the firing of a gun over their heads, at the depth of twelve feet, was scarcely audible, though the shaking of the banks was felt. Now, our senso- rium is very acute ; whilst fish are proved to have no organs of hearing by this simple fact, that gold-fish in a vase took no notice of a loud shout, whilst, at the slightest scraping of the glass, they exhibited great disturbance. This is to me decisive. The substantiality of the ele- ment they inhabit must necessarily render the HEARING OF FISHES. 55 smallest motion perceptible to their delicate frames, and the smallest undulation of the air be equivalent to the perception of sound by the whole body of the fish, which takes instant alarm : thus, thunder drives fish into their deep and secret holes, not because they hear, but because they feel." " I remember being on the Savoy side of the Lake of Geneva when Lac Leman was like a mirror, and the Latine sails of the barks hung idly on the yards, and were reflected from a great distance in the water (the sign of a dead calm,) when I overheard, certainly three or four miles off, on the opposite shore, the conversa- tion of a paysan and paysanne, every word of which (to our infinite amusement) was so distinct that we lost not a syllable." " This proves my position. Their voices could not penetrate the water owing to the solidity of the element, and the sound, in tra- versing the smooth surface, found no more re- sistance than it would have done from a plate of glass or a slab of marble." " I can, perhaps, throw some light on this subject of acoustics, by relating two facts that 56 HEARING OF FISHES. came under my own observation in India. When I was at Moorshedabad, the collector had a large tank full of fish, that were petted by his daughters. They had erected a bell, which when rung brought all the fish from different parts of the pool to be fed. So tame were they, that they took bread out of the hands of their young mistresses an interesting sight !" " As no animals have stronger instincts than fish, I see no reason why they should not be capable of recognizing, and perhaps attaching themselves to, those who feed them; and if so, the story told, in some Roman writer, of a lady (whose name I think was Antonia) bewailing the death of her lamprey, was not so ridiculous as Petrarch * would wish to make it out." " You perceive that bells bringing the fish may be reconciled with, and does not militate against my theory. But now, Julian, for your other fact." " In going up the Ganges, I had an opportu- nity of seeing the most singular mode of catch- ing fish ever adopted, and as it bears some * " Petrarcha de consolatione utriusque fortunae." Caput de Piscinis. E. HEARING OF FISHES. 57 relation to the subject, I will also describe it to you. During the periodical rains, the great river I mentioned overflows its banks, and causes vast inundations, so that I have been sailing for nearly a day together in a con- tinued fresh-water sea. After the floods have subsided, the smaller fish crowd up the nullas, or rivulets, formed by the draining of the land, perhaps fearful of their larger foes, or themselves in search of food. A fisherman, of an idle sort, you may think, plies his dingy, or punt, up one of these, and when it grates the sand, moors it across the stream. With a long, indented bone, somewhat resembling a call made for quail, he in great unconcern, with his ' nubble bubble,' or goorgooru, a pipe so called from the bubbling it makes in having the smoke drawn through a half-filled cocoa-nutshell, in one hand, and his musical instrument in the other, creaks along the gunnel of the boat, and awaits the arrival of the invited. Strange to say, his guests, attracted by the noise, do arrive, and finding the shallow stream obstructed by an unusual object, the boat, throw themselves over. This leap is well calculated, and would be effectual, 58 HEARING OF FISHES. but that (as I should have explained) our Hindoo has extended a net on the lee side of the boat, and against this they commonly strike, and are entangled in the meshes. By such means I saw some dozens of these little animals made cap- tives." " This would imply a very fine sense of hearing ?" " I think not. Even this slight noise caused an undulation of the air, and thence, though in a lesser rate, an undulation in the water, and would most likely have produced no effect except from contact with the water." " Lord Byron says (by the by, the idea is Madame de Stael's,) the face breathes music : why may we not, and by a less exaggerated image, suppose, that fish feel it ? Lacepede observes on the hearing of fishes : ' On ne voit ni ouverture exterieure pour 1'organe de 1'ouie, ni oreille externe, ni membrane du tym- pan, ni cavite meme du meme nom, ni passage aboutissant a 1'interieur de la bouche, ni osselets auditifs correspondans a ceux que Ton a nommes enclume, marteau, ou ctrier, ni lamacon, ni com- munication interieure, designee par la denomina- HEARING OF FISHES. 59 tion de fenetre ronde.' Without any of these organs, how imperfect must their sense of hear- ing be ; and it seems clear that the hollow bone mentioned by Hunter, cannot be an ear." " But a Frenchman has not only given them an exquisite ear, but the faculty of speech. His rea- soning is somewhat amusing from its seriousness. How do we know that a fish has not as many, or perhaps more, vocal intonations than a bird ; both seem to have been formed on the same model ; the one flies, the other swims. The sole difference is in the elements, for swimming and flying are the same thing. Why should they not talk ? It is no argument to say, that we do not hear them either speak or sing, for this, perhaps, may be the fault of our dull organs. The water is everywhere interpenetrated by air, which the fishes breathe ; why may they not, by equivalent media, form vibrations of sound, and notes, too delicate, it is true, to reach our ears, but which may make them understood one by the other ? I love at least to indulge such a notion, nor can I, without some sort of philoso- phical chagrin, figure to myself, that Nature has deprived any of her works of that perfection she 60 VORACITY OF FISH. has stamped on the rest, or that she has doomed to an eternal silence the innumerable tribes that inhabit the immense regions of the ocean and the course of rivers. ' Le silence est le partage des morts, la parole donne la vie aux vivans meme.' " " Tranquillity being now restored," said Char- ters, " I shall make another essay at the pool ; and I do not despair of hooking the same indi- vidual I lost." " Sir Humphrey Davy, I think, says, that a pricked fish will not rise again, or, at least, take the artificial fly." " But he gives an instance of a pike's voracity, by one being produced on the table, at Denham, that had carried off a short time before, the hooks and tackle of Chemicus." " He mentions no such fact regarding trout, but I can tell you one that happened to me the other day at Postlip, near Winchcomb, in Glou- cestershire, where I was indebted for a good day's sport to their liberal and hospitable pro- prietor, Mr. Tregent. I had been told there were some good fish in the milldam, and thither this gentleman and myself proceeded. Scarcely a minute elapsed ere my companion (we both used HOOKING. 61 the same bait) hooked a fish, whose strength proved, after some struggling, too much for his tackle. The gut broke some inches above the hook, and the fish was lost. In the same spot, and within a few minutes, not more than five, I found myself engaged violently, and succeeded in landing the trout. The identical hook, and tackle lost by my companion, and which he had had just time to supply, was sticking in the mouth of the animal. His weight exceeded three pounds." " It would seem, then, that the hook creates no very exquisite pain? Your story pleases me." " I conceive not. The substance of the mouth is bony, or gristly, which, from the scanty supply of nerves, for in them is the seat of all pain, cannot be susceptible of it, or, in other words, a wound in the mouth cannot exert a sympathy in the nerves of the animal, with which the part in question has a very small connexion. The tor- tuous motion of the fish on being hooked is the effect of fear, perhaps of the sense of difficulty of respiration, in the determined effort nature makes against thraldom." " It would seem, then, that the common re- 62 WARINESS OF FOXES. mark, that when a fish escapes it is useless to continue to angle in the same spot, is not borne out in fact, and that the tribe are not so wary as some four-footed animals ; in Sweden, for in- stance, if a fox escapes from a pit, none are ever taken again in the same, wily reynard having given a hint to his fraternity." " That this is not the case here, I have proved already, and shall try to exemplify the other position." Julian and myself here left him, and pursued our sport, principally confined to the taking of samlets, of which we basketed upwards of a hundred. " Do you suppose them to be really the young of the salmon ?" " There are many opinions on this subject. They are called indifferently, samlets, par, last- spring, or fingerlings, from the bluish marks on the back, as if made by the impress of the fingers. Observe their barred sides, and that the spots on the belly are very numerous and bright. The shape of the fish, too, seems to show, to my satisfaction, that it is full-grown, and inclines me to think it a mule or hybrid, though it is said to disappear with the floods ; SAMLETS. 63 from which some argue that it is carried down into the sea. That it so disappears, I have my doubts. Certain it is, that it exceeds not, in these rivers, more than a few inches in length, and like the sprat, is never found with roe. It is very delicate eating, almost as much so as the smelt, which, whether it be a genus of itself, restat in tenebris. It partakes of the flavour of the sardines in the lake of Geneva, of which I have seen hundreds taken off the wall of a ' campagne,' with the common house-flies. The natives never dress them, in consequence of their manner of feeding. These fresh-water ancho- vies are, I believe, peculiar to that lake." " But the river is become almost too shallow even to contain samlets, and behold a village, where, when Charters arrives, we will dine." " Oh ! here he comes. What bait can it be he uses ? He has taken at least twenty pounds of trout, and many eels. Does he always mean to keep his secret ?" " I am still of opinion, it will not answer for the lakes." Never was the sound of " Messrs, vous etes servis" at the Salon des Etrangers, at Paris, half so grateful as the announcement of dinner. 64 DINNER. The best definition of man, which has puzzled all philosophers, is, that he is the cooking animal. I devoutly believed it to be one of the most interesting of his characteristics, when the trout, fried and boiled, the finest I ever ate, came upon table. We made a delicious meal, and in the evening, faute de chevauv, walked to Llanydloes. SCENE ON THE WYE. OUR INN. 65 FIFTH DAY. Our inn. A Fisherman. His advice. Start for Plinlim- mon. Approach to the mountain. Oriental Hot Spring. Religious Rites. Hindu Baptism. The old Fisherman. A chalet. Its inhabitants. Our noctes. Julian. Llanydloes, Saturday evening, 3rd June. THIS little town I shall not describe. The inn, the second in the place (mern. always go to the second,) was clean and comfortable in the extreme, and the landlady civil and obliging. I have the bill : " Supper, beds, breakfast for three, 13s. ;" though, after the manner of Fal- stafFs, our sack bore a very disproportionate ratio to the carte. Our first thought on arriving (follow the habit, it is a good one) was to send for a fisher- man. Were I possessed of that essential and most useful (for it fills up) talent to a novelist, description, I would draw his portrait ; as it is, VOL. I. F 66 A FISHERMAN. you must be satisfied with a silhouette. Suffice it to say, that he had lost his left arm, and was apparently seventy years of age, rather short than tall, and answering Tacitus's description of Agricola, " calvus et gracilis senex." (A Roman emperor and a Welsh fisherman what a strange idea to come into the head !) His costume was a brown serge jacket, with large pockets, and leggings of the same material. The lines of his face expressed hard labour, and care was en- graven on his brow. He spoke English, not only without any Gallicisms, but with elegance. His easy and unembarrassed manners showed an acquaintance with the world, and the tones of his voice (there is no better criterion by which to detect vulgarity) were modulated and pleas- ing. How easy it is, by the commonest sentence that proceeds out of the mouth, to know a man of education. I entertained no doubt, and will allow you to be as sceptical as you choose, that the blood of the Cadwalladers ran in his veins, or perhaps, like Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, that he could trace his pedigree from Gomer, one of the sons of Noah, I believe " 'Twas quickly seen, Whatever he was 'twas not what he had been. HIS ADVICE. 67 He told us that he had been fishing all day in the Severn, and that it was (as I verily believe it to be) a very indifferent river (strange that he should be so candid!): he advised us not to waste our time in tracing its course, and ended by complaining of a new weir of Lord - 's, that effectually prevented the salmon, once abundant as high as Llanydloes, from making their way to the spawning grounds. We asked to see his flies. They were well made, and I bought of him two dozen, at a reasonable rate : no common occurrence, for at Rayader we were asked sixpence apiece for sal- mon-flies, which were uni-coloured, plain-look- ing things, mostly of the grouse hackle. Our piscator recommended our proceeding straight to the Begalen pool ; declined dining at our expense; and wishing us sport, left us. I should, had he been an Italian, have left him with an " a rivederlo" Llanydloes, Sunday, 4th. " Dies non" as the lawyer says, and as Julian, one of the " nefasti"* (unbelieving Hindu.) Not being one of the " metuentes Sabbata" I went to church, and said to Charters, " Lay up for your- F2 68 START FOR PLINLTMMON. self riches in heaven." The profane fellow re- peated the word " riches," and said " Ay, as Byron wanted Greenfield to do, when, in Harrow church-yard, he altered the inscription on his tombstone, adding a b before, and altering the i to a double ee" But Byron's was a crib from not only divine, but Dean, Swift, who derived the word from ' bear riches,' an etymology quite as good as any of Charters's. Machynlleth, Monday 5th. We had intended hiring ponies, or a gig, to ascend the Plinlimmon, but, the post-master be- ing the only person who had licensed horses, we were eventually, and a contre cceur, obliged to go post. It was ten o'clock when we started. The road lies over a series of barren downs, unrelieved by almost a single tree. The only objects that broke the dreary uniformity, or de- formity of this scene, were occasional patches of * " Pudenda et miserabilis oratio," as Suetonius says. I beg the reader to remember that " non meus hie sermo est," and, as a moralist, I cannot but strongly disapprove of this flippancy, and would, certainly, out of the profits of these volumes apply some part in masses for his povera n Hi inn. had I, with " The Irishman in Search of a Religion," any faith in the comfortable doctrine of their efficacy. E. APPROACH TO THE MOUNTAIN. 6'9 corn, stunted and small-eared, sparingly scat- tered here and there over the adjacent bottoms. The ascent begins at the fifth mile, and a pre- cipitous one for a carriage, it was, for three more. When at the top of the hill we had an uninter- rupted view of the country round, a dismal waste of bleak hills and dales. The boy at last stopped before a wretched hovel, where, making acquaintance with the tenant, a sturdy farmer, he was easily persuaded to serve as a guide to the pool, which he made out to be three miles or so ; his " so" being twice or three times the dis- tance of the miles. A Cicero, as they say at Rome, is indispensable ; seeing there is no track, and a succession of moors, covered with whin- berry bushes, to be traversed, which, he told us, contained grouse. A more uninteresting desert cannot be conceived. " After a laborious walk of two hours and a half, we came in sight of Plinlimmon, which is only deserving to be celebrated as the birth-place of four rivers, namely, the Llyffant, that joins the Dovey near Machynlleth ; the Rhydal, that falls into the sea at Aberystwith ; our old friend, the Wye ; and last, yet chief, the Severn. This noble river rises from a small spring on the 70 ORIENTAL HOT SPRING. south-east side of the mountain ; so small, in- deed, is its source, that a child might stride over it. The water is of a red colour, and brackish, denoting the presence of some mineral. We asked Julian if he had seen any of the springs of Indian rivers, or other springs there, and, to while away the tedium of this march, he gave us the following account of a very singular cfrie, that is tributary to the Ganges. " A little below Monghir, at the foot of the Rajhmal Hills, is a place called Seetacomb, where there is a hot spring, that, in the quality of the water it momently throws up, and its crystalline purity, is, I believe, unrivalled. The water, however, has the singular property of being hot eight months in the year, and, during the four hottest months, of being cold. It has no other sensible quality than its heat, which may be 150 Fahrenheit." " This at least can contain no fish ? But go on." " It is, as I said, beautifully transparent, and, in taste, is not to be surpassed by the purest spring-water ; indeed, it is considered as superior even to that of the Ganges, which is held in such estimation that some of our officers, even in RELIGIOUS RITES. 71 camp, used to drink no other, at no small ex- pense, you may suppose. But this is in such request that even at Calcutta some rich natives send from time to time for a supply, and all travellers lay in a provision of it. Upon inquiry at Monghir, we learned that sulphur, though not in the immediate neighbourhood, is found at the distance of a day's journey, yet it has not the slightest appearance of foreign impregnation. During the four months when it is cool, it be- comes troubled, stagnant, green, and full of unclean animals; but no sooner does the rainy season commence, than it begins to bubble up, purify, and become hot, as we saw it. Being an object of veneration to the natives, who make pilgrimages to it from all parts of India, it is a source of considerable emolument to the Brah- mans, who give instructions as to the ceremonies to be performed, and repeat certain Sanscrit prayers, for which they receive a sum propor- tioned to the means of the neophyte. While we were there we saw a few of the rites gone through by the Hindus belonging to our fleet. These mysteries were paid at a colder fountain by the side of the hot one. The devotees ap- proached the officiating priest with the most 72 HINDU BAPTISM. reverential awe, and stood before the holy ( padre' with a little of the water in their hands, whilst he ran over a benedicite. He then taught them in what manner, and how often they should pour the libations, and having placed a ring of some shrub on one of their ringers, the ceremony was concluded by the votary plunging over head and ears in the fountain, and each putting a piece of money in the Brahman's hand, took his departure." " And how can you, who are more than half a Hindu, reconcile such mummeries with reli- gion?" " All religions have their mummeries, and the ignorant and unenlightened, who can form no metaphysical notion of the attributes of a God, must have some type of his goodness or power, by which to be taught to acknowledge Him. The true Brahman is like the philosophers of old : but, not to enter into this subject, the my- thological worship of Greece and Rome, that of the saints and relics of the Romish Church, and the adoration of the Virgin, are not more ridi- culous than this baptism and regeneration of the poor Hindus, which they perform in honour of one of their Nine Incarnations." THE BEGALEN POOL. 73 This subject was inexhaustible, and we had reached the Begalen pool. It is of an irregular form, shut in on all sides by drear hills and crags, and may be a mile and a half, or two miles in circumference. The bottom is covered in many parts with weeds, and it is very shallow ; the water of a pitchy blackness, from the peaty bed in which it lies, and islanded here and there by masses of rock. 74 THE OLD FISHERMAN. Leaving Charters to his accustomed solitary, monotonous bait, Julian and myself pursued the winding shore ; and making a sharp turn round an almost isolated crag, discovered the old fisher- man from Llanydloes. He was standing on a loose fragment of rock, and so much engaged in thought, or in his pursuit, that he did not perceive us till we were within a few yards of him. He was whipping away ; his line falling to the full extent unreeled, straight as an arrow, and mak- ing no more effect on the water than some rain- drops. 1 accosted him with the ordinary saluta- tion of " What sport, old soldier ?" and when he opened his basket I perceived in it twenty or thirty trout, none exceeding half a pound. " You call me old soldier, but I never served in the army. I lost my arm," and here he held out the stump, " on board a ship. I had struck a dolphin with the grains, and previously wound the rope that is always attached to the harpoon, round my arm ; the consequence was, that I could not disengage my wrist, and it was so much mutilated that I, was forced to have it am- putated immediately. I took a turn round the jib-boom the next time I threw off the bows." " The loss of one arm," observed Julian, THE OLD FISHERMAN. 75 " seems to have imparted additional vigour to the other, as we see happen to a branch of a tree when the neighbouring one has been lopped. I should like to throw like you. What may you get a pound for these fish ?" " They are much esteemed in the valley, more so than the Severn trout, because they cut red, which is owing to the quality of their food, the leeches, that are abundant here ; but they are so delicate that they will not keep, and must be eaten the day they are killed. It is time, therefore, for me to make the best of my way to Machynlleth ; and you, gentlemen, the rain has begun," looking up ; " we shall have more of it, for I see a dark cloud gathering in that part of the heavens." " Perhaps you are a native of that place ?" '* No," he replied, with a sigh ; " I have not seen my native village for many years. I shall never see it more. Never return to it in conse- quence of- - no matter. I am a wanderer, and my pilgrimage will be soon over. I am now on my way to the Bala lake." Knowing the attachment the Welsh, like all mountaineers, have to the spots of their nativity, I was curious to hear something of his history, 76 A CHALET. and said " We are also going to the northern lakes, and perhaps you will bear us company ? We shall be glad also to profit by your expe- rience and knowledge of angling in this country." After a pause (which betrayed indecision or absence of mind), he agreed to the proposition ; and we had hardly thrown twice, during which I took a fish of a pound weight, when the rain came down like a water-spout, and, to add to our mortification, not a breath of air stirred the pool. We bided the pelting of the pitiless storm for some time, and without a dry thread, were at last driven for shelter into a hut, which (except a deserted fishing-box, belonging to Colonel Evans,) was the only one on the moun- tain, where we found Charters, who had not had a single run. The interior of the chalet did not belie the wretchedness of the outward appearance. It consisted of only one room, without windows. The doors were of such rough carpentry that the wind passed through them, above and below, at will. They possessed, however, the advan- tage of giving admission, through the crannies, to the light, that also came in a flood down the huge chimney. Within, huddled together round ITS INHABITANTS. 77 a miserable turf fire, was assembled a family party, consisting of three generations ; the last a numerous one ; the floor, filthy as that of an Irish cabin, was half paved with loose flags, and here and there full of puddles, and the mud walls ran down with damp, against which stood in rows, several truckle-beds without curtains. How human beings could subsist in such a den was my astonishment^ but it was greater still when I observed the cheerful and contented countenances that encircled the fireside : the children, who slunk into a corner, scared by the appearance of strangers, to finish their mess of llaethewyn (buttermilk), or mwdran (flummery), showed in their ruddy cheeks rude and vigorous health, and one of the boys might have sate to a sculptor as the model for an infant Hercules. A very pretty, rosy-cheeked, black-eyed daugh- ter, of seventeen or eighteen, through the dense smoke that pervaded the apartment (as if to exemplify the fact that no seclusion from the world, or state of poverty, however abject, is capable of repressing the ruling passion which governs all female minds, viz. that of dress), was on her knees hard at work, on a bench in the corner, at what is called getting up frills, of 78 OUR NOCTES. which, no doubt, she was not a little vain ; for the Welsh peasant girls pay more attention to their heads than their heels, and although you see many without shoes, you will rarely find one who has not a neatly plaited cap under her round beaver hat. It was perceived at a glance that we were not likely to be relieved from any of the incon- veniences of wet, cold, and weariness there, and learning that they could give us nothing to eat but potatoes and oaten-bread, or to drink, than milk, a consultation was held, and it was voted that we should proceed to Machynlleth, nine miles distant. One comfort was, that we had to descend the whole way, which was accom- plished with much greater ease than had been expected ; and having changed our dripping clothes over a good fire, and with an excellent supper, we soon forgot, like mariners after a storm, the fatigues of the day. * * * * Going to bed. Charters begins to be disgusted (I think) with his patent bait, and talked of nothing at our nodes but the stupid and bad taste of the trout in the Begalen pool. I have no curiosity to JULIAN. 79 know what it is, but Julian, who whipped off two dozen flies, and whom it was dangerous to come near, for fear of being hooked, is dying to know the secret. He had quite enough to do yesterday and to-day with disentangling his end, that, like the Gordian-knot, he served half a dozen times as did Alexander cut it. Why, one might have heard it crack half a mile off; truly, his line was a regular four-horse whip; he has made, too, a dozen bawks in it, that have taken, to its no small detriment, half an hour to unknot. In the lakes he may do better, for he can throw a shorter line, which I can- not persuade him to do. He begins to tire of angling, and daily threatens to be off. His Trichinopolies will not last long if he goes on at the rate of half a bundle a night. All his camel trunks, that he calls " bowlies," are arrived. SIXTH DAY. Birdlime. Romantic town. Dragging for Salmon. Re- sorts of Trout. Hooking a Trout. Water-proof boots. Precautions. Wading. Size of Fish. A glorious Pool Enormous Eel. Eels. Their migration Food of Eels. Propagation. Variety of Eels. Adders. A strange Supper. Stewed Cat. Anecdote. Machynlleth, Tuesday, 6th June, daybreak. WE found Charters up, and drying before the fire some red birdlime (consistent stuff) in a tin bait-box. He has at last shown it to us. What do you think it is ? Salmon paste, or roe, pre- pared at Liverpool, and costs him, carriage and all, twelve shillings a pound. Walton, I am ROMANTIC TOWN. 81 told, speaks of it, and Daniell, the sporting parson, taking his account from " Barker's Art of Angling," a scarce old book. In a generous fit, Salmonius, as we mean to call him, (query, what sort of a word salmonia is : should it not have an ana tacked to it ?) has given some to Julian, who means to leave behind him his flying machinery. We shall now see if my words do not come true, that any bungler may succeed in trolling, or rather, in sinking and drawing. Julian is in high spirits, for he has hardly taken a fish above three ounces yet. Charters has had a consultation with old Humphrey, and is off to try a tributary stream to the Dovey, called the Divlas. He finds large waters won't do. We are under weigh too. * # * * We passed through the single street of this somewhat regularly built town. It is romanti- cally backed by broken and abrupt rocks, pic- turesque in their outline, and as beautifully varied in their tints as the old buildings in a Canaletti. We soon came in sight of the Dovey, and observed before us two men carrying a net, and coracles strapped on their shoulders. The word coracle, or coriacle, is derived from coria, a VOL. i. o 82 DRAGGING FOR SALMON. skin, and seems to prove the invention to belong to the time of the Romans. These skiffs are four feet wide, and two over the head ; the shells, formed of wicker basket-work, and covered with flannel, the principal manufacture in this part of the country, or with coarse cloth, pitched or tarred. We stood on the bridge for some time to see the operations. They were about to drag for salmon ; and it must have been difficult to preserve the balance in such frail and fragile machines. The net was attached to the two boats, and connected them. When all was clear, the fishermen made with their paddles a consi- derable circle, and then reunited, drawing in cautiously the sweep. They seemed very dex- terous in the management of their canoes, and perfectly unconscious of danger. Danger there must be, for the upsetting of one would inevit- ably involve the safety of the other, if not the lives of both, by entanglement in the meshes. A salmon of ten or twelve pounds weight leaped over the corks, but the first essay was a failure. " This is a most destructive practice," I ob- served, " and if permitted, care should be taken that the laws regarding salmon-fisheries are well enforced. The size of the meshes, as in France, RESORTS OF TROUT. 83 should be looked to, and netting at the spawn- ing season strictly prohibited. I was some years ago at Caermarthen, the latter end of October, when the fish are crimson, flabby, and full of ova, and saw the coraclers from the public walk, sweeping the Towey, and their prey afterwards openly sold in the market. I am told, that Sir Watkin, to whom the greater part of this fine valley belongs, will not permit them to ply above the bridge, and has keepers to protect the river, so that it may be said to be preserved. Com- mencons ! Courage ! Julian." " I see a large trout lying under this arch ; he seems asleep." " The arches of bridges are favourite resorts of trout. You will observe them motionless (as yon hawk suspended in his atmosphere) for hours ; but they are so shy, and glutted with food, that it is difficult to waken their attention. I have at Geneva and Zurich seen large ones, similarly posted, tempted with a great variety of baits, but in vain ; among which, however, was not the salmon-paste. Its grape-like crimson globules may attract him. Let us go below, for here you cannot get the lure near him, though the eyes of fish are, in my opinion, G 2 84 HOOKING A TROUT. not so indistinct of vision, as some suppose ; but even were we to hook him here, he must inevitably break away, even from this gut, which, though single, is as strong and stout as a fiddle-string. A lions ! Essayom nous." " The water is deep, and the current rapid, so that the bullet will be required a la Charters." " Your first cast was too near the buttress of the bridge. Try again." " Yes. I have him ! He is off on the other side the bridge, and is running out all my line* He is as strong as an otter." " You have turned him. Keep his head straight, the curb tightly drawn, and guide him in true dragoon style, through the arch. See, he is quite exhausted. v Now I '11 net him. He is a finely fed fish of at least three pounds weight, though we have no Mrs. B in our train with her scales to weigh him. Fancy weighing every fish as it is caught ! What will Salmonius say, now ?" " We have begun the day well ; and now what think you of the paste ?" " What I ever did ; that it is an unworthy contrivance, and that I will never condescend to use it. Besides, it is a pity and a shame to WATER-PROOF BOOTS. 85 adopt it, as it cannot be procured without de- stroying thousands of salmon. I do not deny that it is a clean bait, and a murderous one, especially in small rivers, and confined rapids, such as this ; and now that the river fly-fishing is nearly over ; but no salmon will be ever taken with it, though Walton does talk of old Henley's doing so with some scented stuff. For my part, I shall be sufficiently amused, though I should have little sport, in tracing this noble river in its course up the valley. It will be necessary, friend, to wade to-day " " These boots I bought at Kington, will at least keep out the water. They are of double leather, the soles half an inch thick, and I have had them besmeared with a newly-discovered preparation, or water-proof receipt, taken from a book ; it is wax and caoutchouk, even quantities, melted together, and a single dressing answers, it says, the purpose." " You will find your specific fail. All I have ever tried have done so. I once ordered a pair of shooting-boots similar to some I saw in a window, floating in a vase of water. It is true, they expelled the wet, but they also excluded the air ; were air-tight ; and the consequence 86 PRECAUTIONS. was, that my feet were always in a cold bath ; and I soon discarded them, when I heard that a friend of mine had lost his life by adopting such a contrivance. The best plan is, for those afraid of their heads, to do as I saw practised at Ge- neva, in the Rhone ; have a pair of boots similar to those still worn occasionally by the French postilions, that come half way up the thighs, carried by your servant or guide, and when fording or wading, draw them over your leg- gings." " As Mrs. Rundell says, you must first catch your fish, i. e. first have your servant to take with you. Fine lumber, to carry about, would be these wooden overalls !" " True. I despise such effeminacies, and wear strong high-lows, that lace ; shorts, long gaiters, and Welsh stockings, which may be easily taken off, and pocketed before, and re- placed after wading. I never, also, as you know, go out without a short Mackintosh cape in my jacket pocket, to protect my shoulders in case of rain." " For my part I have a hydrophobia : you will scarcely get me to wet my feet." " You a soldier, and afraid of wet ! You WADING. 87 remind me of the Longchamps at Paris, where a Frenchman rode about on a fine sunshiny day holding an umbrella over his head in ridicule of this lady-like custom of our compatriots, and to the great amusement, at our expense, of his own. Wet your feet ! why, what is to be done in this Dovey without wading ? the river winds so much, and the wind is so strong, that, without frequent crossing, it is impossible to get a fly properly into the water, and one must throw it as light as the thistle-down, or nothing is to be done here ; even now it requires a good hand not to whip off the stretcher. But take my advice, and always wet your feet early in the day, before you become heated by exercise. When the water is warm there is no danger, though Sir Humphrey Davy talks of palsy and rheumatism. I have waded all my life, nor ever experienced myself, nor ever knew any one who had experienced, any ill effects from it. Fisher- men by trade live to a great age. When I was on the lake of Como, two pescatori passed us in a boat, father and son, one a hundred and seven, and the other seventy-six. I was some years ago at Stroud, and saw two workmen in a dyeing factory, whose feet were contin- 88 WADING. ually wet, and they were both hale men, and above sixty." " There is an article, I think, in Blackwood, on the subject. The opinion of that writer is decidedly against you. But I shall try this rapid at least four feet deep." " If you do, I hold it impossible to troll suc- cessfully without immersion. You cannot other- wise command the mid current ; at least to spin a minnow naturally, would be impossible. I some years ago had an equal horror of the water, but was cured by seeing my tutor in the art, whilst I stood shivering (as we see boys do, afraid to take a plunge in a cold bath) on the bank, take, in one rapid, with his minnows, or samlets, I forget which, three trout, one weigh- ing three pounds and a half, the maximum of size, perhaps, in any of the Welsh rivers, at least, I have never seen one exceed that weight. We hear, indeed, of fish of five or more pounds, but I look upon such relations as mere hear- says." " You may well treat such with suspicion ; for my part I am sadly disappointed. How do you account for their being so much smaller than in England ?" SIZE OF FISH. 89 " You know what Sir Humphrey Davy says of the Teme and Colne, at Denham and Downton. The Hampshire rivers produce fish of ten and more pounds. This is owing to the superior quantity and quality of the food, no less than the soil. The flies in Wales are smaller, and of less variety, and the beds of the rivers are almost all gravelly, or rocky, besides being overstocked. The mountains, lakes, rivers, and forests of Asia and America are commensurate with the size of their continents. A similar remark (with cer- tain reservations) may be made with regard to fish. The pike in the Swiss lakes grow to an enormous size, particularly in that of Geneva, which is thirty-six miles in length ; and the trout fed by the waters of, what Voltaire calls, ' Le Lac,' par excellence, far exceed in weight any known in any other country. Thus, the salmon in Wales are proportioned to the size of the waters into which they migrate, few surpassing twelve pounds, whilst those of the Shannon, the Boyne, the Ballyshannon, and the Barrow, (about whose respective merits, flavour, and the quantity of their curd, the Irish contend, as the Greeks did about the birth-place of Homer,) and some of the Scotch rivers and lakes, arrive 90 A GLORIOUS POOL. at fifty pounds, and more. But I am taking nothing. I fear the stream has been whipped already this morning, the fish are so shy. I am right, for I perceive two persons lashing the water a mile a-head." " Look, there is a glorious pool ! and the water, from the intensity of its blue, must be very deep. I wish I could get at the opposite shore, where the beech-trees overhang the stream, throwing it into deep shade ; there, where the current sets and eddies." " You will find a ford a little higher up, if I mistake not ; there, where the cows are. Good ! I see I have made you a convert." ENORMOUS EEL. 91 " A run ! a run ! I have a monster now. He has reeled out two-thirds of my line, and seems as fresh as ever. I cannot get a view of him. It must be a salmon. Come over, and help me to land him." " No ; he is not quick enough in his motions for a salmon. Do not let him get among the stumps of the trees. You have turned him- reel up." " This multiplier winch is now useful. Ha ! I have raised him ! It is no salmon ; you are right ; but an enormous eel ! Pshaw ! I never was more annoyed !" " Keep a tight hand on him, and he must come on shore, nolens volens ! There, he is working his way as naturally over the stones as if the land was his element. He must weigh at least four pounds." " He is as dark almost as a Conger eel, and cannot have been, by his colour, long from the sea." " Perhaps only a few days. The tide comes up within three or four miles of Machynlleth, and he has got his marine appetite. Charters told you this morning that the salmon-paste is the most irresistible of lures for eels, and has 92 EELS. an ingenious theory, that their main object in pushing up rivers is to devour the spawn. Cer- tain it is, that whilst the sun is shining out so hot, he would not have left his retreat under yon bank, but for the attractive smell and crim- son colour of the lure. You may remember the surprise of the fishermen at the village where we dined, when Charters opened his basket and produced several eels of two or three pounds, and they declared they had never seen an eel taken before in the day-time, out of the Wye." " Can you tell me anything about the natural history of these ugly brutes, that Count Lace- pede is in such raptures with, calling them all elegance, grace, and beauty ? He commences a chapter on that slimy monster with the follow- ing list of its properties ; one would think he was describing his mistress : ' Elle est offerte, cette image gracieuse, et a 1'enfance folatre, que la variete des evolutions amuse, et a la vive jeunesse, que la rapidite des mouvements en- flamme, et a la beaute, que la grace, la sou- plesse, et la gaiete interessent et seduisent, et a la sensibilite, que les affections douces et con- stantes touchent si profondement, et a la philo- THEIR MIGRATION. 93 sophie meme, qui se plait a contempler et le principe et 1'effet d'un instinct superieur.' " " It is singular that so little should be known about it. All I have read throws little light on the subject. Sir Humphrey Davy confesses, after a long commentary on the observations of others, all he knows is, that he knows nothing, leaving the question precisely where he found it. The reason of the migration of eels is certainly a great problem. If they are hermaphrodites, they do not push up the rivers for the purpose of perpetuating their species, like the salmo tribes, whose eggs, according to the doctrine laid down in ' Salmonia/ cannot develope young fishes independent of the influence of the air without aerated water. That they do push up the rivers we know ; and analogy would lead us to suppose that they are also oviparous, were it not that they are met with only a few days old in numerous shoals, in the Atlantic. I have seen them in myriads making their way over perpen- dicular rocks, that compose the sides of water- falls, in effecting which in the river Teme, buckets' full, not much larger than lob-worms, were secured by a boy. Thus, the probability 94 FOOD OF EELS. is, that they are viviparous, and that the deli- cacy of their skins rendering them very sensible of changes in the temperature, they, like birds of passage, make for the springs in the summer, that they may enjoy a cooler atmosphere, and on the approach of winter return to the sea, or descend to the deeper and more still and muddy parts of rivers, and hide themselves there, or under banks, and stones, where they lie in a dormant state ; for that they do not all, like woodcocks, make an annual migration, is proved by their being seen occasionally at all seasons. Their food is the carrion, as they are the vul- tures of fish ; but Charters's idea is somewhat confirmed by the experience of to-day, that they are ravenously fond of, and well acquainted with the taste of salmon spawn, and must be very destructive to that daily decreasing species, and will tend ultimately to exterminate it, if means are not taken to thin them. Here they are quite unmolested, for the poorest peasant in the country (the same prejudice exists in Ireland), if almost starving, would loath llyswonad (eels), highly as we esteem them, particularly when they attach themselves to such clear streams as these ; nor will any Welsh cook willingly touch PROPAGATION. 95 them, looking upon them with an equal horror to snakes and adders." " Is there no perceptible diversity of sex observable in these reptiles, as in snakes and adders ? My f bearers' killed in my compound (a corruption of the French word campagne) two cobras. Examination clearly distinguished the female from the male, by the narrowness and flatness of the tail. You know it has been found that all the venomous are viviparous, all the innocuous genera the contrary, would not this, by analogy, militate against the argument you held just now, or at least, be a strong pre- sumption in favour of the opinion of their oviparousness ?" " No perceptible generative organs have been as yet discovered, though they must exist, unless we conceive, like the water-snakes in the ' An- cient Mariner,' they are generated by the state of the water itself, or as the vermicular monsters exhibited in the hydro-oxygen microscope." " The ancients certainly thought them not hermaphrodites, and were of opinion too, that the water-snake, and lamprey, coupled toge- ther ; and Orestes, in the ' Choeforac,' calls his mother a murenophis, i. e. having been so 96 VARIETY OF EELS. unnatural as to pair, or cohabit with ^Egysthus. There is a passage in Marcellus that thus de- scribes, and throws light on that remarkable simile, and chimes in with my notion. 4 Qualem murenae coluber stimulatus amore, Gaudia conjugii metuens temerare veneno, Effundit summo in scopulo, effusumque reponit Cautibus in rigidis, mox saltu precipitem se Dejicit in medias sinuosi flurainis undas, Sibilaque ingeminans, charam vestigat amicam : Ilia, sono audito, confestim occurrit amanti, Multiplicique ambo conjungunt corpora nexu.' " Fabulae ! fabulse ! Certainly, there are many different kinds of eels ; and this of yours differs essentially from the Thames eels, but still more from those of Loch Ern, that are of so vast a size that the fishermen hang their skins up to dry, and make leggings of them impervious to the water. Still more unlike are they to the pond eels, that have no communication with any stream or rivulet, much less the sea." " Their migration, then, is not necessary for their propagation ?" " Certainly not ; they get acclimate, like other animals or plants, though they do originate in the sea, the proof of which is found in the Wenen lake, in Sweden, where eels have, within ADDERS. 97 a few years, made their appearance since the opening of a canal that communicates imme- diately with the sea, some unscaleable cataracts in the river Gota having previously impeded their progress, and yet they find their way into the lake of Constance, and must have ascended the falls of Schaffhausen." " I was speaking of adders some time back : do you consider them of one genus T " A Hampshire acquaintance of mine made a collection of adders from the New Forest, with which it abounds, and put them into a cage, with wires so narrow that they could not work their flexible bodies through it. He there pri- soned four different kinds ; a black, a pink, a tortoiseshell, and a grey, and made many experi- ments on their venom, which, by trying its effect on animals of one species at different times, he found to possess different degrees of virulence. The animals he chose were cocks. Fowls are known to be cold-blooded, and therefore best fitted for such an experiment. One died soon after it was bitten by the black ; another lay in a state of torpor, after being exposed to the teeth of the other three ; but I forget which he said was the least noxious. He once forgot to feed VOL. I. II 98 A STRANGE SUPPER. these extraordinary pets for some weeks, but, on examining the cage minutely, discovered a part of the tail of the grey adder, evidently proving it had been devoured by the rest." " Your story reminds me of Ceylon, where a medical gentleman confined in like manner a number of scorpions, which fought most despe- rately, till the weaker were all victims to the stronger ; and at last only one remained behind, with the trophies of his victory, the claws and shelly parts strewed around him. How do you know that eels, like them, and adders, do not feed on their own species ?"* " I have never known or heard of their taking such a bait. But, speaking of adders reminds me of Mola di Gaeta, and the strange supper we had there, which the beauty of the place hardly compensated for, to my companion. I have before me still the orange groves, that slope down to the bay, and remember the deli- cious odour of the bloom when I opened the windows in the morning. But our fare. At * I saw a pike taken in Gloucestershire by trolling, of eighteen pounds, that had one of four pounds undigested in its stomach, and that fish another in his, of one pound, so that three fish were taken by the same bait. E. STEWED CAT. 99 the Cena my friend fed heartily on the dish, which passed for ' anguille fritted What do you think it was ? Fried adders. I knew the mountains of the Abruzzi abounded with them, and did not like the black look of the reptile brood ; their headlessness roused my suspicion, but I said nothing till the half-empty piatta was removed; when out came the murder, for the ' Giovinetto,' as they call in Italy a waiter of sixty (like the boy in Ireland), could not deny the loathsome fact. I have been shy abroad of nondescript dishes ever since I disco- vered I had devoured for a hare the best part of a stewed chat at Geneva. When last at that thistly-looking place, I was sensibly struck with the diminution of the numbers of the feline tribe, that used to keep me awake, some years before, with their amatory serenades." " Your friend's qualms recall an anecdote told me at Cheltenham the other day, of little Moore, who is known to be the greatest epicure, as he has always been the greatest tuft-hunter going, as Byron used to say. A friend and himself made an excursion to Greenwich to eat white bait, which, I am told, is as fine as the Mango fish at Calcutta, or Pomfret at Madras. H 2 100 ANECDOTE. This friend was no other than Lord Strangford, who, determined to hoax his brother bard (quelle malice ! as you say), had bought, before he left town, a small-tooth horn comb, which, when the soup was served, he dropped secretly into the tureen. Moore found the contents deli- cious, and was overpersuaded by his titled bon vivant (though, according to the immortal Brum- mel, it is highly incorrect) to be helped a second time to soup ; when what should be ladled out into his plate, but the damning evidence of the cook's cleanliness? Tommy's fertile imagina- tion peopled it with a hundred hairs. The story goes to say, he ate no white bait that day." " But what has all this to do with angling ? A tremendous storm is brewing from the south- west; and we have got fish enough for our dinner. Let us see if we can get it dressed in the manner of white bait, at that village, which, by the map, should be Llanwin. ' You have no need to say, bon appetit.' " DEJEUNER. 101 SEVENTH DAY. Dejeuner. A Bull. Narrow escape. Boar-hunt in India. Henry's death. The banks of the Dovey, afternoon. " WELL, we have made an excellent dejeuner & la fourchette, or, as you would say, tiffin. The trout had none of the muddiness of our English trout, and were firm enough without our having resort to crimping, that most execrable and barbarous custom, which Sir Humphrey Davy dwells on in every chapter with as much com- placency as a boy spins a cockchafer, or as a lady of my acquaintance impales a worm." " Let us hunt the waterfalls higher up. What delightful meadows ! What a lovely valley ! It grows wider and more open ; and there is not a part of the river where the fly cannot be thrown. This scene would be a fine study for Bcrghem, 102 A BULL. that group of black cattle making one of those foregrounds he delighted in. Do you see the lord and master of the seraglio ?" " And hear him too. He does not approve of our approach, and deems it an intrusion on his ' zenanah,' and, like the Shah of Persia, would willingly make it death to come near or look upon his harem. I do not much like his sup- pressed and sullen roar. " It increases in its diapason ! See how he lashes his sides with his tail, as if it were a thong to goad him into ferocity ! He has left the herd, and is moving slowly along the water's edge towards us ! And now he stops, and bel- lows, as though he thought to intimidate us, and lowers his dewlapped neck to the ground, and shakes his horned head, as if in preparation for butting. When he comes up close, as he will do, get ready some of those large stones to pelt him with." " The water is here too deep to be fordable, if we wished to cross. But I shall not stir, for the appearance of this rapid pleases me, and I have just had a rise. Look out ! Here he comes !" " When he finds us resolute, and feels a stone NARROW ESCAPE. 103 or two rattling against his old horns, he will turn back, but, if he perceives in us any symp- toms of alarm, he will assuredly gore us." " There, that stone has struck him on the head, and he has sulkily turned up the bank, where he stands and watches us, with a red and gloomy eye, and an inward disappointed moan." " I will tell you a narrow escape I had some years ago in Tuscany. R and myself having heard of a flight of cocks, had gone down into the Maremma to shoot. You have heard of the Maremma. It possesses an almost interminable extent of morasses, ' overgrown with long, rank grasses,' and hillocks, as Shel- ley beautifully describes, ' heaped with moss- enwoven turf/ a wilderness of putridity and desolation. It was the month of November, before which time it is dangerous to set foot there, for, till the first frosts, even many of the fever-stricken serfs forsake it. In the eagerness of sport we had been led farther than we calcu- lated from our albergo, a solitary, wretched hovel, bordering on the marsh, the abode of the most ghostly, yellow, emaciated objects in human form I ever beheld, except some of the 104 NARROW ESCAPE. cayenne'd, curry-dried, liver-worn Anglo-East- Indians we left at Cheltenham. The sun was fast setting, and we had still two miles to make, and were coasting along the edge of a knoll, thickly set with huge and speckled aloes, inter- mingled here and there with stunted ilexes, and chesnuts, and with the strawberry-tree, then bright with its globes of deep red gold, when methought I heard a rustling among the branches, and a sound like that of the grinding of teeth. I noticed it to my companion. He suddenly turned ashy pale, and whispered hys- terically, * We are near a herd of swine !' " Vast numbers, I should have told you, are turned out in the fall of the leaf, to fatten here, and become so savage and wild, that none but their keepers dare approach them, and, cased as they are in an almost impenetrable mail of leather, even they sometimes fall victims to the ferocity of these brutes. " ' It is well for us/ continued my friend, 'that there is a hut within a few hundred yards. Let us lose no time in making for it.' As he spake, the sounds became louder, and I saw some hun- dred hogs emerging on all sides from the brush- wood, grunting fiercely, and gnashing their teeth NARROW ESCAPE. 105 in unison. They were huge, gaunt, long-legged, long-headed, and long-backed creatures, giants of their species spectral monsters, more like starved blood-hounds than swine." " Ha ! ha ! ha ! Why, you have been draw- ing a picture of Russian wolves ; a whole pack of them could not have frightened you more !" " Nor would they have been so formidable, laugh as you may. They now mustered their forces in battle array, outside the thicket, and commenced the attack in a systematic and regu- larly concerted manner, the veterans of the herd directing the movements of the hostile band, and one, by a deeper grunt, not ill resembling the word of command of a certain General, a de grege parcus of our acquaintance, giving dreadful notes of preparation, as if to spirit on the line to a charge." " Ridiculous ! Run away, indeed, from tame hogs ! why, I have charged a wild boar in India whilst he was whetting his tusks, which were heard a mile, and jabbed him too, with a con- sciousness that on this unerring hand depended my life or death but these pshaw!" " You shall hear. The danger was to us more imminent ; for you had only a single 106 NARROW ESCAPE. enemy to deal with. We made our way with difficulty through the rotten and yielding mo- rass, leaping from tuft to tuft, and risking, by a false slip, to plunge into a bottomless abyss, whilst our blood-thirsty pursuers, with their long legs and lanky sides, and tucked-up bellies, advanced, a fearful phalanx, in semilunar curve, momently gaining ground ! My friend, who was more accustomed to the bogs than myself, soon outstripped me, not daring to look behind. Once, and once only, did I, and beheld them coming on like a pack of hounds in full cry, and with the scent breast-high, and, to my horror, perceived the two horns, or wings, of the troop, making an echellon mouvement in an ever-narrow- ing circle, like a regiment of cavalry bringing their right and left shoulders forward, to out- flank, and then enclose us. I dared not risk a second glance at my foes, but the hoarse voices of the ringleaders ran through the ranks, and I heard and saw the plash of their many feet, as they turned up the mud but a few yards in my rear. " How I reached the hut I know not, but reach it I did, when I found my friend leaning against the wall, breathless with terror. The shed was rudely constructed of peat, and appeared to have NARROW ESCAPE. 107 been long deserted, consisting only of bare walls and a few rafters ; but, providentially, there was a door hanging by one hinge : this I contrived to shut just as the centre of the herd reached the threshold. They made a halt, retired a few paces, and collected together, as if to hold a council of war. Whilst they were undecided how to act, we discharged our four barrels loaded with small shot, from the window, at the nearest, who slowly limping, with a sullen grunt of dis- appointment (reminding me of yon bull), the whole of their comrades at their heels, retreated into the covert. " ' Thank God !' said R , when he saw the last disappear among the aloes. ' It is but a year since, a traveller, crossing the Ma- remma, paid for the journey with his life. There was not a tree to shelter him ; and though he was a determined man, and well armed, and no doubt made a gallant resistance, they hemmed him in, and devoured him. I could show you the spot where the swineherds drove them from his mangled remains ; it was pointed out to me the last time I came here.' " " Mackenzie had as narrow an escape at Columbo, with a wounded elephant, who charged 108 BOAR-HUNT IN INDIA. over him, and his two tusks entered the ground on each side his head, without injuring him ! Whether it was that the enraged animal thought he had killed him, or was ashamed of his mal- adroitness, he struck at once into the jungle. But T will tell you a story to match yours, or, as the French say, a pendant. The boasted hog- hunting in the forests of France and Germany is not to be compared with that in India." " India again ! I know a Welshman who lays the scene of all his stories at Shrewsbury." "As I was saying, their boars are sheer domes- ticated Maremma-hogs, in comparison, and their tusks mere grinders, to a Bengalee bahader's. I should like to see a pack of hounds engaged with one ; it would be no suicide. At Moorshe- dabad I made one of a party of three to beat a vast grass jungle, bordering on the pawn-gar- dens and sugar-canes (immediately on the banks of the Ganges,) to which the ' suers' owe their monstrous bulk and fat. We were mounted on small and very courageous Arabs, for no other horses will face a wild boar, and armed with spears (several spare ones being carried by our 'hircarras') of between four and five feet long, BOAR-HUNT IN INDIA. 109 the shafts of which were of the male bamboo. They had been made at Monghir, spears and all, for the English steel (even Palmer's) is too highly tempered, and is apt to snap at the point, like a needle, from being too brittle. I had never seen the sport ; but not so my two com- panions, one of whom was the judge of the district, and the other my brother. He was on a mere cat, little larger than a ' tattoo,' from whose back he had killed, at different times, upwards of seventy hogs. The line of beaters was hardly formed, when we heard the cry of " Burro suer ! Burro suer ! Sahib!' Off went the boar! Off'doured' we after him, at a spanking pace, thinking little of ditches, heaps of earth, and holes, where the hogs had been ' grooting,' or dry wells, of which the place was full. The jungle was above our girths, and the progress of our prey was only traceable as the long withered grass rustled and waved with his motion, as the passing gust rushes along, turn- ing up the surface of the river. I marvelled at his speed ; it was like that of the wind. " For five or six hundred yards he beat us hol- low, and I thought we had lost him ; but the 110 BOAR-HUNT IN INDIA. whetting of his tusks, resembling that of a scythe, soon showed us the contrary. He had run till he could run no longer, and becoming blown, stood, in rather a more open spot, at bay, grinding his tusks, as I described to you just now, and waiting our charge, to return it. I happened to be in advance, and, riding with too slack a rein, or too weak a curb, met him full in the face, and my horse, who was conscious of the danger, neither swerved to right or left, but leaped clean over him. Whilst in the air, I threw at random, but my spear did not fall within many yards of him. Henry came next and was counted, on all hands, if not the best hog-hunter, the most intrepid jabber in India. Jabbing is a habit condemned only by those who have not the nerve to practise it. It was his invariable custom. It is true, that the risk is threefold ; first of dislocating the shoulder, next of losing the balance, and third, of getting one's horse ripped. " Perhaps you do not know what the term means. ' To jab,' is to plant the spear never letting it out of your hand, but making it a pivot to wheel upon. The object is to fix it between the shoulders, through which a well- BOAR-HUNT IN INDIA. Ill directed point will pass with scarcely any sen- sible resistance, or, to use a common phrase among us, as through a lump of butter ; in which case death follows without a groan. But this time the pony (he was not more than thirteen hands high) by an over-boldness, or perhaps a false step, came within contact of the two awful tusks. One of them struck his sinew, cutting it like a knife; and the spear glancing off from the tough hide of the boar, and slightly grazing it, horse and rider came with a tremendous fall to the ground. What was my horror on turning round, to see Henry lying flat on his face, and the wounded savage standing astride over him, and digging his tusks into his back ! " The judge now came up. The question was, how to act ; it was a choice of evils. If unrescued, my brother's fate was inevitable, and the peril not less imminent from the delivery of the spear, which, without most unerring hand- ling, must transfix at the same time the fallen and his infuriate foe. R screwed his cou- rage to the sticking-place, and in an instant the point was in the heart of the savage, who .112 HENRY'S DEATH. lay weltering in his gore, and under him my brother, who had fainted from his wounds. But he recovered, thus verifying the old couplet * If thou be hurt with hart, it brings thee to thy bier, But barber's hand will boar's hurt heal, therefore thou needst not feare.' " Henry used to show the scars, and the tusks, the largest I ever saw, which exceeded nine inches in length. His recovery and escape were equally miraculous ; even now, I cannot help thinking of the scene without shuddering. But he never lived to hunt hog again, for he was killed, poor fellow, at an outpost, during the Goorkha war ; and though they be irrelevant to our pursuit, I will repeat to you some lines, the last of which is imitated from Catullus, that I wrote on the occasion. " At that lone outpost fallen I see thee now, With none to wipe death's icedrops from thy brow ! A brain wild-throbbing with delirious fires ! An eye more glaring as the spark expires ! Why was it not reserved for me to pay The last sad duties to thy suffering clay ? To heap the dust o'er thine abandoned bier, And soothe thy spirit with a brother's tear !' RESULT OF OUR SPORT. 113 " And this we call angling ! But I perceive our host, with his char a bane, in the road, whom I directed to fetch us. How many trout have you got ?" " I have not counted them ; but at least a dozen ; and the trout and the eel." " We will have a rise out of Charters at our noctes" VOL. i. EIGHTH DAY. Arrival of Salmonius. His account of himself. A bet A Kilkenny story. Lord Byron's faith in abstinence. Ortolans. A poacher's fly. The Duke of Norfolk's milk-punch. Start for Plinlimmon. Our flies My companion's travels. The Fisherman's Tale. Machyntlleth. SALMONIUS is already arrived, and has pro- duced twenty pounds of trout, and is as much in love with his " Pasta" * (so we call it,) as ever. He gave us this account of himself : * Lord Byron, and his friends at Pisa, invented a sort of Macaronic language. For instance ; they used to call THE DIVLAS. 115 " You remember crossing a stream a mile from the turnpike-gate : it was the Divlas. It is, in character, an infant Wye. Nothing can be more romantic than the gorge through which it rushes, in a continuation of falls, I might say, torrents, leaving here and there deep, tempting little pools for salmon to repose in, as they always do before they push up to their spawning- grounds. I, however, took none, though I had hold of one of five or six pounds. He must, however, have been hooked foul, for he was as strong as at first, after I had played him a quarter of an hour. I found the stream every- where swarming, for not an inch of it can be netted, hardly a fly thrown the whole way, as, on one side, sloping down to the water's edge, and overhanging it with its branches, rises an amphitheatre of oak, and, on the other, lie huge masses of rock, up which I clambered with diffi- culty. I made a sumptuous breakfast at the flannel manufactory, which was the extent of my travels, for a tremendous weir I will not de- scribe, but show you on paper stands close to it. It is well there are few such contrivances, firing, tiring hitting, coljring riding, caral/itig walking, n sjtassiiiy, &c. E. I 2 116 A BET. for in no floods can a salmon, with all his strength and cunning, ever pass that barrier. This you may judge of by my rough sketch. " There is such fishing in this half-mile of the Divlas, that I would venture to wager basketing more trout there in six hours, than Julian with the paste (though he has taken a good fish by accident), and you and Humphrey with your paltry flies, will in as many days." I caught Humphrey's eye as he was speaking, and took him aside ; and after a few moments' conversation with him, said, smilingly, to Char- ters : " Suppose I reverse the bet, and lay, that I and Humphrey, putting Julian out of the question, will catch more in six hours than you in six days. Are you agreed ?" " You are not in earnest ?" " What shall it be ?" " A new suit of clothes for Humphrey, and complete fishing- apparatus, with six hanks of gut from Chevalier, and, to punish you, a ten- pound note." " Done !" " And now I will tell you a story, and apply it. You know a story is nothing without ' a local habitation and a name ;' it is like a landscape A KILKENNY STORY. 117 without trees a picture without a frame a woman without her bust a flower without per- fume a " " Hold ! hold ! similes enough." " Well, then ; my friend, Sir Ulysses O'Shaugh- nessy, was walking with his lady in the environs of the lake of Killarney, where he was going out salmon-fishing, and met an old beldam, named Mrs. Malwadding. ' The top of the morning to you.' ' The same to you, Mrs. Malwadding.' ' I dramed a drame, your honour.' ' What was your dream about, Mrs. Malwadding ?' f Och ! I dramed that your honour's honour would give me a pound of tay, and your ladyship's ladyship a shiner.' ' Well, but dreams always are veri- fied by their contraries.' ' Och, then, it 's your honour's honour that 's to give me the shiner, and your ladyship's ladyship that 's to give me the pound of tay' Need I tell you that Mrs. Malwadding's wit ensured her both the tea and the money ? Thus, Humphrey's wit deserves that both the tackle and the note should be his, and so in either case, whether winning or losing, it shall be ; and we will let you dream over the bet this night, with a certainty that the truth of your vision will be realized by its contrary." 118 FAITH IN ABSTINENCE. " Not till you have won it. But what do you mean by ' this night f " " You shall know after dinner." * # * * Confession is reckoned, by all true Catholics, as salutary for the soul as fasting. Byron, who was a ' virtuous man,' in FalstafPs sense of the word, had great faith in abstinence, for on Friday he would not touch ' beccaficas.' I hope he finds the benefit of it. For me, poor weak sinner, (whatever day or week in the year it might be) I could never find it in my heart to resist those seductive little darlings, or ortolans either, particularly when they came up, with their charms to be guessed at, under an en- velope of vine-leaves. By way of parenthesis, the proof of their being fit for the spit is, when they cannot rise from the ground, the only valid test of a man's inebriety in Ireland. But there is no question here about such bonnes bouches ; all I say is, that travellers, much more fishermen, have, or ought to have, a special dispensa from his Holiness for animal food ; and, though this is a Friday, and I had dined once already, I made a second meal as hearty as the first. But this is not the point that presses on A POACHER'S FLY. 119 me like an incubus in a nightmare ; for, gentle brothers of the rod, I have another, and 'severer account to settle with you for once, and will promise not to sin again, if you will give me absolution, when I have imitated Byron (I had forgot that his " Confessions" are in the hands of Messrs. Moore and Murray), and candidly imparted (which I mean to do when I have sum- moned courage, though not immediately, so do not be in a hurry) a sin that weighs heavily on my mem conscia of the reverse of recti. You remember the story of the poacher who could catch as many trout out of the squire's stream as he pleased, whilst its owner was always unsuccessful ? What do you think the poacher used ? Not lime, though it is a deadly killing thing, and may be detected, when fish are so taken, by examining their eyes ; but a coarse fly, made of a white feather, plucked from the neck of a fowl. The evening moth was the fly he imitated ; and what do you think old Humphrey whispered in my ear ? ' White moths and the Begalen Pool !' But remember, that the moths' part of the confession rests en- tirely entre nous at present. Would that the whole secret had rested ever unrevealed- 120 START FOR PLINLIMMON. ' Nor pass'd these lips, in sacred silence seal'd !' What a stale quotation, and how dull ! But, not so Julian ; he was elated ; so gay, and witty, and the cause of wit to others though I have no time to ask you to laugh too (nor would you, for you have been made too serious by my reve- lation) that I had smoked three cigars and drunk as many beakers of milk-punch, for which I have the old Duke of Norfolk's recipe (if you like you shall have it gratis), and had almost forgot my bet. It was time to remember it, and I abruptly said to Charters " We have ordered our host's gig, and are going to Plinlimmon." " To Plinlimmon ! What ! to that dull pool on the black mountain ?" " The same." " What, at this time ?" " Precisely." " Then, good, or rather, bad luck to you !" In half an hour we were en route, with two dozen flies of old Humphrey's (the old fox !) There were some mottled-winged, with a brown body, and black hackle with red points ; some with light mottled large wings, double, the body the whitish stuffing of an old saddle, or such OUR FLIES. 121 dubbing as had been got in a tanner's yard, and a large whitish yellow cock's hackle over all. We had besides, a few that I found in poking over Julian's shop lumber, and plenty of feathers (from an old hen, caught at roost,) en cos de besoin ! It was, as Plato says, deep twilight, ooQog fiadvs ; the air from the mountain refreshing, and the stars burnt out the promise of a fine night, whilst the broad disk of the moon rose, silvering the top of Plinlimmon. My venerable companion (whilst I held the reins) was com- municative, and entertained me with an account of his travels in the New World, that will, per- haps, he said, one day eclipse the Old,* and my curiosity was strongly excited to know his story, but I felt a delicacy in making the request. He seemed to divine my thoughts, and at length said : " Your kindness has won my confidence, and I will reveal to you what has never yet escaped my lips to any human being." He sighed deeply, and having paused for a while, as if to collect his thoughts, began thus : * An ingenious friend of mine has an idea, that when our colonies are become mistresses of the world, England will only be visited as it was by the Phoenicians, for the purpose of getting tin ! E. 122 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. " I am the only son of the proprietor of a small rhos, or poor mountain farm, that runs down to Llandyssil. It seems to me, in my partiality, one of the loveliest spots in the cre- ation. The Tivy is there swoln into a stream worthy of being called a river, and, winding leisurely (as we saunter along, loth to leave some delicious landscape) through its own green valley, makes a turn opposite our cottage win- dows, and is lost among the plantations, whose white house peeps like a bird's-nest from among the leaves. In this village I first saw the light. My father, who was educated at St. Peter's, Caermarthen, had acquired some smattering of Latin, and spoke English without an accent, which is rare in that, or any part of Wales ; and instead of increasing his fold, as his fathers had done for some generations before him, set up a day-school, and, in addition to this occupation, opened a Ranter's chapel, and collected a small flock of lambs of another kind. " You must know how much we Welsh are THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 123 given to dissent. Besides my father, there were no less than three other preachers in our parish, all following mechanic trades, and as many places of worship ; and I often wondered (though I might have recollected that, in the times of the Apostles, one was of Paul and another of Apollos) how ours should be the only faith, whose tenets were so vaguely defined as to admit of such a variety of interpretations, each supported by texts, yet so fine and subtle in their distinctions, that one would suppose a rude and ignorant peasantry could scarcely be taught to distinguish one from the other. " I was, in fact, a thoughtful and inquisitive boy, and used to put strange questions to my father, and to suggest doubts that tasked his divinity sadly. Instead of solving these by words, he took to the more forcible, but less convincing argument of blows ; and repeated this discipline so often, that I very early took a rooted dislike to reading the Bible, but a still greater to his canting prayers, and never-ending discourses, and to the scandal of all his congre- gation, and in defiance of his anathemas, though I had got almost all Watts's hymns by heart, and possessed a passable voice, refused to conti- 124 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. nue leading the canticle for the day, in which his nasal twang was sonorously pre-eminent. " I might have been fifteen when this wayward disposition broke out. I had an uncle, who kept the small inn at Pennibont, (which means bridge end.) He was a conformist of the Church of England, but rather lax in his devotions, owing perhaps to his trade, that, like poverty, 'makes people acquainted with strange bedfel- lows,' I mean with persons of all persuasions, and no persuasion. But he was an excellent, warm-hearted man, and what would have seemed perfectly unique in your country, honest withal ; he was unextortionate in his dealings with his cus- tomers, and never took advantage of their sacri- fices on a holiday to chalk up at the door one pot of ale more than they had really drunk. Here I always met with an asylum from the brutal vio- lence of my father, during the paroxysms of his fanatical zeal, and found a never-failing advo- cate in the person of my little cousin Mary." Here the old man's voice faltered, and the effort to conceal his emotion seemed painful, but soon, in his accustomed tone, he proceeded. " I mentioned to you my cousin Mary ; she was of the same age as myself born on the THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 125 same day. It was said that we, as children, might have passed for brother and sister, for our eyes and hair were of one colour. We had played together from earliest infancy, and what- ever the weather, or my engagements, (for I as- sisted in my father's school,) I had never gone to bed without running over to Pennibont, only a stone's throw from home, to kiss my little wife, as I always called her. Yes, once, and once only, when I was taken to the Eisteddfodd, at the county town, the extent of my travels. Then she wept all night, and I never closed my eyes perhaps I wept too. " But I am making myself ridiculous by these childish details What is love? How, and when does it begin ? Is there any period of our life at which we can pretend to assign a date to its existence ? In the retrospect of my earliest days, I can call to mind none, however early, in which the image of Mary was unassociated with all that was dear to me. You expect I shall draw her portrait. Every eye makes its own beauty, and nothing is so difficult to define. I shall not make the attempt. " You have heard of the custom of Caru, which the Americans denominate bundling. It 126 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. is almost universal in this country, and is doubt- less extremely ancient, for we Britons, in pre- serving our language, have preserved with it the primitive manners of our ancestors. This mode of courtship, you, I know, look upon as barba- rous, but the annals of our parishes will prove it in general to be an innocent one, much as you may think the contrary. " The Germans have, I am told, a dance which excites no voluptuous ideas in them, who are used to it from infancy, but this is not the case with those foreigners who adopt the habit late in life ; and the very circumstance of its being deemed improper, tends to make it so in reality. I don't know if I rightly exemplify what I mean. I shall have to speak of this custom of ours presently. " Kin, I am sorry to say, in this Christian land, are generally anything but kind. My father had often tried in vain to convince my uncle of the errors of his ways, and believed, or professed to believe, that all out of his own little pen, were lost sheep, and predestined to eternal perdition ; you may imagine then that these two brothers were not very brotherly; but my at- tachment to my cousin was encouraged by both THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 127 families, and it was mutually agreed, that our bidding* should take place as soon as we were of age. " I was sixteen when I first began to 'cam an gwilly/ with my little Mary. No language possesses so many terms of endearment as ours ; our ' ungariad y', (sweetheart,) ' lodis bach pert/ (pretty little dear,) 'anwylbach,' (my pretty dear,) seem to me the most musical of all sounds ; and in the confidence of our hearts, that throbbed with one impulse, many a night have we lain awake lavishing them on each other, and raising * Perhaps my readers may like to see a draft, as the law- yers say, of a bidding. " As we intend to enter the matrimonial state, we are ad- vised by our friends to make a 'Bidding' on the occasion, at the sign of the Three Horse-shoes, when and where the attendance of your agreeable company is earnestly solicited, by your obedient servants, Griffiths Griffith, ploughman, at Machyntlleth, and Mary Lloyd of Cabach. The young man's father and mother, John and Gwynian Thomas, and his brothers and sisters, David and Rhys, and Gwillian, desire that all gifts of the above nature due to them, may be return- ed to the young man on the above day. The young woman's father and mother, brothers and sisters, (naming each) also desire that all gifts due to them be likewise returned, and will be thankful for all gifts, &c. (Signed) " GRIFFITHS GRIFFITH, MARY LI.OYD." E. 128 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. air-built plans for our future years that imagina- tion made more real than realities. " For two years, every Saturday night did I share her couch Years! they were moments! there was a flood of rapture in them that has made all the course of my long life seem made up of shoals and shallows. Harbour a thought against her innocence ! no ; passion formed a small part of what I felt for her. Some might suppose that I was not happy, that a com- munion not of souls alone, but of the senses of our whole nature, is thirsted after, and be- comes an imperious claim and a necessity in lovers. I know not how others feel, but I thought there was no greater heaven than in her arms, and morning found her sleeping in mine with no blushes that night had need to have concealed. Would you coldly censure would you condemn this intercourse ? Was she not the soul of virtue ? was not her honour dearer to me than my life ? Was she not my betrothed mine, by all the ties that twine about our hearts in infancy, that had been indissolubly strengthened by years into a bond of the ten- derest affections? mine by the protestations of unalterable love, a thousand times repeated and THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 129 sealed by her lips ? O Mary, Mary ! and to lose thee !" The old man here sobbed convulsively, and a big burning tear fell on my hand : his emotion was sacred I did not venture to interrupt it. He continued. " Who could live on the Tivy, a stream like the Tivy, and not become an angler ? I was scarcely breeched when I used to play the truant and get under the arch of the bridge that sepa- rates Llandyssil from Pennibont and hide my- self there, and with a hazel-stick, and a line of knotted thread, and a crooked pin, pass hour after hour unconscious of their lapse ; and if I had two nibbles and a bite, would go home and dream of some mighty samlet, and walk in my sleep, fancying I felt him pull ; and when, rousing myself in my eagerness, I stretched out my hands to land him, I hardly knew for some seconds whether I was awake or asleep, so like reality was my dream. " There was an old soldier, (most of our fish- ermen are such,) living on his pension in the village, who initiated me in his art, and under his instructions (for I was a willing pupil) I fabri- cated with my own hands rods in different years, VOL. i. K 130 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. according to my strength, the last of our moun- tain-ash, and a splendid rod it was, till at last I grew almost as expert as my master in the mystery of fly-making and throwing, to which I ever exclusively addicted myself; and in pro- cess of time there was not a rapid, or ford as we call them, nook, or estuary in the river, for some miles up and down, that I had not visited, or that were not identified in my memory by the recollection of some piscatory exploit. But little would have been the satisfaction they afforded had there not been one to whom I could recount them one to whom I could present the spoil ; and many a salmon, not large indeed, but more delicately flavoured on that account, have I laid at the feet of my eye-sparkling Mary. " I fear you will think me tedious ; but pro- lixity is the defect of age, and we have yet far to go I much to say. " There was a gentleman by fortune (I shall not mention his name) who had purchased a considerable estate in our immediate neighbour- hood, where he was residing just as I had attain- ed my eighteenth year. This Saxon, for such we call all Englishmen, had a son, not much older than myself, who was keeping his terms at THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 131 one of your universities and spent his vacations at ' The Plas.' You must have found that no objection to fair angling is ever made on the part of our Welsh gentry or farmers, even when their grass is trodden down or corn da- maged, as I have often seen shamefully done; and till the arrival of this ' Says/ the Tivy had been free as the mountain-air we breathed. " This young collegiate, not satisfied with netting on his own side the river, was in the daily habit of beating and dragging on that of all the petty proprietors in the village ; and his father had erected a weir above it similar to that in the Divlas, that no salmon but in the great floods could by possibility ascend. He was a magistrate and justice of the peace : law is ex- pensive, and the causes at our Caermarthen assizes are generally said to be gained by the party who has the longest purse or the best advocate ; so that, though all -murmured, no one had the spirit or the courage to contest the squire's right to set up the new fishery. " Thus matters stood. There is a pool, a mile down the river, where there are in the month of September seldom less than two salmon ; they seem to go in pairs, for whenever you take one, K 2 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. another is sure to supply his place. I have the spot before me still. How could I forget it! On one side the bank is precipitous and fringed with alders, and the water exceedingly deep, whilst on the other, which is open, there is a low bed of pebbles, that shelves gradually to the shore, an excellent landing-place: I had been lashing some hours without getting a rise in dif- ferent pools, and was determined to give this a trial, as a last resort, not liking to come home empty-handed to Mary. " It was near sunset when I took my post on the gravel bank. I used, I remember, a very gaudy double-winged fly, made of the feathers of the kingfisher, (which are very numerous on our river,) and the peacock, with a thick gold body, unlike anything in nature ; but our salmon lately come from the sea, have either forgot, or are ignorant of the forms and hues of insects, whilst, when they have had more experience higher up, they will not look at any but dull v ones. Well, at the very first cast, I hooked the consort of the fish I had taken the day before. She gave me some trouble, and I was nearly half-an-hour before tiring her, but I landed her at last, and was putting up my tackle, and had THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 133 unspliced my rod, when who should happen to come up but the young squire. He had had a blank day, and whether it was that jealousy of me for having been more successful than himself made ill-blood, or that he was naturally arrogant and overbearing in his temper, he accosted me, taking up my salmon, with, "You d d poacher, what are you doing on my ground ? I'll have you whipped at the cart's tail, you Welsh rascal, and sent out of the country." Saying this, he threw my fish into the water. " I stood motionless for a moment, like one in a trance, eyeing with vacant stare the place where the salmon had sunk with its own dead weight, but it immediately rose again. It lay, awhile, motionless on the surface, but by de- grees opened its gills, moved its fins, turned on its side, and at last waddled quietly and slowly into the middle of the pool, and disappeared altogether. " It is a mistaken idea that we Welsh are choleric. Our language being full of harsh con- sonants and gutturals has given rise to this erroneous impression. Till then, at least, I had never known what rage really was : but my blood 134 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. now boiled within my veins. I was in a fever of indignation. My first impulse was to throw the insolent wretch into the pool after the salmon, and, flying at his throat, I seized him with that intent ; but he was older, and taller, and stronger than I, and succeeded in disengaging himself from my gripe, but not before we had mutually given and received several heavy blows from each other's fists, in which he had a decided advantage. " Retiring a step or two, he then lifted up his heavy salmon rod, and struck with all his might at my head, which was bare, my hat having fallen off in the scuffle ; fortunately for me, I eluded the aim, and slightly grazing one ear, the four brass-bound joints descended with a tre- mendous crash on my shoulder. I staggered with the blow, was thrown back on my knee, and instinctively making a lever of my right arm, laid it (as some demon willed) on the butt-end of my own rod, armed with the spike. It was much sharper than they usually are, and was nothing more or less than a large nail, to which I had attached a screw. Blinded by passion and smarting under my bruises, and scarcely knowing what I was doing, I seized it in the THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 135 middle, as one would a spear, rushed at him like a tiger thirsting for vengeance, and plunged it into his side. " The victory was mine but what victory ! Crying out, ' Help ! Help ! I am murdered !' he fell. " The whole scene had only occupied a few minutes, but when I saw him prostrate on the ground, I awoke as from a frightful dream. Was I a murderer ? Had I taken the life of a fellow-being ? I ran to him, he made no mo- tion. I got some water in my hat, and threw some in his face ; he showed no signs of life. I flew to the PI as, alarmed the servants, and, ac- companied by two of them, returned to the fatal spot of our encounter, and taking him in our arms, still bleeding and senseless, we carried him into the house. " The village doctor happened to be calling a few moments after. He immediately had the patient stripped, and on washing and examining the wound, discovered that it was superficial, the point having glanced off from the ribs. My antagonist had only fainted from loss of blood. It was easily stanched, and by adopting the usual remedies, he to my infinite joy opened his 136 THE FISHERAIAIS'S TALE. eyes, stared wildly about him, and was in a short time sufficiently recovered to sit up on the couch. " The old squire now entered. He refused to listen to a word I had to say in my vindica- tion, and on the deposition of the servants made out my mittimus ; and the same night I was carried off to Caermarthen and lodged in the county-gaol. " Four long months did I lie in prison. At length the day of my trial came : the testimony against me was conclusive. The evidence of my aggressor was diametrically opposed to the truth he denied all that occurred previous to the infliction of the wound; in short, my defence was deemed worthy of no credit. I had the character among the fanatics of my father's con- gregation of being irreligious ; my youth was looked upon as no extenuation of the crime, and I was sentenced to be transported to the colonies for fourteen years." Here the old man groaned deeply, and I thought he would have broken off his narrative ; but he took up again the thread of it thus : " Of all my friends and relations, Mary was the only one who did not abandon me she had THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 137 braved the opinion of the world before the as- sizes by often visiting me in my cell, and up to the day of my leaving it for embarkation, con- tinued to minister to me like an angel. How inexpressibly bitter was our last meeting ! She vowed to me an eternal fidelity ; that vow was registered in Heaven. We parted without a hope " I shall not speak of what I endured on board the ship : you may imagine ' howling,' but you can hardly picture to yourself what it was to be condemned to listen to the details of blood, in which they gloried, and the impious scoffs of my abandoned associates to be their ' equal,' the companion of those hardened, desperate, profligate wretches ' one of them' in that horrible floating dungeon for nine months. Suf- fice it to say, we reached New South Wales. " I made a link in a chain of convicts sent to clear the country. It was an interminable forest full of all horrible reptiles ; they used to crawl over me as I slept on the hard ground, but would not sting me : my back would show you characters graven with scars from other stings, the lashes of our drivers. I have shed tears bitter as blood ; I have prayed 138 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. for death like him in the Scriptures, but it came not. " The term of my exile was expired, and I succeeded, through the recommendation of the captain of the vessel in which we sailed, and with whom I had ingratiated myself by my good conduct, in getting a passage home. Home, said I? what home had I, a felon a criminal branded with eternal infamy and shame ! I had left my home young, hale, flushed with health ; but hard labour, bad climate, spare and unwholesome diet, and misery that furrows deeper than age or disease, had so completely changed me, that even Mary, were she living, could not have recognised me. With a few dollars in my pocket, saved by extra work dur- ing the last years of my transportation, I landed at Gravesend, and finding there a coasting-brig bound for Aberystwith, put myself on board, and after a short voyage, behold me once more set- ting my foot on my native shore. " The next morning I came in sight of Llan- dyssil. I have heard of the pleasures of memory : how inexpressibly painful to me was the contrast between past and present feelings ! how ago- nizing the sight of every well-known object THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 139 around me ! The Tivy, whose murmurs were once the sweetest music to my ear, seemed in every fall of the river, as I followed its course, to roll along in a melancholy cadence, as if ominous of other times ; but, as one of our poets says, I knew not that it was an oracle. I passed the mansion of my enemy ; I saw it was inhabited, unlike most of the Welsh gentlemen's seats I had passed, and was curious to know if any retributive justice had befallen him. I saw the little church-tower; the cottage where I was born " I was dressed in a sailor's blue jacket and trowsers; but my weather-beaten features, bronzed face, bowed shoulders, and the loss of my arm, had needed no disguise. " I left the road to avoid going through the village, and, following the course of the stream through the meadows, then enamelled with flowers, for it was June, soon came to what you may conceive would be the sole object of my journey, Pennibont. I perceived that the sign had been changed, but the name on it was the same. Before the door were stopping several gwladwrs (peasants) in their clean but coarse grey garbs, merrily drinking from their taxed 140 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. carts, and three or four llangees (girls) mounted on ponies and dressed in their Sunday attire, their white and nicely-plaited caps peeping from under their round, smart, fine beaver hats. They were on their way to a wedding, and the bride, about eighteen or nineteen, was easily known from the rest by a large bouquet of wild flowers that had no doubt been culled by the hands of her lover, who stood whispering in her delighted ear. I thought of Mary thought how often I had lifted her on her side-saddle to go to mar- ket ; I thought too but no matter. " I threaded the crowd unobserved, and, pass- ing under the well-known ivied porch, took my post on one of the benches of the large open fire- place in the kitchen ; there I narrowly watched the faces of the inmates as they entered, but not one was familiar to me, and the host, whom I heard called Jones, was a stranger. Seated next me was a man of about five-and-thirty, in the garb of a gamekeeper, and, calling for ' barra cous ' and ' cwrw,' I invited him to par- take it : he was already far gone in liquor, and I hoped to elicit from him in his cups some in- . formation that I was afraid, yet breathless with desire to learn. THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 141 " With the usual inquisitiveness of our coun- trymen, he said bluntly, ' Where you come from? where you going 7 " ' I left Aberystwith this morning, and am bound for Tenby to join the Mary lying there. It is now some years since I travelled this road ; but the people of the inn seem to me not the same, though, if I remember right, the landlord's name was then also Jones.' " ' Right right : this house is now Squire 's, and he turned out the old cadneau (fox) because " ' Because what ? I thought him an honest sort of innkeeper, and his cwrw was better than this.' " ' Eze, sure ; but since the Hanks o' Bristie' (the boys of Bristol) have sent us their cheap porter, there has been no good ale brewed in these parts. But as to old Jones " ' Landlord, dere rhen Hank !' (another pot of ale.) " ' As to old Jones you don't call to mind, do ye, a prettyish sort of a body, his daughter ? mayhap it was before your time, if you have not been here for some years.' 142 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. " ' Now you mention it, I do remember some- thing about her ; she was fair, with blue eyes, wasn't she ?' " ' Eze, sure ; the minx wasn't amiss, and might have married well, and got as good a ' bidding' as Rhys and Gwinnie outside, but, on some silly crotchet or other, refused to bundle with half the young boys about. I 've heard say 'twas all along of her taking up with a fellow as was sent to Bot'ny for an attempt to murder my master the squire. The chap was a sort of a cousin of hern ; but I bean't of this part of the world, so I can't say nothing concerning that.' " ' Well, but the girl. Some more of your good cwrw, Master Jones !' " ' Eze, indeed, the girl. Well, as I was saying, she wouldn't hear of no courting, and would have died a maid, ha, ha, ha! but for- * For ' " ' Squire, when he was a young one, had an eye for a lodis glarn (a clean girl), and likes to see the country well peopled, ha, ha, ha !' " ' He couldn't ' THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 143 " ' Why what 's the matter, man ? This ale of Jones's is rather a take-in ; it an't so poor as you think for why it seems to choke ye !' " ' I have had a long dusty walk, and Well?' " ' Eze, indeed, if you ha' come all the way from Aberystwith. Here 's t' ye !' " ' But go on.' " ' 'Tis now just twelve years back ay, twelve years, come midsummer day sin I corned to look arter the squire's preserves ; and a year and a half arter that ' " < Well, friend, after what? " ' You must know that squire took all of a sudden to coming down from the Plas to have a mug of ale of an evening out of the hands of the little Mary, as folks called her. It was a great thing for the house, and a vast honour too to the girl; but she didn't think so, for it was but seldom that she would serve him hersel', and her father and she used to have words about it. To make the matter short, (I hope there's no lis- teners,) master took a huge fancy to the wench, and was resolved to have her by hook or by crook, ha, ha, ha !' 144 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. " ' The wretch !' " ' What is that you 're mumbling, master sailor ?' " ' The wretch ed creature ! But drink your ale. Another pot, landlord!' " ' The business is now hushed up ; but folks will talk, and this made a great to-do in the vil- lage at the time.' " ' This what ?' " ' You shall hear. After squire bought the Public, he used to chat with Jones concerning a new lease, and they were off and on about it for some while, and there was a deal of going back- wards and forwards to the Plas. It 's my believe that squire had no mind to let the old man have it ; for he used to lodge and board Sasenach gentlemen that tramped about the country like gipsies, with their packs on their shoulders, to fish and shoot, as if there were no trout and game at home.' " ' But this lease ?' " ' Eze, indeed, the lease. One day squire sends down Davids to bid some one come di- rectly from the public on pressing business. Now Jones, we all knew, was gone to Newcastle Emlin to the fair, and so, after o' Davids' telling THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 145 o' Mary that the affair was pressing and so it was, ha, ha, ha! he gets the little girl to go with him to the Plas.' < We 11 f " ' Ay, sure it was well, I Ve heard say, for the squire that she came without being sent for of her own head, as a man may say.' " ' He did not dare ?' " ' Dare ! ha, ha, ha ! poor tender thing ! She wasn't such a chick neither ; she must ha' been full-fledged twenty-two or twenty-three at the least, ha, ha, ha ! (This ale gets into my nod- dle.) She was shown into master's justice-room ; I was talking to him about nabbing an old poacher as she came in, and as I knew master's tricks, look you, took myself soon out of hearing.' " ' What could you have heard ?' " ' Heard, bless your soul ! Why, according to Gwinnie the maid's account, she screeched for all the world like a springed rabbit. Ha, ha, ha !' " ' The villain, the damned villain !' " ' What 's that you 're saying ? If you don't stop that foul mouth of yours, I '11 drive some of your teeth down your throat to join the cwrw.' VOL. I. L 146 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. " I eyed him fiercely, and laid my clenched fist on the table ; he did not like my determined look, or perhaps drowned the recollection of my words in a deep draught of ale, and, when he had taken breath, with a grin of horrible mean- ing said, " ( After a time, squire's bell rang. I was up to the whole affair, and would not let nobody answer it but myself. As soon as I entered the room, by master's smirking face, and the rig of the girl, I could see with half an eye what had happened. She was squatted on the floor, her cheeks scarlet as her cloak, her teeth strongly closed, and her eye fixed and stony. She looked for all the world like a body in a trance. But all of a sudden, as if she was waking out of a night-mare, she sprang up from her seat, be- fore I could stop her, brushed out of the door, and we could see her from the window scudding like a hare scared out' of her form, and scurry- ing along the banks of the river, till some alders hid her from sight.' " O God ! does thy vengeful bolt sleep ? " ' There is a big pool between the Plas and the inn, which we often drags for salmon ; the THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 147 water there is sleepy, and the sides go down (for I once measured it) into near eighteen foot eze, indeed, eighteen foot. Well ! will you believe it ! the foolish creature threw herself into it, and once in, 'twas not so easy to get out; a lamb might as well try to climb out of a sawpit, or a fox out of a well.' " I recognised at once by the description of the worthy servant of this wretch, that it was the identical pool that had been the cause and scene of all my misfortunes. I had now nothing to learn, but was rooted to the bench. " ' In the evening there was a great outcry at Pennybont, and when old Jones came back from fair, he runs trotting as fast as his stumpy legs would carry him to the Plas ; all he learned was, (for master wouldn't see him) that Mary had left it in the a'ternoon. He was like one daft, . and wandered about the woods all night, and scoured the country round, calling on her by name, but no Mary could answer. The next day the Tivy was dragged, and sure enough there she was hooked out. They tell me she was the prettiest corpse that was ever clapped into a winding-sheet. But you don't listen ? L2 148 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. " I had listened too long. A fire was in my brain, an eating fire ran tingling through my veins, a sword was rusting in my heart. I rushed out of the house, not knowing whither my steps were hurrying me. One would have supposed that they would have borne me to- wards the spot, now doubly fatal, but destiny, or some demon, directed them otherwise. " The road led into a deep plantation of oaks and beech-trees, that had grown up since my departure, whose overhanging branches formed a green arch that almost made it twilight. I moved on involuntarily, and scarce conscious of my way, but as the imagination in dreams brings clearly before the eyes objects, if seen, scarcely remarked by day, thus the scene has since re- curred to me in horrible distinctness. I was walking at a frantic pace, when, on making a sharp angle in the avenue, I all of a sudden came upon a man. Those features, the gloomy expression of that shark-like eye, could they ever be obliterated by change or time from my me- mory? " It was yes, my inhuman persecutor, the cause and origin of all my miseries the vio- THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 149 lator of innocence the murderer of my poor Mary, stood before me ! Whether he recognised me I know not, but he started as if a spectre had crossed his path, screamed, and turning on his heel, attempted to escape by flight ; but I pursued him with the speed of a maniac, and with my knife, which in my precipitate retreat from the inn I carried unclasped in my hand, overtook him, and plunged it to the handle again and again into his heart. Deep groans, succeeded by horrible convulsions of his form, accompanied the stabs. " His limbs were loosened, and he was stretched a senseless corpse at my feet. But my ven- geance was not yet satiated. I knelt on him I stamped on his breast I spurned him from me with contempt and abhorrence, as does a father some loathsome and venomous reptile that has stung his child. I howled in triumph over his mangled remains. * * * * " What happened next I know not, for I long lay in the shadow of death. But when [ awoke, I found myself fastened with heavy chains to the wall of the very cell which I had J50 THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. occupied sixteen years before, in the gaol of Caer- marthen. It was long before I could believe that all that interval had not been a frightful troublous dream, and I thought when I heard the step of the turnkey, that it was that of Mary. " By degrees however, reason, as light returns slowly to those long immured in darkness, came back, and I was roused to a consciousness of the past, and sense of my real situation. The pri- son doctor was a kind and compassionate man : he soon struck off my fetters, and having, dur- ing my ravings, learned a part of my story, inte- rested himself in my behalf, and took a journey to Llandyssil to collect evidence for my defence. " The trial was a long one. Among other witnesses, was examined the gamekeeper, from whom was unwillingly elicited a confession of his master's guilt. Mary's father gave important testimony in my favour ; mine was no more, and was thus happily spared the second shame of see- ing a son set at the bar for murder. My love my wrongs my madness the unpremeditation of the crime pleaded that mercy should temper justice ; and, when the sentence of death was THE FISHERMAN'S TALE. 151 passed on me, it was whispered in my ear, that it would be commuted for the hulks. * * * # " Nineteen years ago I escaped from them, and no Hue-and-Cry was published, no means taken for my re-apprehension. " My tale is at an end. You see me now leading the same precarious life I have ever done since that period. I have nothing to live for in this breathing world, and daily repeat, with old Llywarc ' Woe to him who has been fated to an evil destiny ! Death ! why wilt thou not befriend me?'" * " Truan o dynged a dynged. Wi o angau na 'm dygrel." CANU LLYWAHC, lien i'w Ifenainf. VOL. F. F, 4 152 MOONLIGHT SCENE. We reached the pool, and, taking off our leggings, waded to a small craggy island, off the shore, and then resumed them. The night was calm, and only now and then a breeze following the curve of the lake, gently ruffled its surface ; but overhead, the moon, like the wheel of a vast flaming chariot, rolled over the precipitous dark clouds, and between them some spare stars peeped dimly out. We ap- proached the longest day ; and it could scarcely be called night. Wrapped in my long Mackin- tosh cloak, and lighting my cigar with a steel SUCCESSFUL SPORT. 153 and ' amadow,' I sat on a fragment of the rock, and having adjusted my tackle, began to cast with my long salmon rod. I followed, in my manner of throwing, old Humphrey, who drew back the line with gentle pulls, for about a yard, which made the fly seem as if alive. At the second cast I took a trout of three pounds ; at the third, one on my stretcher and second dropper, and landed both. All the fish in the pool seemed collected round the place ; the fools ! The moths were irresistible in their attractions. But why dwell on the details of this murder- ous sport ? The day broke, and found us with eighty-one fish ; none small. We loaded the cart, and at seven returned to our inn, when I went to bed, and dreamed, not of Plinlimmon and the Begalen Pool, but of Mary and Llan- dyssil. 1.54 THE BET GIVEN Ul>. NINTH DAY. A fine morning. The bet given up. Mountain Scenery. Annoyance from flies. Flying Bugs, and other winged nuisances in India. Travelling in Hindoostan. Myriads of white Ants. Their mode of architecture. Their devastations. Their King. Grandeur of the Welsh mountains. Cader Idris. The Towyn famous for Salmon and Sea-trout. The Pennibont Inn. Colonel Vaughan's liberality. Destructive sport of three Anglers. A de- lightful evening. Machynlleth, Thursday, 8th. IT is a fine morning ; and our kind and at- tentive hostess' table (it is a fair-day) will be well supplied, that is one comfort ; for the night's poaching burthens my conscience. Char- ters was " dumbfounded," as they say in Sussex, and has given up the bet, and written for the tackle. I had some difficulty in making the old man take the paper, and he shed tears but they were not of pleasure. ANNOYANCE FROM FLIES. 155 * * * * The valley of the Dovey, and its tributary streams, would have supplied us with amuse- ment for many days (or weeks, earlier in the season,) but I was anxious to proceed on our excursion, and we set out in the old char a bane at noon. The scenery is the finest we have yet met with. It reminded me of the more cultivated parts of Switzerland. The side hills are well wooded, and, nested among them, are some de- lightful country-houses. The road follows the Divlas, confined to a narrow, rocky channel, still rapid, and gradually diminishing in width. En route Charters would stop the vehicle, and try the brook, and had set up his tackle for that purpose. We did not, however, think it worth while to imitate his example. Whilst loitering on the bank we were at- tacked by hosts of insolent enemies, in the shape of flies. If Homer thinks them fit for heroic poetry, why may not I for plain prose ? Their bites were as venomous as those of gnats, as our lips and cheeks, wherever they settled, bore witness. This annoyance, though not in an equal degree, we had experienced the day be- 156 ANNOYANCE FROM FLIES. fore ; and to while away the time of our journey for Charters was soon tired of catching small black trout, of a few inches long, (the weir at the Divlas as effectually confining them as if they were in a piscina,) the conversation turned on flies, by my observing : " We can now judge of what lo's punishment was, or, if we want to know what its effect is on cattle, we may read Bruce's account of the Abys- sinian ' tafana,' that drives the cows as mad as in the Prometheus that ' horned damsel' was made by its stings. The flies in Switzerland that torment the horses are larger than hum- ble-bees, and an English mare I had with me during a tour was with her fine skin in a state of such excitement, though naturally a quiet ani- mal and I am not an indifferent horseman that I was " " Made you a field-officer, as we say in the cavalry." " You have hit it. I once made one of a pic- nic party from Vevay to St. Gingolph, the most romantic spot, perhaps, in Europe. We went into the woods to dine, and were scarcely seat- ed, when our gipsy concern was broken up by the attack of large, pale, half-animated gnats, FLYING-BUGS IN INDIA. 157 that spoiled the beauty of more than one of our fair ladies' skins. But Julian will tell us some stories of his Indian tormentors, for he never fails to find a climax for every marvel of the creation, however marvellous." " I was attacked in Bundlecund by other monsters quite as bad as the harpies of old by swarms of bees that had made their hives on the trunks and branches of the trees under which our tents were pitching ; they descended on us in myriads, leaving their lives in every sting, and punished our camp-followers so se- verely that they were obliged to decamp, and we had to abandon the tempting shade of the peepul (or banyan) tope for the canopy of the sky, and a burning one too, for it was in the midst of the hot winds. But what do you think of sand-flies, no bigger than the points of pins, that have a particular partiality for eyes ; blister- flies, that cause no tears of rapture ; flies, one of which in a glass is an emetic ; or flying bugs, that in crossing a table pervade it with odours not Assyrian ?" " Charming country ! no wonder you have left it." " You should go to Madras, and sleep a night 158 TRAVELLING IN IIINDOOSTAN. in the Black Town ; the mosquitoes there are fine, game, speckled fellows, and so minute that no gauze-curtain can exclude them. A brother- passenger of mine, a mauvais sujet, (I speak of his * physique,' and not of his ' morale,' as you say,) was nearly dying of their bites ; and the flies which lay their eggs in the feet, and become long snaky worms that, once domiciled, are only to be wound out like a skein of thread, and once broken in the process produce mortification, are not much less noxious than lo's oestrum." " Her stings, if I read the tale aright, were stings of another sort." " Talking of gnats, I should think the white ant-flies, when in their amatory state, would make as excellent lures for trout as your white moths, Stanley, at night. But you do not like the allusion ; you know the history of those Indian pets ?" " The history ! that means a long story. Now for a yarn, as the sailors say spin it, Julian! These mountains are very dull and barren Bengal for ever !" " There is a species of hymenoptera not men- tioned, I believe, by Cuvier, though found in all parts of India, and in its habits, perhaps, more MYRIADS OF WHITE ANTS. 159 remarkable than any I mean the termites, or white ant. This insect, in size and shape, not ill resembles a nut-maggot ; it is also of a pale yellow colour, and sluggish in its motions, but not inactive in doing mischief, and for what pur- pose created, God only knows, but for our sins. Shortly after my arrival in Calcutta, I had oc- casion to visit Cuttack, and had a dak hired for that purpose. Travelling dak is travelling post, only that, instead of relays of horses, you have relays of men ; these chaise a portcurs consist of from twelve to eighteen in number each relay, four only at a time carrying the palanquin or litter. The stages seldom exceed eight miles, and the pace is never less than five." " About the general rate of posting in France." " Me voi/ti done en route. I could not speak a word of that barbarous patois the Hindoos- tanee. The monsoon had set in ; the rain came down in cataracts and without intermission, and yet the air was hot and heavy to suffocation. Fancy me boxed up in the narrow vehicle, and panting for breath in a shirt and pair of * pi- jammahs' (drawers), and you may form some notion of the boasted and expensive luxury of 160 THEIR MODE OF ARCHITECTURE. a dak in the rains. But the road : it now lay through avenues of bamboos so overgrown and narrow as hardly to admit the palanquin. At one time my bearers were wading up to their knees in paddy-fields, when a false step would have embedded me in black, putrid, tenacious mud ; at another, they went splish-splashing through an almost interminable inundation, or, by way of variety, made a dead stop at some nulla, (five such they came to in one day,) when it was necessary to disfurnish the litter and for me to cross d la nage. " At night every thing assumed a worse aspect, for the torch's glare gave horrible indistinctness to objects, and as we threaded vast jungles, I ex- pected a tiger to spring on us at every step ; or when we emerged from some black forest, fancied myself about to plunge into one of the Bolgi in the Inferno, escorted by demons, who kept up (like my black attendants) a continual con- cert of groans. I could not help thinking in my lucid intervals, with many a sigh, of the neat post-chaises, macadamized roads, and able horses of Old England. One day (our journey lasted several,) I observed in a vast horizon- bounded, watery plain, several mounds of earth, THEIR MODE OF ARCHITECTURE. 161 grouped together, and forming a sort of oasis, which I at first took for huts of the natives, or sheds for their cattle, but on coming up to them I discovered that they belonged to a colony of white ants. " These barrows were all of pyramidal shapes, varying from twenty to thirty feet in height. They were fabricated of a congeries of mud and sticks, or straws, and were, I found, inhabited by congregated myriads of ants from the cir- cumjacent plains, who had constructed these co- lossal retreats for the purpose of escaping being drowned in the periodical flood, with its rise, they also rising above the level. " This was the only interesting object I re- marked during this tedious and monotonous journey, and I was desirous of learning some- thing about the habits and pursuits of these clever masons. I soon had an opportunity of gratifying my curiosity, for I found that our bungalow, like every other in the cantonment, was a * formicaria.' " Bungalows are mud-walled buildings chop- pered, or thatched with grass, and there the swarms take up their domicile ; but not content with making stealthy ravages on all below, the VOL. i. M 162 THEIR DEVASTATIONS. diminutive marauders, in their voracity, devour even the thatch, and in two or three years so consume it, as to let in the sun and rain. The beams too of the houses, if not of bamboo, sissoo, or teak, are not safe from their devastating fangs, or mandibles, attempered like the finest steel, and they soon convert mango and the softer woods into dust. " It is curious to observe them at their labours. Whether it be for the purpose of shielding from the air, or protecting themselves against the inroads of other hostile ants or insects, they commence their operations by constructing gal- leries, kneaded together with a kind of mortar or paste. This cement is at first wet, whether, like the spiders', from some exudation of their bodies, or a kind of saliva, I know not, but no engineer could make better covered ways. " The rapidity with which these arches are set up, surprises no less than the expedition with which, after they are raised, the work of devasta- tion goes on. They are by no means epicures. Nothing comes amiss to them. I have opened books, of which only the covers remained ; even the corks of my bottles in my godown, or cellar, were devoured, and the wine spoiled by the ad- THEIR DEVASTATIONS. 163 mission of the air. I have seen glass, of which the polish had been lost, their teeth having acted as a file upon it ; and the collector of a district charged the white ants with the deficiency in his treasure chest. " One day in Bundlecund, as my tent was pitching (no long operation), I remember taking up a backgammon board from the ground, and finding not only the leather eaten, but even the deal-board under it perforated into holes. " During a standing encampment, I have known tents, though the 'canauts' (walls) and ' fly' (roof) consisted of four or five cloths, com- pletely honeycombed in a very few weeks. " They have, as I said, no invidious preference in the way of diet ; paper linen leather cot- ton, all dry vegetable matter (for they are not carnivorous) are subject equally to their ravages. They do not seem to possess the sagacity of hoarding, common to many species of the for- mica, but in a climate, where nature and art supply them with a never-failing abundance of food, such providence would be unnecessary. " Like other hymenoptera, during the period of generation, which takes place in the ' rains,' they have wings, and, attracted by the lights, M 2 164 THEIR KING. descend from the choppers in thousands, and destroy themselves in the flame of the lamps, which they sometimes extinguish with their car- cases. This change of condition lasts, however, a very short time, perhaps only a single night ; and probably, like the ants mentioned by Huber, after their wings have answered the purpose of the perpetuation of their species, the lovers tear them off, or they become torn and useless, being made of such flimsy and gossamer materials, that one wonders how they can support the dispro- portionately bulky bodies of the insects at all, who, however, take no long flights. " I might mention, by the by, that when they are in the amatory state the natives make curries of them, as they do of the locusts, confirming the account in the New Testament of John the Baptist's fare. The king, as the Greeks used to say, QSaff/Xgy?,) is a grub nearly three-fourths of an inch in length, and very inactive from his corpulency indeed, scarcely able to crawl; no bad emblem of a rich Hindu or Mussulman, who gets obese in proportion to his wealth: he is generally carried or dragged by his subjects. I have attributed to this ant a masculine sex, though perhaps erroneously, for it may be an THEIR KING. 165 hermaphrodite, or perhaps the mother of the swarm. " This sacred and pampered personage has more than once fallen into my hands ; it was immediately surrounded by vast crowds of the ants, who betrayed extraordinary solicitude about its safety, fearlessly exposing themselves to dan- ger, and lavishing on it the most tender caresses and attentions. Knowing that its destruction would not prevent my bungalow from being infested by the tribe, I generally set it free, when it was borne in triumph by rejoicing mul- titudes of its guards. " Huber has said that bees, when they lose their queen, can make another. Whether the white ants are gifted with a similar creative power, I am unable to affirm ; no fact in natural history is more startling, if true. I have read that these pernicious insects have lately found their way into some sea-port in the south of France, having been brought there by a mer- chantman from India. Were the ships from that country liable to such a pest, what cargo could escape ? But I have never seen them on board, and should imagine they cannot exist in the holds of vessels ; not but, once transported 166 GRANDEUR OF THE into Europe, they might easily be acclimate'd, as neither damp nor cold affects them. God forbid that the white ants should ever domicile here! for, compared with them, the new and pernicious insects that produce the dry rot are a genus innocuum" Charters, who thought every moment lost that was unemployed in fishing, had been long impatient to arrive at the end of our destination, and was in the clouds during the greater part of this long entomological lecture. For my part, I had been for the last mile so struck with the charm of the scene that had burst upon me where the road turns off to Dolgelly, that my whole soul was absorbed in it. I said " How grand those mountains that shut in this gem of a lake on all sides ! look, how it glows in the sunbeams like a sapphire ! How steep those rocks, that seem to form ram- parts an inaccessible barrier to this little world!" " Yet those specks are the wild flocks without a fold ; see how they hang on the precipice, or cross in files the broken crags, to pick up a scanty vegetation that here and there relieves their barrenness !" WELSH MOUNTAINS. 167 " Perhaps, a few years since, they were com- pletely denuded. The rock decomposes : first comes moss, whose decay becomes the parent of grasses ; thus have I seen a ' scoria ' of Vesu- vius islanded with patches of green and yellow flowers. Even the marble and the granite melt away, and my fancy pictures to itself Switzer- land, and dwells on some chalet, with its little green meadow and garden-plat, hanging almost in the clouds, which it requires the sturdy legs and steady head of the mountaineer to reach ; my brain has grown dizzy in watching his ascent to his eagle-home." " You call this mountain unscaleable ; but I see a shepherd threading the zigzag path, and the peasant girls wind up it with considerable weights on their heads, to the market of Ma- chynlleth, which, as the crow flies, is not more than four or five miles distant. But, cast your eyes to the right ; that is Cader Idris, the se- cond highest mountain in Wales. Snowdon, as its name implies, is covered with perpetual snow, whilst on those three summits it never rests." " How bold its outline ! It looks like a seat fit for a giant, the Monarch of mountains, or u Cybele, with her rocky diadem !" 168 PENNIBONT INN. " What do you call this little stream that debouches from the lake T " It is the Maes-y-Pandy, which joins the Dysyawy, a few miles below, and afterwards is called the Towyn, that gives its name to a town some eight miles distant, where it falls into the sea. It is famed for its salmon and sea-trout ; and, occasionally, the former make their way into the lake, where one was taken last year, with a common fly, of twelve pounds ! " I have brought you, gentlemen, to the Pen- nibont inn. It is the nearest to the lake, and, as you see, you might throw a line from the win- dows. There is another public-house, that has, perhaps, better accommodation, but it is further from the boats, which are moored every night at the farmer's opposite." " To whom do the boats belong ?" " To Colonel Vaughan, the proprietor of the lake. He keeps them solely for the accommo- dation of all lovers of the art, and never throws a line or net into the water himself. No leave is even required." " It were well if our English esquires would imitate this noble Welshman in his liberality to brothers of the angle." DESTRUCTIVE SPORT. 169 " You must remember that trout are of little value here. The distance to Dolgelly and Ma- chynlleth, joined to the exceeding delicacy of the fish, which is common to those of the Be- galen Pool (as I told you), makes them scarcely ever pay for their transport." " Let us go in and see our lodgings. Hospi- tium modicum, I doubt not." In the parlour we met a gentleman, who asked us to look at the album. At the first page I opened, I perceived a record of the last week's sport of a party, which appeared to me marvellous : " Three brother anglers, five hun- dred trout in five days." I expressed my surprise. " It is too true," said the stranger. " Should this murder continue, the lake must be soon thinned of its fish. Even now they are con- siderably diminished since my remembrance. From twenty to thirty is now looked upon as excellent sport, even when you whip all day, but double that number might have been ob- tained some years since without much labour." " I shall be well satisfied." " It is but a few years since this lake was first known, and was, I believe, first discovered by a 170 A DELIGHTFUL EVENING. descendant of the celebrated C , as keen and good a sportsman as his illustrious ancestor. He makes a journey here twice a year, expressly to throw a fly in the water. But here he is ! Let us see his basket. Thirty fish, I declare ! All of nearly the same size, from half to three quarters of a pound." " I shall employ myself till dinner in making flies, and to-morrow try my luck." We passed a delightful evening ; and were I not too tired, would make you think so ; but my sides ache with laughing, and my hand- writing is become already illegible. PERPETUAL RAIN. 171 TENTH DAY. A Stranger's Invitation. Perpetual Rain. Angling in a Boat. Irish Rods. Metamorphosis of a German Flute. Advantage of a strong Breeze. Sir Humphrey Davy's Flies. Hooking a Trout. He is landed. Description of him. Beautiful Scenery. A new comer. Disadvan- tage of wading in the Water while fishing. Deep Water not favourable. Cormorants. Signal for Dinner. A Morning's diversion. Digression. Tal y Llyn, Friday, 9th. THE stranger I addressed on arriving at the inn, or who addressed me, I forget which, has engaged one of the boats and has had the po- liteness to offer me a seat. Salmonius (Julian would not go, pleading letter-writing) is off to the Towyn. " Well, it pours as usual ! As Jaques says, ' the rain it raineth every day.' Since we left Cheltenham, we have scarce once escaped a drenching ; but I have not taken the least cold." 172 IRISH RODS. " Any weather, however, is better for an angler than fine weather; clouds, rain, a gale of wind these are the elements of success here. I have looked down the valley from the bridge, and it is black as night towards Towyn, which indicates a succession of showers, and there is a mist on Craig Cock* (the red cock.) I perceive, too, some curlews on the lake, proving that the gale has been strong at sea, or that they appre- hend it ; but we have Mackintosh cloaks. Roger and the boat are ready." " Then let us on board." " Which end of the boat do you prefer for your station ?" " To me it is indifferent whether I throw over the right or left shoulder." " I will take the head of the boat. Do you use a single or double-handed rod ?" " The fatigue of whipping with a double one is less; it is not necessary to throw the fly, which I here do seated, to the extent of its power." " You are right, for I have taken fish almost under the gunnel of the boat. What rod is yours ?" * A rock on the south-east corner of the lake E. METAMORPHOSIS OF A GERMAN FLUTE. 173 " An Irish one ; it grooves into the ferules. I once ordered a pendant to it at a celebrated tackle-maker's, but when it came home it was as unlike my pet as possible : in fact, the fabrication of a rod that will stand is a mere accident. Care also should be taken, after a hard day's straining, to lay it down horizontally ; you per- ceive mine, that has been in use many years, is as straight as it was the first day." " You are fortunate. I might say with Ho- race, ' O si angulus ille proximus accedat !' for mine has twisted like a French horn ever since I lent it to a tyro in the art some days back, who caught more trees than trout. Since which I have set it down in my tablets, ' Never lend your rod, your gun, your cue, or cricket-bat, to your best friend.' " " Your mention of a French horn reminds me of a story of my Indian friend's that he amused us with the other night. He was in some place up the country at the season of the hot winds, when the heat is so intense, night and day, though it blows a gale of wind and dust, that to put their noses out of doors is literally what the Italians cdll a ' seccatura,' a drying-up. A brother-officer at this delightful season borrowed 174 ADVANTAGE OF A STRONG BREEZE. his German flute, and when he sent for it in the rains, lo and behold! he hardly recognised his old acquaintance again with his new face, and returned it to the borrower, telling him that he had lent him a German flute, but that it had come back a French horn : so it seems with your rod." " Yes ; mine has the true Hogarthian line, but not of beauty. But we are far enough out ; opposite the boat-house. Hold, Roger ; down with the large stone, and let us drift. The wind, I am glad to see, is freshening from the west : without a strong breeze nothing is to be done in this lake. " The finny darter with his glittering scales suspects the fraud when the surface is unruffled ; he also probably sees the line, even though it should be, as yours is, the colour of the water. I like to see the pool strongly agitated, and full of what the Genevese call ' moutons' and the Irish ' white horses.' Before the sun is high, it will make a sea for our little bark. ' Lo ! where the gust comes blackening the water, as it walks along like a thing of life.' " " How do you account for one pool being freer than another ?" SIR HUMPHREY DAVY'S FLIES. 175 " ' Davus sum, non GEdipus ;' it altogether baffles inquiry. Perhaps Tal y Llyn is a remark- able evidence of this truth. The trout, which have almost ceased to rise in the rivers at the natural fly, having been glutted with the super- abundance of that sort of food, supplied them by the prolific influence of the spring-season, or, in the angler's language, having become lazy, are here as eager for the fly as when nature and they burst into life from their winter sleep ; and here, as Sir H. Davy remarks of the Swedish and Norwegian rivers, they are almost indif- ferent to the genus of the fly." " What flies have you ?" " A cocobundy, a grouse hackle, and a blue gnat ; but all larger than the natural fly." " I can hardly forgive Sir Humphrey Davy for allowing his great mind to trifle so much about the peculiar manufacture of flies. Be assured that, when you have the right colour, your success will depend upon your throwing the line, and not on the exquisite delicacy of your manufacture. The best fishermen in Ire- land, Scotland, and Wales, will be found among some rude peasants, who are always careless about the workmanship. These are very roughly 176 HOOKING A TROUT. made, a circumstance of little import in my eyes." " There ! I have a rise at my dropper, a cocobundy. He rose short. Now I have him ! And you too have hooked one ?" " Yes ; with my stretcher, a black. They fight bravely. Now mine is out of the water." " Keep him in hand, for the fish here, when they feel the hook, make for the bottom, where they know there is a quantity of long thread-like weeds, and where, if they entangle the line, they will most likely break away, for their mouths, like themselves, are very delicate." " My tackle is very slight." " As it should be, always proportioned to the prey. Take care he does not get under the boat ! Roger, bear a hand !" " What a beautifully-formed fish !" " He is in high season, as proved by the crimson of his fins. His weight does not exceed half a pound, the general average of the trout in this lake." " They seem of a peculiar species, and cer- tainly differ from any we have met with. They are narrower and whiter ; their spots fewer." " There ! I have hooked two with my grouse DESCRIPTION OF HIM. 177 hackle and cocobundy. From being like her- rings, which they resemble, they are called ' herring-sized.' They evidently go in shoals. I shall probably lose one or the other, perhaps both. They die game. There ! they have both sprung out of their element ! After that effort their vigour is spent. Now, Roger ! Yes, they are both boated safe !" " How bright their eyes are ! Their backs are like tortoiseshell, and their bellies resemble burnished silver !" " Yes ! it is evident that they prey gregari- ously, for when you take one I invariably do the same, and, what is strange, that which I have now hooked, took the fly a yard, at least, under water, whilst I was watching your sport." " Their drifting down the pool is a fatally destructive mode ; for thus we sweep the whole of the water, and in the course of the day lash every part of it." " We are now at the head of the lake, where a river, you see, runs into it ; and the weeds rise above the surface. It seems a likely spot. I have him ! Sure, he is larger than common. Roger, land him." " Bred among the weeds and rushes, he varies VOL. I. N 178 BEAUTIFUL SCENERY. from the rest of his finny brethren. He is, you perceive, broader in the back ; his Read smaller ; his belly as golden as that of a carp ; the spots in the neck of a deeper mottled colour. A noble fish for this water, and weighs two pounds. Perhaps he is the patriarch of the place ?" " We are now aground !" " And our host is arrived with the old mare, to tow us against the wind to the bottom of the pool, where we will take the sweep of the left side." " I shall be glad of this half-hour to observe the scenery. See, how the rack drives over the summit of Cader Idris, whose range is now bare. Look where the lower ridge of the mountain shadows with its craggy sides the village of Tal y Llyn, seated on each side a gorge, through which falls a cascade. And here to the left is a green hill, smooth as a bowling-green, of deli- cious verdure, sloping like a wall to the water's edge. And that grove of pines beyond, which overhangs the farm-house, and the church, and the inn, and the sloping woods in the valley beyond it. The place is beautiful !" " I shall throw as we move through the water. I have often taken fish while Roger has been A NEW COMER. 179 rowing. The lake is so small that they are accustomed to the object." " What is the length T " Scarcely more than a mile, and barely a quarter of one in width." " But there is a new comer, wading up to the middle in the water. I have not as yet seen him take a fish." " Perhaps he will not get three by throwing all day. They are shy of any one on the bank, wading, but take no notice of us. Now for a second drift ; we are too far out. I have found by experience that in deep water, they do not take the fly, or are too indifferent to rise at it. This pool is, however, in few parts more than ten or twelve feet deep ; and so sensible is the gentleman in the other boat of this truth, so well does he know every inch of the pool, that he never wearies himself in vain, nor goes very far from shore. Let us at once follow his ex- ample." " Do you see those cormorants ? It is strange that there should be only two in the whole lake." " There never were known more than two. There is a peculiar economy among birds, per- N2 180 CORMORANTS. haps a greater than is to be found in any other animal tribes. These come from " Craig- a-Deryn,' or the Bird Rock, some miles distant, which is thronged with them ; but the neigh- bouring lakes and rivers are apportioned to a certain number for their support, and that num- ber is never exceeded, so that it would be useless to kill these, for others would immediately be sure to supply their place. See, one has dived ; he is carrying off a large fish." " These wretches are insatiable. I once shot one. His craw was full of worms, that are con- tinually gnawing for food. Behold him, on the edge of the lake, on an old broken fence, stand with his wings extended to dry, in preparation for a fresh chase." " See, too, his consort has joined him, and they hover over the pool." " We have filled our baskets, and the white flag is hung out at the inn, as a signal for dinner." " Take an oar, and we will row ourselves. And now what think you of a morning's diversion at Tal y Llyn ?" " So much that I would willingly pass the rest of our three weeks' tour here." DIGRESSION. 181 This is the Angler in Wales, indeed ! exclaims some fair reader. I hear her, and shall take the hint, and the liberty of digressing a little, no, not a little, in future, and in this I am only fol- lowing the example of Byron, which will remind you of a common remark of Glover's, " I and Claude." 182 SKETCHES OF SALMON1US. ELEVENTH DAY. Sketches of Salmonius Musical Phenomenon. Noctes Indiana.-. Delights of a migratory Life in the East. Oriental Field Sports. Descriptive Verses. A Shik- karie. Astonishing feat in the den of an Hyena. Crocodiles and Alligators. Saturday evening. SALMONIUS talks in rapture of the Towyn, and tells us, nay, has proved, that it is full of trout. He has brought back with him three drawings, two coloured on the spot ; and by them it would seem .that he is not exaggerating when he says he has met indeed with wild scenery. Two of his sketches are different views of the Craig-a-Deryn, or Bird Rock, of which the stranger spoke. Charters gives the following account of it : " On making a turn in the river this morning - it might be about five o'clock I heard, or MUSICAL PHENOMENON. 183 seemed to hear, a sound like a distant organ, swelling in the wind, and now dying away in gentle undulations, though an organ would ill describe the exquisite harmony of this burst. Each note seemed to be distinct, while all were with such precision amalgamated, that it was impossible not to deem it the perfection of mu- sical art. This extraordinary phenomenon pow- erfully arrested my attention. The strain, as I moved forward, increased in volume ; it was of a strange and unearthly character, such as Mem- non's harp is said to have produced at sunrise, or, as Prometheus describes, when he received the welcome visit of the amiable nymphs of Ocean. Had it occurred in the night, I should have exclaimed with them Uctv tpofagov ro pi irgo- ff&girtg, and thought some spirits of the air had been joining in a concert, or that I had heard in trance some planetary music. I listened atten- tively, and looking towards the direction whence the notes proceeded, descried a rock, rising out of the vale to the height of some hundred feet, apparently torn from the mountain range by some convulsion of nature. The shape was sin- gularly picturesque, and leaned forward, as though ' meditating its fall,' in the manner of 184 MUSICAL PHENOMENON. the hanging tower at Pisa, and like it, a plum- met line dropped from its apex, would have fallen far beyond the base. As I approached it the sounds became less melodious, and I could then distinguish the voices of the birds, that were hovering over their nests, and the answers of the unfledged and callow young. I was at a loss to account for what had been harmony in the distance thus magically becoming disso- nance when near ; and it seems a problem in acoustics well worth solving.* On arriving * For the resolution of this difficulty I avail myself of an original, and I think, satisfactory theory, propounded some time since at the Literary Institution, Cheltenham. The gentleman who read the lecture is justly esteemed for his musical genius and his philosophical research into that hidden science of acoustics, for such is still the doctrine of sounds, and had met with a similar phenomenon in Italy, when accompanied by some musical friends to Vesuvius. It appears that, in order to try the effect of a full chord reverberating from the deep recesses of the crater, a strain was sung. The echo was discord. The experiment re- peated, produced a similar effect. It was then proposed to sing a discord, which was done. The result was perfect harmony. Sound is undoubtedly produced by the undulations of the air, forming themselves at first into a sharp wave, or continued zigzag, which, however, as it yields to the resist- MUSICAL PHENOMENON. 185 opposite the rock, I shouted, to try its effect on the inhabitants of the place, when a scream arose, such as I had never before heard, from incredible multitudes of cormorants, gulls, he- rons, hawks, crows, choughs, and curlews, which quite darkened the air. They wheeled round and round the summit of this wild promontory, ance of the body of the atmosphere, gradually declines to a straight line, thus: Now, a perfect chord would be produced by any other sound exactly corresponding in undulations with the first, so, in fact, as to produce no collision with the angles, if I may so term them. Now, in traversing over a plain atmosphere, discord or concord would be continuously discord or concord ; but when repelled by an immoveable body, the undulations take, as it were, a new starting-post, and are returned in perfect concord. To this, then, we may attribute the phenomenon witnessed in Italy, and from the Craig-a-Deryn. The Echo is the musician alone. Nor should we wonder that the ancients personified her, and attributed to her influence such magical effects. E. 186 CRAIG-A-DERYN. settling, to rise again with shriller shrieks, and many darting down till they came within gun- shot. Their retreat is perfectly inaccessible, and it is said by the simple peasants, that a Genius of the birds presides over the rock, and takes them under its special protection, hurling down (as happened last year to a daring birds- nester) all who endeavour to scale it. The loose and friable nature of the material is an addi- tional obstacle to such an attempt, small stones momently rolling in what the Swiss call an Eboulement, and the Welsh, Daear Dw, into the space between the river and it, so that at its foot, a considerable mound, or heap, has been raised by the continual frittering away of the surface of the rock." This evening produced a Noctes Indiana. Julian, who had been very dull during dinner, under the inspiration of his claret, and a dozen of Trichinopolies (he sometimes smokes half a bundle of cheroots a-day), got among his * Anthropophagi,' and told us of sundry perilous NOCTES INDIANA. 187 hair-breadth 'scapes, not indeed in the immi- nent deadly breach (though he has been at the storming of several posts), but from the jaws and claws of divers tigers. One of them sprang on him from a thicket, and dragged him off his horse, but was diverted from finishing his meal by a friend, who rode after the brute, and drew off his attention to himself. He keeps very vo- luminous journals of the records of wild sports of the East, perhaps of things it is no sport to read, for I find he rises from the perusal of them in no merry mood. I will endeavour to commit some of his anecdotes to paper. More than one of the party, I could perceive by their counte- nances, thought of the 'Arabian Nights' En- tertainments,' or the ' Parrot's Tales,' or the exploits of Roustan or Antar. " You, gentlemen," said Julian, " are occu- pied with what is only fit to amuse children. Your hare-hunting and fox-hunting, and battues, and trout-fishing, are tame, when compared to our manly and spirit-stirring sports. Nothing can be more delightful than the migratory life we lead in India. The little camp, which daily changes its ground, and is pitched in some ma- 188 MIGRATORY LIFE IN THE EAST. jestic evergreen tope, or mango grove the care of our elephants, dogs, and favourite Arabs that know their masters, and follow us to be fed, like dogs fresh ground to beat every day, per- haps untrodden by man a line of elephants, the interspace filled up by beaters our howdahs, furnished with three or four Joe Mantons game of all sorts, from the florikan to the quail, and the tiger to the antelope, continually sprung - and then, after gun-fire, good cheer ! that brotherhood, which our exile creates, and for which my soul yearns ! and then the hookah, the divine hookah ! One of these parties, from muster to muster, is worth an age of a life like yours. " It is true, that I should not be the poor hypochondriac, half-animated, half-livered man I am, but for my devotion to these pursuits. Snipe-shooting first was my bane. Imagine a limitless bog, tufted with rank grass ; time, mid- day ; a line formed of eight or ten natives, and myself, in a pair of ' pigammahs' and a shirt, wading up to my knees in the black, offensive, putrid compost, that the extreme heat of a vertical sun (which strikes you when you are first under it like an electric shock) draws up ORIENTAL FIELD SPORTS. 189 above mud-mark, and thence into the frame : the snipes getting up at every step, and flying (for, like owls, they hate the glare) a few hun- dred yards, and then settling, to be kicked up again. I have killed in two hours, though an indifferent shot, thirty-five or forty brace. " We have four sorts of snipes : what we call the solitary snipe; the painted snipe, with grouse-like plumage, and heavier on his wings, and in little esteem at the table ; the common snipe, and the jack. I imagine they never mi- grate with us ; not so the quail, who in the *jow' jungle on the banks of the Ganges as- semble in the cold weather in incredible num- bers. But what sportsman ever coldly calculates any danger, much less to his health ? You, for instance, with a load of trout you can hardly carry, and though you (not I) loathe the sight of them in any way dressed, cannot, though running down with perspiration, resist wading in a likely rapid. Stanley was speaking just now of a chamois-hunter that he seldom dies in his bed, will sleep in the snow, climb wall-like precipices, and leap fissures in the avalanche ; hour after hour, hid behind some projecting crag, watch a gorge when the herd are likely to pass 190 ORIENTAL FIELD-SPORTS. For what ? a single shot, in which, if he suc- ceeds, the deer will most likely fall into some inaccessible place where he is irrecoverable. And yet this Alpine huntsman's peril does not exceed ours. Hawking was once my favourite pursuit, and a no less hazardous one. Our quarry is the curlew, and when on the wing, keeping the eye on the birds, we follow them in a direct line, not knowing over what ground or into what ravine our steeds may carry us. " I once wrote a description of a scene I witnessed, and shall preface it by telling you that the hawks are so numerous, that they hang about and follow our line while shooting, and so impudent are they, that they will pick up almost every wounded bird before it is possible to re- cover it : I have made many a one pay the forfeit of his poaching. The couplets were these : ' With flapping wings and screamings heard afar, The curlew, startled, quits his lone minnaar; A falcon heard, who hovering through the day Had mark'd our line, expectant of his prey. He raiss'd his swoop, and instant through the skies, Amid the quarry's loud and piercing cries, They both ascend. More upward seen to rise, The dissonant curlew more majestic scales The blue vault, wider wheeling as he sails DESCRIPTIVE VERSES. 191 The hawk, as foil'd or scorning the pursuit : But not the less the victim's voice is mute, Nor less relax'd her efforts at that feint ; For well do her instinctive terrors paint The beak relentless and the pinion's force, That flags not in its unremitting course. Too sure the toils the wily foe has wound Too just her fears ; for see ! around around, Lessening and ever-lessening to the sight, Scarce can the eye in that aerial height Trace the swift ongress of their arrowy flight I Now seen but as their shifting plumage gleams And sparkles in the sun's meridian beams ; Now but two specks appear of doubtful hue Now, dizzy grown the brain, are lost from view ; Whilst yet is heard at intervals on high The exhausted curlew's faint and desolate cry. Her destined hour is come, and sooner far Than dies a meteor, falls a falling star, Both in one orb lie intertwined beneath, Indissolubly lock'd in one embrace of death !' " There are some things of which poetry, however indifferent, will present a better picture than prose ; thus these somewhat tumid lines will remind you more of Claudian than of Virgil. " We English boast of our personal and mental courage, and hold India by opinion ; yet no men possess a greater contempt of death than the 192 A SHIKKARIE. natives of India. I was early convinced of this fact on my joining my regiment at Cawnpore. I had not been in that cantonment (which Lord Hastings used to say was only famous for the fineness of its dust) many days, and breakfasting with a brother officer in his bungalow, when one of his servants came to say that two shikkaries wished to speak with the sahib. A shikkarie is a sportsman by trade, has lost caste, and is called by us, though improperly, a pariah, for that name is only given by the natives to an undomesticated dog; it is, however, not inapplicable in that sense of the word to those men, who eat indif- ferently the most disgusting animals, such as cobras, wolves, hyenas, or any carrion they can procure by the chase ; and in this they resemble the bushmen at the Cape and the snake-catchers in Java, who literally do feed on poisons, like the Pontic monarch of old, and with the same view. Do you know how they draw a reptile's teeth to get at this strange food ? They en- rage him with a piece of cloth, which when he has seized, they give it a jerk, and the teeth and fangs are extracted with it : this by the by. To give you an idea of what sort of folks shikkaries are. One of them, when we were encamped at A SHIKKARIE. 193 Sherghur, the most emaciated wretch I ever beheld, came vociferating to me as I was stand- ing before my tent, ' I am starving ; give me one of your sheep.' I had taken with me into the field several that might have cost me ori- ginally only a rupee each, and taking pity on the beggar, I complied with his importunity. I scarce dare continue. The moment he could call the animal his own, he rushed upon it, mouth open, (like a wolf,) and planted it in its heart and sucked the blood. But his ravenous appetite being yet unsatiated, with tooth and nail he next tore off the skin, and began to devour the quivering limbs, instead of salt, using sand by way of digestion, I suppose, as fowls do at sea, which being unprovided with on our voyage home, they literally plucked each other, and saved ' Jemmy Ducks' the trouble. But our shikkarie : I could endure the disgusting spec- tacle no longer, and shuddered to think I was ' a link in the chain of humanity' with such a monster ; Bruce's Abyssinian feast was a diner a la Russe* to it. To return to where I set out. These two shikkaries told us they had * A diner d la Rinse is when the table is only garnished with fruits and flowers and the viands handed round. E. VOL. I. O FEAT IN THE DEN discovered the den of a hyena, and proposed to take him alive in our presence. " Though incredulous of such a feat, we made immediately a partie de chasse, and following our savage-looking guides, accompanied them to Jagemow, once one of the largest cities in that part of India, but then a wilderness of ruins, or rather of ruined tombs, that extend for several miles round the site of the new town. After traversing ravine after ravine, at the imminent risk of our necks, our conductors stopped at last at a colossal mound of earth, resembling a bar- row, that had formerly been a family vault. The bones of many different animals, and some skulls, that had perhaps belonged to the former tenants of the place, lay scattered about, and at its foot was the entrance to a cave. I had brought with me an English terrier, whom I put to earth immediately. We listened for some time, and soon heard, though at a great distance, a quick bark, and then a savage growl, that proved some brute was at home. " The dog had not, however, a badger, or fox to deal with, and soon came yelping out, with his tail between his legs, and covered with blood that issued from his jaws. We now supposed OF A HYENA. 195 that there was no other way of getting at the hyena (if such it was) but by digging down to him, which the compact and iron nature of the ground rendered hopeless. But to our amaze- ment, the least robust of our black allies laid himself flat on the ground, and with a pickaxe began to hammer at the roof of the covered way, till it was large enough to admit his body into the recess, first having wound round his waist a long and strong rope. " We soon lost sight of our hero, and his progress through the windings of the cave was only known by the occasional echo of his strokes, when he found the passage too narrow. Twice he reissued for air, and to rid himself of the dust that filled his nose, mouth, and eyes ; and the last time selected a round mass of ' concher,' (a brittle lime-stone,) which he rolled before him, and then disappeared, as I thought for ever. I could scarcely draw my breath for anxiety, which was increased by a surly low growl, an- nouncing that the intruder was observed, as (he afterwards told us) the savage had become visible to him, by the glare of his glassy eyes. We could next make out, by the voice of the shikkarie, and the fierce protracted howls of the o 2 196 FEAT IN THE DEN OF A HYENA. hyena, that they were engaged in combat. Our fears now painfully increased, which, however, the companion of the daring assailer did not seem to partake. To be short, in about half-an-hour, we were not a little pleased to see him, who had thus * bearded the lion in his den,' make his exit, covered with dust, matted to him by perspira- tion. He held in one hand the end of the rope, which he gave into ours, desiring us to assist in dragging the struggling savage into day. " We were six or seven in number, and by dint of main force, for it called all our sinews into play, we at last succeeded. His jaws were closely muzzled, his fore and hind feet fastened together with the dexterity of one practised in similar exploits ; and having committed the hyena to a sack, brought for that purpose, our two pariahs suspended it from a bamboo, and we returned to cantonments." " Sir Humphrey Davy's story of the alligator's egg, and the young one that attacked the * ac- coucheur,' is a bagatelle to yours. It was, in- deed, like picking the teeth of the crocodile." " The Egyptian crocodile, and the Indian alli- gator, I believe to be the same. The latter are of two kinds, the long, and the snub-nosed. CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. 197 The tanks in Bengal, where the women wash, are full of them, for they are as sacred there, as Juvenal describes them to have been in Egypt in his day. When the Ganges is low, I have seen sand-banks covered with them, and at a very short distance they look like logs of wood, or trunks of trees. I was possessed of a three- ounce rifle, and have frequently suspended my oars to float past one of the islets, and struck the nearest of its monsters, who, though he dyed the ground, and afterwards the water, with his blood, always succeeded in sinking quietly into the river, which, strange to say, they do almost without making a ripple. They rarely attack men. " The dandies, sailors, (very unlike ours) tow the budgerows, and ' boglios/ sometimes all day, and are rarely, if ever, carried off by them. Fish I should imagine to be their principal food, for during one of those long and tedious voyages of twelve hundred miles, as I stood one evening on the deck, I was attracted by a loud smashing noise, and to my astonishment, saw the head of an alligator, out of the water, and holding an enormous * Roey mutchee,' of thirty or forty pounds, in its tremendous jaws." 198 CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. "A la bonne heure! something about fish at last." " If they knew their power, they would be as tremendous as, in antediluvian times, must have been the mammoth, and the phagomammoth, which, perhaps, after all were as comparatively harmless." The night was far spent when Julian had ceased, and he promised to give us another chapter out of his book, on another occasion. START FOR CADER IDRIS. 199 TWELFTH DAY. Start for Cader Idris. Ascent of the Mountain. Lyn Cay. Mountain-trout. A fall of Frogs. Summit of the Mountain. Vast Prospect. Julian's excitement of spirits Return to the Inn. Charters meets with an Adventure. A Female Angler. Her history. Tal y Llyn, Saturday, 10th. BY dint of strong persuasion, and upon my quoting to Julian Lord Bacon's advice for a man that is melancholy even to move from one room to another, I have dragged him out of his den, and Salmonius being already gone to pay his court to the Towyn, we have hired our ta- fanwr's cart-mare and his merch's (daughter's) black pony, and are off to picturesque on Cader Idris. The base of the mountain, geologists say, is slate, what the mid strata are, ' chi sa ? ' the higher summits granite, and the estimated height 200 MOUNTAIN-TROUT. above the sea two thousand eight hundred and odd feet ; but our lake, as its name implies for Tal y Llyn means the high lake is already nearly half that altitude. From recollecting a similar expedition to Snowdon some years since, I had expected to find the ascent more difficult ; but we had no need to dismount once, and, all the windings and turnings of the mountain-paths taken into ac- count, we did not estimate the distance to Llyn Cay (mind, I had no pedometer in my pocket) at more than four or five miles. Julian would not take with him his tackle, and I brought mine, but quite indifferent about the sport. This little lake lies at the foot of a perpendicular rock of the same name as itself. The water is of a dark blue, and shelves down at once into sixty fathoms, and its whole extent cannot ex- ceed as many acres. It is so abrite on all sides from the wind, that, though it blew hard, there was scarcely a ripple on the surface, a circumstance, independent of the depth, very unpropitious. As I expected, I never got a rise nor saw a fish move, though they tell me it abounds with SUMMIT OF THE MOUNTAIN. 201 trout, which the impossibility of extracting them from their crystal retreats renders probable. I observed to Julian " It is strange that the summits of almost all high mountains contain trout. I have seen the lake on the Mont Cenis dragged ; it was said by the fishermen to be unfathomable, and is doubt- less, like this, the crater of an extinct volcano. The same is observable of the St. Gothard and the Simplon ; and the wonder is to find there trout that do not exist, and could not, in the Doverea and the torrents rushing from it." " I have been reading White's Natural His- tory of Selborne, who gives a relation (a well- authenticated one) of a fall of frogs. Fish, I have been told, (though I have never seen them, and will not vouch for it,) are found in the tanks on the tops of houses in India ; and I have myself known ponds that had been dry for eight months in the year swarming in a few days after the rains with small fry, which our bearers used to catch in their kummerbunds, and I have eaten them too, and doubt not they were almost as good as the white bait Tommy Moore was pre- vented from doing justice to. The only way to 202 VAST PROSPECT. reconcile this strange circumstance that savours of the marvellous is, that the spawn, perhaps the fish themselves, must have been taken up into the clouds by some water-spout, and descended in a shower." " An ingenious solution of the knot." " We had now reached Pen y Cader Idris, or the head or seat of the Giant Idris. The day was so clear that not a cloud intercepted the view ; a vast prospect lay stretched, like one of the models I had seen of Switzerland at Geneva, below us. Our guide pointed out the Wrekin, a solitary sugarloaf-shaped hillock, as it appeared, on the immense plain of Salop, and which I had seen from Eaton, though forty or fifty miles distant. It was skirted by the silver windings of the young Severn. Between it lay the Bala lake, the largest of the Welsh lakes, and a worthy rival of Windermere, to which it has been com- pared, with the Ferwyn chains, surmounted by Arran ben Lyn, that seemed little inferior, as well as we could judge, to Cader itself. To the west we got a peep, through a chasm in the Brecon range, of Swansea Bay. The valley of the Towyn, and CHARTERS'S ADVENTURE. 203 the coast of Cardigan, and the shores of Meri- onethshire, with a wide expanse of ocean, lay at our feet, and we thought in the dim horizon that we could descry the coast of the sister- island ; nor did we forget, in the panorama, to cast our eyes in the direction of Tal y Llyn, hid itself from sight by a range of the mountain, and to gaze on the bleak and barren Plinlimmon and the county of Montgomery. This enchanting scene, the ride, the exercise, and the mountain-air, gave Julian an exuberance of spirits which broke out occasionally in a kind of hysteric merriment that savoured of flighti- ness : he pressed his pony down places that it was hardly safe to have descended at more than a walk, and might have met with a serious ac- cident, had not the little animal been very sure- footed; but he carried him, without making a false step, back to our little inn, where we found Charters impatient for our arrival. " He has given up fishing at an earlier hour than usual," I observed to Julian ; " there must be some mystery in this." 204 CHARTERS'S ADVENTURE. We sat down, in addition to the old trio, with a stranger, also a brother of the rod, to dinner, the others having taken their departure. " Well, Charters, what sport to-day?" " I have met with an adventure. Do you see this sketch of Pont y Garth ? it is thrown over a narrow part of the river that rushes rapidly through the arch. I was standing and leaning over the parapet to let my line down, when I heard the gate that skirts one end of the bridge open, and having turned round, observed a " Well, what did you observe ? some pretty black-eyed peasant-girl going to market with her basket of butter and eggs balanced on her side-saddle, eh ?" " I observed a girl, but not a peasant-girl. Her nut-brown locks were surmounted by a broad, flat, straw bonnet; her little hand was armed with a delicate fly-rod, and in her train was an attendant maid, who carried a basket. She favoured me, as I passed, with a look that almost tempted me to address her, or to worship her or rather she was ' Too fair to worship, too divine to love/ for she seemed to me like one of the deities of the streams, or the personification of Diana." A FEMALE ANGLER. 205 " A pretty costume for Diana. I have seen the Diane a la biche, as the French call it, in the Louvre, and Dominichino's Diana and the nymphs, (the counterpart, by the way, of Ovid's,) some holding greyhounds, others shooting with bows and arrows, and the pretty one in the water, but not fishing. It should have been reserved for Rubens to paint your goddess with a straw bonnet and a fishing-rod. I think yEschylus says, that she guarded all the young- lings of the forest, but it is the first time I ever heard of her presiding over, much less destroy- ing fishes, young or old." \ 206 A FEMALE ANGLER. " The gentleman," observed the stranger, who was a native of the country, "has compared Miss well ; or perhaps she may be rather considered an Undine Her mind, face, form, are superhuman ; 'Tis pity she is not a woman. She need not sit for a statue, for she is herself one. The ancients rightly depicted the goddess of the chase as inaccessible to the shafts of love, and your friend, like many of us, may chance to renew the tale of the disconsolate Endymion." " Well, Charters, and what then ?" " I laid my rod on the wall, and followed her with my eye. She turned immediately down to the bank of the stream, and began her cast. I never thought it a graceful art before, but no one ever threw as she threw. " It seemed to cost her no effort, and the fly dropped like a flake of snow on the water, and seemed to have no more effect on it than a real gnat. Romeo says, he wished he were a glove on Juliet's hand. I should have liked to have been the rod, to be clasped between her fingers, or to have been a fish, for I would certainly have risen if I should have had to die for it the next moment. The only lines I ever made in my life CHARTERS'S ADVENTURE. 207 I wrote upon the stone of the bridge : I think I can remember them. If I a trout, and thou should be An angler, I would willingly Rise, were I caught, thy charms to see, And, dying, be content to die." " That 's a crib from Waller, I declare : and what became of the ensnarer ?" " I watched her and watched her, through all the windings of the stream, throwing, and catch- ing samlets at every throw, which her ancilla took off the hook, till she became a white speck on the bank, and then an envious rock hid her from my sight and and then I returned home." " Povero Endymione!" exclaimed Julian, suit- ing the action to the word. Ill-fated youth ! Go, day by day, and waste thy manly prime In mad love yearning by the vacant brook, Till sickly thoughts bewitch thine eyes, and thou Behold'st her shadow still abiding thine, The Naiad of the mirror.' " " But who is the young lady, sir ?" " She is the only daughter and sole heiress of a gentleman of large estate, and of one of the 208 A FEMALE ANGLER. oldest families in this country, tracing back his lineage to those Britons who retired to the fast- nesses of these mountains to preserve their free- dom. He is now old, and dotes upon this last scion of his stock with a fondness that is some- what selfish, for he declares that the day of her marriage will be that of his death, and she re- turns his love with a filial devotion, and has refused every suitor, (and she has had number- less offers,) with a strange insensibility. I ac- cused her of coldness, but that she has an excel- lent and feeling heart all allow. She had a bro- ther, who lost his sight when a boy, and him she tended with an affection that almost made, as some one beautifully says, the infirmity under which he laboured, a blessing. " She played to him (for she is a great musi- cian) and sang to him his favourite childish airs, and would take long walks with him on the banks of the Towyn. Often have I met them there ; her idiot blind brother leaning on her arm, and she anxiously observing the road lest he should hit his foot against a stone. It was not till he died (which he did in her arms, and she nursed him too, during his long illness, as if he had been a child) that she became partial to HER HISTORY. 209 these pursuits. But you are much mistaken, if you think she has an unfeminine mind. She is as gentle as she is beautiful." " You speak of her con amore" " Perhaps I do. To see her, and love her " The stranger did not finish the sentence, and his voice betrayed his emotion, which, I saw, he was ashamed of having shown. We rose, and wishing him a buona notte, retired. VOL. I. 210 NATIONAL CUSTOMS THIRTEENTH DAY. Fishing on a Sunday prohibited. National Customs should be respected. The River Lee. Inn at Bow. The Parlour. Representation of a Chub. A consequential Personage. His Sanctum sanctorum The Inn Ordinary. Cockney Anglers. Welsh Congregation and Curate. A deserted Village. A Meeting-house. A Publican's piety. Hypocrisy. Welsh Peasantry. Their over- reaching spirit. Tal y Llyn, Sunday, llth. You would be stoned, or at least have the dogs set at you in Scotland, and be Yes-indeeded in Wales, were you to fish on a Sunday. Always respect the customs and prejudices of the people with whom you live : I have ever done so, and can with a quiet conscience say that I never missed a bull-bait at Salamanca, an opera at Naples, a regatta at Palermo, the corso at Milan, a veglione at Venice, a fete des barques at Geneva, a fete des vignerons at Vevay, or a quadrille-party at the Bois de Boulogne (when not better en- SHOULD BE RESPECTED. 211 gaged) on that day, and think " Napoleone il Grande" perfectly right in making himself a Mussulman in Egypt, a Catholic in Italy, a Pro- testant in Germany, an esprit fort in France, until it answered his purpose to believe in the esprit saint ;* nor can / believe that Socrates by the last act of his life, the sacrifice of the cock to Esculapius, had any faith in its efficacy or atonement, but that he was only paying the deference of a good citizen to the religion of his country. What a rambling thing the human mind is ! why, Don Juan himself never digressed more! But what has Napoleon or Socrates to do with Sunday? Much; do not be impatient I was only showing how the greatest and wisest- of men acted. Now the Londoners, spite of Sir Andrew Agnew, make the Sabbath (" The day of the Lord's rest ! what a profanation !" would exclaim a Puritan) a day of no rest to the little fishes. Bonaparte had some difficulty in persuading Pope Pius VI. to officiate at his coronation; it is even said that he would not have dispensed the unction hut for the em- peror's threat " J'ai Monsieur Maron dans ma poche," meaning that he would Protestantize France in case of his holiness's refusal. E. p 2 212 PARLOUR OF THE INN AT BOW. Some years back I was travelling with my mare and gig on a Saturday not on a Sunday, mark that meaning to reach town that night; but, as a loose shoe would have it, my groom thought her a leetle tender on the off-foot, so that I was, d conlre cceur, condemned, though not for my anti-sabbatical sins, to pass the night at Bow. Who has not heard of Bow ? Those who have not, may learn that Bow is on the river Lee, the sacred stream of hebdomadals, the scene of the immortal Walton's exploit, catching the chub, vide page no, I have not got Julian's book and eating him too. Chub ! chub ! as Peter Pindar or George the Third said of Pye's poetry " no more of that no more of that!" I tried it at Pennibont on the Ithon. The Hindoos would certainly worship them : there 's a puzzle, now ! Why ? Never mind ; let us go on swimmingly. There are four inns at Bow solely supported by the angle, thanks to Izaac. I chose the sign of " The Pike," and was bowed into the parlour, an odd-shaped, many-sided place, in every corner of which stood huge cupboards no, they had no porcelain in them, and I should say buffets, (for I like to be correct in my phraseology,) and REPRESENTATION OF A CHUB. 213 round the polygon hung sundry coloured and uncoloured drawings of fishes. I examined them attentively, and perceived that they were ex- voto's made by the pious (I doubt that word) devotees of the rod in commemoration of their triumphs over divers jacks, (a jack is a pike before he comes to years of discretion,) chubs, tenches, and perches ; and at the bottom of each marvel of art and nature was neatly inscribed in a printing hand, after the date, first the admea- surement of the fish and his weight, next a minute description of the bait, float, hook, rod, and line instrumental in the exploit, and lastly, in characters of gold, the name of the too happy and thus immortalized victor. Among the lares of the place, and doubtless worshipped as such, (at least, they ought to have been by the host,) I observed strange I should not have done so at first a gilt frame (the others were black) suspended over the chimney- piece, inclosing a silver-leaf paper in the shape of that malacostomous, bull-headed, cow-dung- eating, finned animal, a chub. It was a monster (horrendum informe) of the species, and must have weighed, from its length, if Sir H. Davy's rule is a good one, (which query? because fishes 214 A CONSEQUENTIAL PERSONAGE. are not always in good season or well fed,) at least four pounds. I was surprised to find no name, date, or history, attached to this, I have no doubt, faithful model, and was puzzling my brains to account for this, as I thought, invidious exceptio regulce, when I was struck by the sudden apparition of a consequential personage. He was about four feet and a half high, very well set upon his pins, though on the wrong side of sixty, and had on one of those classical wigs (his was a black one) that I am sorry to see get- ting out of fashion, yclept bobs, i. e. smooth at the top and pole of the head, and ornamented with two rows behind, and one in front, of curls, which the Greeks, from their size and shape and resemblance to the bells of the flower, called hyacinthine. Tastes change I am sorry for it out upon 'em ! He was habited in a drab fustian jacket with very ample pockets, indescribable pantaloons to match, and Hessian boots without tassels, that came up to the calf, by the by, I remember a college-friend of mine writing to Hoby to make him a pair for a large calf, and such seemed to me the punchy little gentleman, who accosted me with, " Sir, you are looking HIS SANCTUM SANCTORUM. 215 at that 'ere picture, (frame, he meant ; but fine frames and pictures were probably synony- mous with him) : sir, I 'm proud to say, sir, that, sir, I caught, sir, that chub, sir." " I congratulate you. What a noble fish !" " Yes, sir. I Ve never been man enough to get sich another, sir. It is the biggest fish, sir, that has been seen in the Lee ever since, sir ; and that is ten years ago, sir ! I will show you the hook with which I hooked him, sir." With that, he opened one of the aforesaid closets, and then unlocked a compartment in it, about five feet high. It was, I found, his sanc- tum sanctorum. On the shelf were lying, in the nicest order, some portentous black pocket- books, enclosing cases that, I found, contained, on bamboo frames, twelve lines in each, of hair and Indian hurl, alternately, like the flats and sharps of a piano, and galore of shots, from number one downwards, in as many divisions of the sliding centre-bit ; and side by side lay floats of all sizes, some green and red, some red and green, some yellow and red, and some red and yellow ; together with sundry and divers plumb- ing machines, kill-devils, minnow-tackle, spring 216 ANGLING IMPLEMENTS. snap-hooks, nets, and kettles for live baits, fishing-panniers, landing-nets, worm-bags, and boxes for gentles and other uses. He thought he had now produced the desired effect, and said " Now, sir, I will show you, sir, the hook, sir." He opened a shagreen-cased snap-box, and produced the trophy with the air of a hero, and that self-consciousness of supe- riority that deeds of fame and glory justify. I was astonished to see no rods among his im- plements of slaughter, but had observed some sticks, of three feet long, standing erect, each in its receptacle, arranged in gradation like the tubes of a Pan-pipe, and, by way of climax, at the extreme end, a portable stool, of the same material of which they were composed : " These, sir," said he, " I find the best rods, sir ; they are all of bamboo, sir, and the joints slide into one another, sir ; and when I am tired with my day's sport, sir for I never misses walking down, sir, to the Lee, sir, for the Sunday, sir, I always takes one for a stick, sir." As he was speaking, several persons, armed with rods of a similar description to that of the little old gentleman, bustled in, and showed by their deference how much they appreciated the THE INN ORDINARY. 21? high " eminence" to which "merit" had raised him ; and in a short time the house swarmed with fishers. He seemed perfectly known to them all ; and in fact, it was easy to see that he was the Apollo, the arbiter ludorum, the oracle of the temple. The ordinary was now served, and the chair taken, of course, by the little Unknown. As soon as the cloth was removed, one of the club proposed the health of Mr. Longjaw, our host, (on his right) and his bull ! This was drunk in three-times-three ! On which the owner, for him- self and bull, got upon his legs, and said " Gen- tlemen, I humbly thank you for drinking my health, gentlemen, but more so for drinking the health of that 'ere bull !" Thundering applause followed ; when my next neighbour, talking of the fine animal, shouted across the table - " Bill, I have been to see the calves ! and what do you think Longjaw feeds 'em on ? Chalk !" " La ! Dick !" replied the other, " don't you know that that 's vat makes weal vite ?" The conversation, scion les regies, now turned upon angling, and was confined to the weather, which naturally elicited the novel quotation of " When the wind 's in the south," &c. the 218 COCKNEY ANGLERS. proper depth, and bait for the season, and other equally interesting topics ; and each of the party, as he eyed the mural ensigns, gloated on the idea that he would the next day rival, or surpass his bygone brethren of the rod, and have his name, like theirs, chronicled in gold. I soon retired ; and the next morning was disturbed long before cock-neigh,* and started for London at an early hour. On coming to the Lee (most like a canal, or the New River) I beheld it literally lined with fishers, as it was in the times of an old cockney poet fisherman, who says " And mark the anglers, how they march in rank, And all the river's sides along they flank !" Some were seated on the banks, with their legs dangling over them ; some were lying at full length, with their instruments (not) of destruc- tion by their sides, watching the float ; some standing, and all with baskets strapped over their shoulders ; one loaded with provisions enough for a week, and the other large enough for provisions for the next ; whilst others, in a * It has been suggested to me by a learned friend, that " the land of Cockagne" is derived from Aristophanes's , or yaio, land of cuckoos. E. A FALL IN THE RIVER. 219 group, were collected about " the Complete An- gler," who, like the genius of the place, seated on his tripod, was giving out his prophecies, like the Pythoness of old. Just as I was passing, a poodle-dog, who had, contrary to all "jus et norma," been hied into the water to pick up an orange, mistook for it the old chub-catcher's float, and, in bringing it to land, by a sudden jerk, hooked its owner off his perch into the river. Then arose a tremendous hubbub, for, in addition to the barking of the poodle, and the screams of the young Izaacs for help, were heard the responses of the men of the Humane Society, who, brass-plated and glazed-hatted, came hurrying, with their apparatus for resusci- tation, to the spot ! But of drowning there was no fear, for the depth was not much above his knees, though it was at the imminent risk of his catching his death-a-cold, that he was fished by his disciples out of the mud ! I stood upon the seat for some time, looking at this grotesque scene, worthy of the pencil of Cruikshank or the fair authoress of the " Comic Offering," and laughing till my sides ached. Well ! this is Sunday, and there is a church on the opposite side of the pool. But the ser- 220 A WELSH INCUMBENT. vice is in Welsh, and I shall not form one of the congregation, if two or three gathered toge- ther make one. A few years ago they spat on the floor at the name of the devil, and, at that of Judas, struck their heads in concert customs that reminded me of the Swiss places of worship at the present day, when the officiating ' Cure ' at every pause in his ' sermon' gives a signal to his parishioners to blow their noses, and a trum- peting runs through the aisles of the church. The incumbent of this is literally passing rich on forty pounds a year, for he has, on that slen- der stipend, contrived to bring up a large family, but not to increase his flock, gradually dwindled down to about as many sheep as he has pounds. After his duty was over, I had no difficulty in making him out at our host's, for he was easily known by a three-cornered hat, and his grey threadbare coat of true home manufacture. He was smoking his pipe to a pot of cwrw in the ingle-nook of the kitchen. After he was gone, the Welsh stranger told us that the pre- sent bishop, when he came to the see, made the praiseworthy resolution of distributing the pre- ferment among the native ministers, and that, having heard of two brothers, whose curacies THE CONGREGATION. 221 did not exceed thirty pounds each, he inducted them the same day into livings of nearly a hun- dred a-year. There are few such in his diocese. They were, it appears, well qualified to have contested the houghmagandie, or the whistle, with Burns, or his heroes, Craig Darroch, or Glenriddle ; for on the joyous occasion of their taking possession of their incumbencies, being noted 'termers,' they met at the Goat and Tun, to finish a barrel of cwrw, and when the feat was per- formed, being anti-Mai thusians, and not ap- proving of Miss Martineau's Preventive Check, married the next morning, one the daughter of the publican, a strapping, six feet, red-faced, and red-headed amazon, the counterpart of our host's, who performed, like her, the triple office of chambermaid, cook, and scullion ; and the other that of the clerk, who had distinguished himself among the out-and-outers of the ale party. Amen, said I, to the nuptials. But these instances are rare, for more exemplary characters than the generality of the Welsh clergy are not to be found, or who are more free from the auri sacra fames, a motto not inapplicable to the dissenting hypocrites in this 222 A MEETING-HOUSE. country, who extort from the pockets of the de- luded peasantry, what should go to relieve the wants of their ill-provided families. Charters has been prowling about Pont y Garth. Having arrived at a pentrif, (village) to the southward of it, to his surprise he found it deserted. The alehouse which he entered to get a pot of cwrw, had neither customers nor host, and all appeared as if some sudden cala- mity had befallen the romantic spot. Scarcely had he passed the threshold, when a bellowing of monstrous portent struck his ear. Curious to know the cause he issued forth, and led by the protracted screams, found they proceeded from a stable that had been turned into Tyrwrdd, or meeting-house. Here had congregated the vil- lagers, and a stentorian orator, with his head wrapped, like a turban, in handkerchiefs of all colours, the trophies of the sweat of his brain, or many a hard day's labour of a similar kind, ever and anon he wiped his melting face, and roared and roared again, whilst to each ebullition of the momier, the audience returned a simultaneous concert of groans. The only words Charters could distinctly make out were ' Thadd Ager, Maab Ager, Ussfrid-dda/ Father, Son, and Holy A PUBLICAN'S PIETY. 223 Ghost, and Gogoniah, the Welsh Hallelujah. Nor were there wanting dishevelled locks, or tattered caps, yet still the women wept, and tore their hair, and the men seized on their faces with their hands, and struck their heads, as though a fire was in their brains, that racked them to frenzy ; in fact, Irving's ladies of the unknown tongues, the Trollopers at the love- meetings in America, or the new Incarnationists of Johanna Southcote, could not have appeared more ridiculous than these ranters. He had not been a spectator of this extraor- dinary exhibition long, when a man, who seemed to be foremost in the impassioned responses, turning round, eyed him, and in an instant all his enthusiasm had evaporated ; he smelt a cus- tomer, and immediately leaving the crowd that continued to rave in discordant unison, in decent and composed English, such as a positive human creature yes, a simple, downright, human being with common intellect and common sense would have used, civilly asked if he wanted anything at the Sun. Charters having answered in the affirmative, our host, without manifesting in his deportment any hesitation or compunctious visitings of conscience in at once abandoning his 224 HYPOCRISY. devotions, with the alacrity common to his tribe, led the way to his house, which was indeed the inn ; and applied himself with all composure to relieve the traveller's thirst. The fellow had a cunning eye, which encou- raged Charters's inquiries, and he could not refrain from asking him the cause of all this hubbub. Our host was safe from listeners, for no other person in the place understood a word they were saying, and in his own homely way, I do not quote his words, replied, " This is a monthly meeting of the Pregethwr,' (preachers.) They have been employed in praying and sing- ing since six this morning. For my part I do not much admire them, for it takes up time and hinders business, but I must ingenuously confess that I get much by it, for after the exertions of the day are over, their throats become dry, and the appeals to my ale-barrel are strenuous and repeated. I must admit, that my making one of the congregation, and indeed my being conspi- cuous in it, is indispensable to my success as a publican, for, were I lukewarm in my zeal, I should find such enemies in the preachers, that I might bung up my spigot." The same in- fluence, he added, he doubted not moved the WELSH PEASANTRY. 225 shopkeepers in this, and most other villages, who found their trade increase as they became adepts in these mummeries. " Poor human nature !" said Charters ; " will men never cease to assume the garb of religion to cover interested views ? When will the state of society be such, that every one will follow the dictates of his own conscience, and worship his Maker free from the slavish influences of hood- winked priestcraft, or the detractive eye of sec- tarian malevolence ?" And with this observation he left him. A few words as to these infatuated creatures, and the peasantry in general. In personal ap- pearance the inhabitants of this secluded part of Wales are a robust (though not short) healthy- looking, hardy, primitive, simple, and harmless people ; in their manners and address very awk- ward and shy, particularly the men ; with a true Milesian disregard of cleanliness in person and dress, and fortunately with an equal indif- ference to the quality of their food, or what our labourers call comfort in their abodes. They can mostly read their Bibles, the only books they are acquainted with, and which they are taught to believe the only ones worth reading. Their VOL. i. Q 226 THEIR OVERREACHING SPIRIT. knowledge of English is extremely limited, and very many know only those politely-affirmative phrases of " eze indeed," and " aye sure." A friend of mine used to say that a brave Suisse was the greatest rogue in Christendom. I do not mean to say that it applies to the ancient Britons, though (like the Swiss, with all their bravery towards their own compatriots) they are not over-scrupulous in trying to overreach tra- vellers. As a proof of this, Charters having oc- casion to send a man to Aberystwith, for his letters and newspapers, a never-to-be-omitted precaution, and great resource in a Welsh tour, for some time paid twelve shillings per trip. Verbum sapienti sat hodie. JULIAN'S FONDNESS FOR SMOKING. 227 FOURTEENTH DAY. Julian's fondness for smoking. Anecdote of Maturin. Swallows. Their habits. Sir Humphrey Davy's Re- marks on those Birds. Flying Fish. Atmospheric Eva- poration. Fishing in Boats. New Arrivals. Angling in Ireland and Switzerland. Piscatory Character of the Lake of Geneva. Byron's Opinion of Angling. Walton and Sir Humphrey Davy. Colour of Rivers. Geneva Flies and Rods. Rhone. Trout. Cretins. Goitres. Azote. Bridge of St. Maurice on the Rhone. Angling in that River. Bains de Louche. Pass of the Gemmi. The Aar. Lago di Guarda. Enchanting View. Swiss Scenery Traditions. Tal-y-Lyn, Monday, 12th. JULIAN was particularly gloomy yesterday, and continues so this morning. He will smoke himself into a mummy, for he gets thinner day by day, and will be reduced, as the Irish say, into a perfect Otomy. He keeps to his den like his hyena, reminding me of Maturin, who, when in the agonies of poetical digestion, typified it Q 2 228 THE HABITS OF SWALLOWS. by two wafers on his forehead, a red and a black one. The first denoted only ordinary raving ; and in a matter of life and death (but even then with fear and trembling, though he was very ux- orious) his wife might approach him ! but when sporting the sable patch, he was a kind of Bal- four of Burlie in the cave, and you might as well have looked at the Gorgon. Our kumano major has, however, consented (though as a spectator) to bear Stanley and myself company on the pool. Salmonius has got it into his head that our trout will take his bait. He little knows them. " Well, friend, we shall have another wet day ; the surface of the lake is covered with swallows. What insatiable creatures they are, and how well does Juvenal's ' Ore volat pleno mater je- juna' express their voracity. They almost dip themselves as they fly, so closely do they skim the pool." " An invariable sign of rain. I perceive they are all of the sand species." " I am half inclined to think that these birds, as well as swifts, often remain with us all the THE HABITS OF SWALLOWS. 229 winter (if, indeed, the latter migrate at all), congregating like bats (as I remember, when a boy, on thrusting my hand and arm into a hollow tree) in some inaccessible holes, in banks, churches, or old buildings, as neither of these species are ever met with during their passage. A sand-swallow, some years ago, in Sussex, on the first of January, whilst I was shooting, flew about me, and seemed actively employed in the search of flies. It was as warm as April. That they can live long without food is evident, for this bird of which I speak must have lain in a dormant state many months." " I remember being on the Newfoundland bank, about the latter end of March, when an immense flight of swallows from the Western Islands took refuge, in a strong gale of wind, on the shrouds and yards of our vessel. The sea was half covered with weed and pink flowers, carried out of the Gulf of Florida, reminding me of jEschylus's ' Egean as with flowery weeds,' &c. The weather was remarkably cold and unseasonable, which we ourselves felt the more, from having rapidly left a warm latitude. One of my cabin-windows (for I had half the round- house) was open, and hundreds took refuge 230 SIR H. DAVY ON SWALLOWS. there; but, having once settled, they became torpid, and never flew again." " But how do you account, as you said, for swallows flying low being a sign of rain T " Sir Humphrey Davy in his ' Salmonia' thus reasons, for this, doubtless, seemed clear to that great chemist, though I must confess that I don't understand him : ' Swallows fol- low the gnats and flies, and gnats and flies de- light in warm strata of air, and, as warm air is lighter., and usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata are high, there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by the admixture with cold air ; but when the warm and moist air is close to the surface, it is almost certain that the cold air flows down into it, and a deposition of water will take place.'" " What an unlogical and ill-balanced sen- tence ! He had not been studying the style of Thucydides. What wonderful instincts these flies have ! and how philosophically they reason!" " The geniousness of man, as I heard an Irishman say, bangs the world, barring the bees (though they do make hexagons as perfect as a mathematician could, and though hexagons are the only figures in which no space is lost.)" FLYING FISH. 231 " More credit is given to the bees than they deserve ; all circles of a similar matter, when subject to equilateral pressure, form themselves by necessity into hexagons. But Paddy should have said gnats and flies, which latter, I should conceive, are the objects of the swallows' search, and that it is owing to the weight and moisture of the air, that the former bon gre mal gre are driven down, when they become the prey of their relentless pursuers from above and below." " The most unfortunate of all the created tribes of earth or air are the flying fish ; pursued by their myriad enemies, the bonitos and alba- cores, which throng the tropical seas and make them at night one phosphoric flash, they rise only to be attacked by multitudes of gulls, which drive them back only to rise again." " The unnatural distinctness of the cattle in the distance, shows, too, that the atmosphere is subject to a rapid evaporation, a never-failing sign of rain." " I frequently observed this in Switzerland, particularly in going from Interlaken to Lauter- brunnen, or the Vale of Waterfalls. So rapid, indeed, was the evaporation that several of these small cascades were taken up before they reached 282 FISHING IN BOATS. the bottom of the tremendous mountains from which they tumbled. For the three succeeding days we had hardly a moment's intermission from rain, no uncommon, though no very agree- able circumstance amid the high Alps." " On our return I should like," said Charters, " to make some propitiatory offering to the deity of the sea, who seems as unmitigable in his wrath as he was in the time of Horace, for I am likely (though I recollect he escaped) to meet with a double wreck." Wrapped in my long cloak to my heels, that defied him, I sate at the head of the boat, whilst the trout rose momently at my flies, and came to net. Charters was lobbing out his patent bait, but did not get a single run a remark applicable to the other boat, where a new arrival from the other inn was trolling with a minnow, with no better success. Salmonius, wet to the skin after our first drift down the lake, and Julian in nearly the same plight, jumped on shore, and made the best of their way to Pennibont, to hang up their Vestimenta Maris Deo. Forty fish were the produce of this day's sport. IRELAND AND SWITZERLAND. 233 We met in the evening at dinner several new anglers. One was just arrived from the Lakes of Kil- larney, where he had had splendid salmon fish- ing. Another, from those of Capel Kerig, little inferior to this, and last from the Bala lake, which, he says, is only good for pike. A third from Bhilt, where he has been passing all the season on the Wye (of which, and its tributary streams, in the months of March and April, he spoke highly) ; and a fourth, in a disappointed mood from Switzerland. This latter was complaining much of the sport there, and we asked him for some account of it. I knew every inch of the country, but told him I had been too wise to load myself with the impediments of rods, and their et-c