THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 TROUTING DAYS AND TROUTING WAYS 
 
 IN WALES, THE WEST COUNTRY, AND 
 
 THE SCOTTISH BORDERLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 A. G. BRADLEY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 1914
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE MICROBE I 
 
 II 
 THE WELSH DEE 44 
 
 III 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES .... 77 
 
 IV 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS . . . .100 
 
 V 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND . . 135 
 
 VI 
 
 THE ELAN LAKES AND WILD SOUTH WALES 173 
 
 V
 
 vi CLEAR WATERS 
 
 VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON . . . .216 
 
 VIII 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY . . H5 
 
 IX 
 IN AND AROUND NORTHUMBERLAND . . 290 
 
 X 
 THE WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE . . 332
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ON THE COQUET 
 
 CARROG BRIDGE ON THE DEE 
 
 THE WILTSHIRE AVON AT AMESBURY 
 
 KENNET AT MARLBOROUGH . 
 
 TAL-Y-LLYN LAKE AND CHURCH . 
 
 LUGG BRIDGE, KINGSLAND . 
 
 PEN-Y-GAREG LAKE, RHAYADER . 
 
 GARA BRIDGE ON THE AVON 
 
 THE HEAD OF ULLSWATER . 
 
 FROM THE HEAD OF ULLSWATER 
 
 ON THE COQUET NEAR ROTHBURY . 
 
 THE WHITEADDER AT HUTTON CASTLE! 
 
 THE WHITEADDER NEAR ITS JUNCTION 
 WITH TWEED 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 46 
 
 80 
 
 94 
 
 120 
 
 148 
 
 184 
 
 224 
 
 248 
 
 280 
 
 300 
 
 34 
 
 Vll
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 I 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 WHAT is it and whence comes it ? 
 A different insect I think from that 
 which sends the young idea to horse or gun, 
 to bat or ball, constantly as both are found in the same 
 small body. I have myself had most of these other 
 complaints as violently as is common. Childhood 
 and youth are by instinct gregarious. But this angling 
 microbe sends even gregarious youth away into soli- 
 tudes, where there is no company but his own, no 
 shouting, no competition, no applause, no glory. If 
 it were the unsociable, the studious, the delicate who 
 usually fell a victim there would be nothing in it 
 But as a matter of fact this is not very often the case. 
 It is much more frequently the other sort who in the 
 mysterious magnetism of the stream find a something 
 that is not measured to any extent worth mentioning 
 by success, rivalry, or applause, but nevertheless holds 
 them tight. There are thousands of well-to-do men 
 in this country who are neither good performers, nor 
 really care much about it, yet carry a gun regularly. 
 It is one of the correct things to do, and, what is more, 
 fits in with or sometimes assists their social life, and is 
 A I
 
 CJ.EAR WATERS 
 
 nowadays made very, very easy. The novus homo in 
 the country takes it up violently and is thoroughly 
 pleased with himself for so doing, which latter attitude 
 when you come to think of it is rather absurd. Or 
 another sort of man was automatically entered to it 
 as a boy with all the machinery to hand, but without 
 any particular initiative on his own part. Still more, 
 the individuals who hunt because they really like it 
 for itself, no knowledgeable person would ever venture 
 to assert are anything but a minority, while those 
 who really understand the craft are a still smaller one. 
 The accessories of the chase include at least half a dozen 
 distinct attractions, some harmless, others vulnerable 
 and irresistible to the cynic. Even salmon-fishing is 
 not free from suspicion, as it is one of the sports ac- 
 counted worthy of a millionaire ; while a lady of 
 fashion, who with or without the gillie's help has some 
 measure of success, stands more than a good chance 
 of figuring with her biggest fish in the society or illus- 
 trated papers, some of which seem almost to exist for 
 such purposes. But trouting profits no one who is 
 not fond of it, and is, I think, really free from all the 
 meretricious enthusiasm and make-believe that hangs 
 on to the skirts of other sports in Great Britain alone, 
 I fancy, of all countries. Not that this is to be de- 
 precated for a moment. The good no doubt far out- 
 weighs the humbug, though there is a great deal of 
 both, and it is about trouting and its environment 
 that I propose to gossip in this little book. 
 
 How the microbe came to be within me I cannot 
 imagine. My paternal forbears with all their rami- 
 fications were scholars or theologians or both. On the 
 2
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 other side they were sportsmen almost to a man, but 
 East Anglians to the core, which in those days, when 
 all but dukes and the like found their sport at home, 
 meant that not one of them probably had ever even 
 seen a trout. As for me the Kennet to be sure washed 
 the far end of our precincts for about two hundred 
 yards. The Kennet, however, was not a prattling 
 brook beside which an urchin would disport himself 
 and make acquaintance with troutlings, but a rather 
 deep and slow river where big trout lay hidden from 
 all but the expert eye, and for most of the summer 
 were buried beneath a coat of flowering weeds upon 
 which the moorhens and dabchicks ran about as on 
 a meadow. No rod of any kind was ever seen waving 
 there, nor was there anything about it to attract an 
 infant or indeed any one but a fairly skilful fisherman, 
 had there been any such, to its rather awkward banks. 
 So I have always held it to be a curious psychological 
 mystery that I, a small boy, absorbed preternaturally 
 for my years in bats and balls of all kinds, who had 
 never consciously heard the word trout uttered, 
 should have been fascinated by a ridiculous cheap 
 print which hung over the fireplace in a certain gar- 
 dener's lodge. It was an absurd thing. I can recall 
 it most vividly, though I could not have set my infant 
 eyes upon it half a dozen times. It represented two 
 slim gentlemen in tall hats, blue cut-away coats and 
 tight pantaloons standing on a grassy bank, with a 
 long wavy rod resting upon the shoulder of each. On 
 the grass was a creel, and beside it two fish adorned 
 with lurid red spots. In the foreground was a dash 
 of sky-blue water and a bed of reeds bending in the 
 
 3
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 wind. It was entitled ' Trout-fishing,' and while the 
 nurse gossiped with the gardener's wife my childish 
 gaze was always riveted upon it, though the little 
 room was hung with many other startling works of art. 
 It kindled within me a strange and pleasurable feeling 
 that I can still lucidly recall, though I could not define 
 or analyse it to save my life. It was quite obviously 
 the first stir of the microbe caught perhaps from 
 some playmate who had fishing ancestors ! With the 
 nursery period the few occasions for gazing on this 
 masterpiece passed away as did the very word trout 
 from my ken, and indeed my school holidays were 
 generally spent in the Isle of Wight, the most trout-less 
 bit of England. 
 
 And in the meantime the microbe lay dormant. 
 The Kennet below our grounds though I realised 
 nothing of this till a later day, was netted by a miller 
 at the bottom of the town, who, under a charter of, 
 I believe, Richard n., possessed and still possesses 
 the curious archaic privilege of dragging his net once 
 a year for a long distance, irrespective of any riparian 
 owners' rights. But of this I knew nothing then. 
 A few years later I knew all about it and had more 
 than one wordy passage with the miller's man who, 
 from the withy bed which fronted our meadow, had 
 the impudence to dispute my right to throw a fly 
 from our own ground. It was before the days of dry- 
 fly fishing, here at any rate, and I really think that this 
 upper bit of the Kennet, though quite a sizeable 
 stream, had never before had a fly of any sort cast 
 upon it. There were no local fishermen. It had 
 become a sort of stodgy tradition that the river was 
 4
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 sacred to the net of this unspeakable miller, who sent 
 big fat trout round to his patrons and friends ; for at 
 least there was nothing sordid in his otherwise, as I 
 then regarded it, disreputable proceeding. When 
 first the real significance of that two hundred yards, 
 of which one bank was ours, burst upon my awakened 
 senses, I was considerably chilled by our venerable 
 rector, who had once been a fly-fisherman, assuring 
 me that Kennet trout would not rise to the fly above 
 a certain point two miles down stream, and this I 
 think was the local tradition. An utter myth of 
 course, incredible to the modern understanding, and 
 as I very soon satisfied myself by the simplest of 
 methods and a mere wet fly, absurd in itself. But I am 
 pretty sure that no fly at that date had ever been thrown 
 above Marlborough. What between the miller and 
 his mediaeval rights and the marquis, whose benignant 
 but still awesome sway then rested on all that country, 
 I don't think it had ever entered into anybody's head, 
 even if they had a stretch of bank from which to cast 
 a line upon that sacred stream. So it was with a 
 shout of amazement and indignation that the miller's 
 man first beheld me exercising what I felt sure were 
 my lawful rights, from our own ground, on waters 
 sacred in his unbelieving and woolly mind to his 
 master and the marquis. I let him shout, and when 
 he had finished assured him with the arrogance of 
 youth and quite justifiable confidence, that he and his 
 master and his beastly net could go to the devil, and 
 that if Richard n. had been unsportsmanlike enough 
 to perpetrate an annual poaching raid on our field and 
 garden among others it was an outrage of which his 
 
 5
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 master ought to be ashamed to take advantage. As 
 for the marquis, it was a private matter entirely 
 between that great man and myself. 
 
 The miller's henchman having listened with dumb 
 amazement to this outburst, departed muttering I 
 should hear more of this. I never did, not likely, save 
 occasionally from that misguided rustic himself. 
 Looking back on it I think it would have been a very 
 nice point of law between the marquis and my in- 
 significant and immature self, had that great man, 
 who possessed some miles of fine fishing down lower 
 upon which in after years I had many a pleasant day, 
 troubled his head about a bow shot's length of water 
 where the fish were not supposed to rise to the fly, and 
 that an outsider could legally net. For our place was 
 on a thirty-years' leasehold under the said marquis, 
 and I used to compose imaginary letters in bed in 
 defence of my practices, which in regard to an ancient 
 superstition were regarded by some as a trifle audacious. 
 My compositions ran something like this, though 
 possibly not so stylish ! 
 
 MY DEAR MARQUIS, The miller is a common enemy 
 though a licensed freebooter. This bit of water is 
 obviously useless to you since you could not fish it 
 without coming into our private grounds, which would 
 be impossible without permission. Reciprocity of 
 treatment of course would be the only possible terms 
 of admission. A mere dog-in-the-manger policy, on 
 the other hand, even within your Lordship's rights 
 on a long leasehold demesne so small that the sporting 
 privileges could hardly have been considered, would 
 6
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 merely deliver more fish into the shameless net of the 
 common enemy, the miller. Ergo, every fish I kill 
 with a fly, besides being a great and worthy pleasure 
 to myself, saves it from an ignominious end in the 
 miller's net.' 
 
 Yet, in spite of this crushing logic, there were still 
 people obsessed of a time-honoured unsupported 
 superstition who regarded me as making rather free 
 when for two or three years, till we left the neighbour- 
 hood, I treated the water without molestation as my 
 preserve. And this to the oft-times contentment 
 of the household ; for Kennet trout, unlike some 
 others from neighbouring chalk streams, are pink and 
 firm and worthy of a dinner-course, not merely to 
 serve as a breakfast side-dish. In a breeze even in our 
 still water they rose fairly to a wet fly. 
 
 I even suspected my father, who was on excellent 
 terms with the marquis, of being not without secret 
 misgivings. 
 
 But then, though he knew a great deal about many 
 more useful and important things, he knew nothing 
 at all about trout or riparian rights. A letter from 
 him to the great man would no doubt have settled the 
 question in my favour. But this I forbore to suggest, 
 for there was an agent, and even marquises can do 
 nothing without a word at least with their factotum, 
 and I suspected this one of encouraging the pre- 
 historic traditions that a know-nothing community 
 had dumbly acquiesced in. An agent naturally dis- 
 likes the concession of small privileges, particularly 
 to a boy. Even then I knew enough to picture him 
 
 7
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 brushing aside, plausibly and respectfully, his employer's 
 good intentions, and suggesting all manner of possi- 
 bilities and precedents which such a trifle might give 
 rise to, and finally undertaking to relieve the great man 
 of appearing churlish by answering the letter himself. 
 This he would do most courteously without touching 
 on the question of rights, hinting at imaginary diffi- 
 culties with imaginary people and pleading expediency, 
 which would have settled the case against me. In other 
 words the great superstition would have triumphed. 
 
 However, this stretch of bank, just about the time 
 I ceased to tread it, passed by purchase out of its noble 
 owner's hands, and never I believe since, in forty 
 years, have the three or four successive occupants of 
 our old abiding-place realised that they have as good 
 a little bit of trout-holding water for till June, when 
 the weeds gripped it, it was always full though a little 
 awkward to fish as there is on the uppermost Kennet. 
 Nay, worse, one of them not long ago deliberately 
 set to work to fence himself and his successors off from 
 all access to the bank by a thick planting of willows, 
 and King Richard's miller now, I presume, reigns 
 supreme and gets every fish. Indeed, I myself long 
 since ceased to regard that archaic right of his with 
 the frenzy of untutored youth, but on the contrary as 
 a picturesque and interesting survival. I long ago 
 made friends with the successors of my ancient enemy, 
 and not seldom as an occasional visitor to the old place 
 have accepted the hospitality of his little garden 
 behind the mill-house on the island, and cast my fly 
 from it on the wide surging pool beneath the dam 
 where pounders and even two-pounders may be ex- 
 
 8
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 pected to consider it favourably. There are always 
 two or three sockdolagers of twice that weight 
 occupying the choice positions just under the fall, 
 whence they regard one at quite close range with 
 contemptuous eye. A pleasant leafy spot it is, too, on 
 a June evening, when from the Norman church tower 
 the curfew-bell is tolling ; so near and yet so aloof 
 from the dear old town, whose muffled hum floats over 
 the mellow riverside gardens and mingles with the 
 roar of the dam, the rumble of the mill-wheel, and 
 the whispering leaves of the tall poplars overhead. 
 
 But all this is anticipating, for we had not got much 
 farther chronologically than the first wriggle of the 
 microbe before the masterpiece in the gardener's 
 lodge. It was some three years before I felt it stir 
 again, and this fell about at Twyford, that most 
 venerable probably of all preparatory schools, which 
 stands, as every Wykhamist knows, in tolerable pro- 
 pinquity to the Itchen. This classic stream, however, 
 had been nothing to me nor to any of us except as 
 the scene of an occasional bathe. The contests of 
 the playground absorbed our outdoor life. But I 
 well remember one June half holiday near the end of 
 my time, how while engaged in a cricket-match I 
 espied one of the masters pass along the end of the 
 playground with a long whippy rod over his shoulder, 
 a creel on his back, and accompanied by a young friend 
 of my own. A voice from a fieldsman somewhere 
 called out, ' Hullo, there 's old Brown going mayfly- 
 fishing.' Then all at once I experienced the same 
 unaccountable attraction and queer, wistful longing 
 that the gardener's print, never thought of since, 
 
 9
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 had been wont to excite. For some quite inexplicable 
 reason I would almost have sacrificed my chance of 
 the first eleven, for which I was at the moment strug- 
 gling, to have been in my young friend's place and to 
 have followed that burly figure with the rod and 
 creel to the riverside, though I had but the vaguest 
 notion of his procedure when he got there. Beyond 
 a doubt it was the microbe stirring again. Then 
 there was nothing more till a year or so later, when I 
 ran into a hotbed of the disease and the complaint 
 broke out. 
 
 For, to dispense with metaphor, I found myself 
 domiciled in a snug rectory upon the slopes of Exmoor. 
 It was a cold February. I remember the snow lay 
 deep and frozen on the moor, and the stream, of a 
 type different from any I had ever seen, gurgled like 
 a black twisting thread through the white vale below 
 the house. But in due course March suns and balmy 
 winds unthawed the rigid earth, the snow vanished, 
 the valley became greener than any valley I had ever 
 seen in early spring, and there was everywhere a 
 strange and delicious murmur of bubbling and tink- 
 ling waters. A mountain rivulet fashioned to a 
 mimic cataract plashed noisily beneath my bedroom 
 window night and day. From the Wiltshire Downs 
 and the Isle of Wight to Exmoor was almost a change 
 of continents to a child. From the typical south to 
 the most extreme type of the west, to an observant 
 impressionable youngster, was almost like crossing the 
 Atlantic to a grown-up. The Exmoor rectory, how- 
 ever, soon became a paradise. Early regrets for the 
 gregarious joys of school life were forgotten. The in- 
 10
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 mates of the house began to talk about trout-fishing as 
 if it were the normal occupation of everybody's leisure 
 hours in the spring-time. Unsuspected rods came out 
 of hidden lairs, and when on an early day a youth 
 of some sixteen summers returned at luncheon time 
 from the river and laid half a dozen quarter-pounders 
 on a plate on the hall table, the insect once again, this 
 time seriously, made demonstrations, and I was soon 
 in a high fever. This was the opportunity no doubt 
 that I had unconsciously been waiting for. The mere 
 sight of these trout, the first I had ever beheld, was 
 enough ; and the flies too had, during this first ac- 
 quaintance with them, an extraordinary fascination. 
 Often in later life have I striven to catch, and with 
 but a faint gleam of success, the glamour which in- 
 vested the first handling of those palmers, black and 
 red, and these blue-uprights of such ancient fame 
 and usage in the west country. 
 
 But a rod ! Now almost anything in reason, even 
 a pony, had horseflesh not been abundant on the spot, 
 might have been included in my outfit for this far 
 country, which had been recommended as a cure for 
 some childish weakness. But a fly-rod was outside 
 the vision of my home circle, for the world, be it 
 remembered, has changed much since those days. 
 The parent in Essex, Northamptonshire, or London 
 is almost as likely nowadays to be a fly-fisher of sorts 
 as a home-bred west-country parson. If he is more- 
 over a fond parent too, he thinks nothing of devoting 
 the expanded modern Easter holidays, sensibly and 
 skilfully contrived no doubt by angling pedagogues, 
 without regard to shifting church festivals, to the 
 
 II
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 education of his hopeful in the gentle art. He takes 
 him to far counties, north or west, and superintends his 
 elementary endeavours. Sometimes I have fancied, on 
 encountering such parties, that the hopeful is rather 
 bored. But never mind so long as he is not put off : 
 the experience will be of infinite comfort and use to 
 him in after life. The parents of former days, though 
 urgent in the matter of ponies, for riding was then a 
 virtual necessity, never dreamed of this other business ; 
 we had to look after the superfluities ourselves. Per- 
 haps the rector, himself an all-round sportsman, 
 suggested a probationary period before I communi- 
 cated to my people the uncanny demand for a fly-rod. 
 We had only three posts a week too, and were eleven 
 miles from anywhere. Nor could he guess that a 
 shrimp of a lad from the dry counties, an * up-country- 
 man ' term of contempt among the local rustics, was 
 likely to fall a hopeless victim to the solitary fascinations 
 of an Exmoor stream. 
 
 So for the nonce an expedient was devised in 
 the upper and nether portions of two broken rods 
 spliced together with string. This was my first 
 weapon, and it was about as handy as a shaven bean- 
 stick, while a reel was regarded for the present as a 
 superfluity. My pocket-money was equal to com- 
 pleting the outfit, while old Pulman of Totnes, a name 
 long forgotten, tackle purveyor to the household, 
 supplied me with two casts (collars they called, and 
 still call, them down there) and a dozen flies of the 
 before-mentioned patterns for their equivalent in 
 postage stamps. Our casts were coarser, and our flies, 
 I think, larger, than those used nowadays in that, or 
 
 12
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 most countries. But revolutions have taken place in 
 fishing as in the greater things of life since those dim 
 and easy-going days. Nevertheless I should still, and 
 do still, when the occasion arises, always mount the 
 same old pattern of red palmer with or without gold 
 twist as a tail fly in clear water up-stream fishing in 
 every stream known to me in Devonshire ; further 
 encouraged if such were needed, by the fact that my 
 contemporaries in that country hold stoutly that 
 nothing has ever been contrived worthy to displace 
 it. Strange insects galore have been dressed since 
 those days. Rods, reels, lines have all been developed 
 almost out of recognition. But the old Devon 
 palmer still, I think, defies time and change in its 
 own country, while as for the blue-upright, even if the 
 wings have in a measure been clipped off, who would 
 venture to mount an April cast at any rate without 
 one. After all, the same old naturals, though wonderful 
 names and classifications have been devised for them 
 by moderns sweltering in the weird vocabulary of dry- 
 fly purism, flit and spin through their brief and happy 
 day along the same old stream. Down in the hidden 
 waters between the alders, the rowans, and the oaks, 
 the whir of a feverish world has passed unheeded, 
 and here at any rate time has stood still, and the old, 
 old melodies are played. 
 
 I plied my glorified bean-stick with unremitting 
 ardour and with a novel delight, that has never yet 
 palled, in the ever-shifting surface and the strange 
 charms of a hill-born stream purling amid banks that 
 were part wood, part meadow, and part heath. I 
 had never been so happy in my brief and unclouded
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 existence as in the momentary expectation of killing 
 my first fish, except in the accomplishment of that 
 great design. We had some four miles of water all to 
 ourselves on this river, and my companions, older and 
 comparatively trout-wise, were too intent on their 
 own performances to bother much about me. So I 
 thrashed the stream assiduously by the light of nature 
 through all the leisure hours of daylight with my un- 
 handy weapon for a full three weeks, though cheered 
 and properly startled by an occasional rise (ah ! those 
 first flashes of a yellow side above the ripple) before 
 the great moment came, and when it did come it was 
 rather extra glorious. 
 
 Now, no knowledgeable angler will need to be told 
 that our trout in such a stream would average about 
 six to the pound. It had been dispiriting to return 
 empty-handed every day to a circle in which your 
 status, it might almost be said, for the warmer six 
 months depended upon your baskets. To say that 
 I can remember the spot out of which that first fish 
 was violently dragged would be ridiculously super- 
 fluous, since at this moment, after nearly half a century, 
 I can follow down in fancy that four miles of bewitch- 
 ing water, edcjy by eddy, stickle by stickle, and pool 
 by pool. I don't know how that fish took my fly, or 
 why I became suddenly aware that he was engaged 
 in such an artless enterprise, for there was no sign 
 above water. But I did, which proves that I had 
 made some progress. I have more than once in later 
 years seen a small boy engaged with his first trout 
 and how he lets it run about the water shouting in the 
 meanwhile to the attendant parent as to what he was 
 14
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 to do next. I had caught many before I could 
 exercise such composure, if such it can be called. 
 The first hundred at least of mine came flying out 
 willy-nilly. This one was too big to fly, but with the 
 sub-consciousness that one was on I ran backwards 
 in a sort of delirium, and a third-of-a-pounder was 
 whirled sideways on to the meadow, when I instantly 
 fell upon him, and having disengaged the hook went 
 straight home in a rapture. It was almost the largest 
 that had yet been caught that early spring, and the 
 triumph would not brook delay. 
 
 I held up my head after that, and for some reason 
 or other very seldom came home again quite empty- 
 handed. The spell was broken. A rod moreover 
 was purchased from Bowden of North Street, Exeter, 
 a maker patronised by the household for a specialty of 
 his, consisting of two whole cane joints and a lance- 
 wood top. I was now admitted as a brother fisher- 
 man, and by degrees worthy to join in the long dis- 
 cussions at night over the respective merits of this 
 pool or that stickle and all the rest of it. It may seem 
 ridiculous at such an age, but I cannot help what it 
 may seem, and there are plenty even of skilful fisher- 
 men who do not know what such a thing means to their 
 dying day. But the charm of that country, as would 
 have any similar country enjoyed with such freedom 
 through the medium in the first instance of its streams, 
 entered into my very soul. I must no doubt have been 
 rather abnormally susceptible to such influences, and 
 Exmoor with its quiet yet robust life, always in the 
 presence of what to one's youthful imagination were 
 rivers leading into mysterious, unexplored fairy-lands, 
 
 15
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 or into great moors stretching to infinity, exercised 
 an extraordinary and lifelong influence. Wild 
 horses would not have extracted an admission of such 
 day-dreams even had I been capable of giving expres- 
 sion to this vague sense of continual aesthetic enjoy- 
 ment. I was frequently rallied for absent-mindedness, 
 a new vice I think, and not being then much enamoured 
 of the literary tasks which imprisoned us for a portion 
 of most days, had no excuse for such mental eccen- 
 tricities. I was constantly being offered the pro- 
 verbial copper for my meditations. Had these been 
 capable of articulate shape and the offers been accepted, 
 my seniors would, I think, very often have been pro- 
 perly astonished. It was a wonderful existence in its 
 way for a boy of a sympathetic temperament. There 
 were no lessons in natural history, such would possibly 
 have been regarded as a bore. But simply an atmo- 
 sphere in which you were supposed to know every 
 ordinary fact connected with earth, sky, or water, and 
 you sucked it all in automatically, out of doors. If a 
 master at school, for instance, during a Sunday walk, 
 had pointed out the difference between a chaffinch 
 and a bullfinch, it might have been thought a little 
 tiresome and very likely forgotten. But here was 
 a circle where to confuse a sea-gull with a curlew, 
 or a pigeon with a hawk on the remote horizon was 
 accounted a disgrace, and to mistake a jack for a full 
 snipe simply wrote you down a hopeless ass or a Cockney. 
 This was admirable. All these and a thousand kindred 
 things were taken as a matter of course, than which 
 there is no better school. They were not holiday 
 interludes, but continued for three hundred days 
 16
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 of the year more or less throughout the changing 
 seasons. Topography and all it signified became 
 in this free, wide-ranging life something real. From 
 the moor just above, where in those days the black 
 game still bred, we could see nearly all over Devon- 
 shire and into north Cornwall, together with the 
 whole of the Bristol Channel and the long curving 
 coast of Wales with its shadowy, mysterious, back- 
 lying mountains. The habits of observation were 
 established without injunctions or precepts, and they 
 soon extended themselves from the things that were 
 near to the things that were far away. The maps of 
 infancy began to shape themselves into real things 
 of infinite interest, into hills, moors, valleys, and 
 seas. 
 
 The greatest joy of all, however, were the occasional 
 days upon the Barle. Our river washed the skirts 
 only of the moor, but the Barle cleft its silent heart. 
 It was a real solitary moorland stream, from where we 
 tapped it near its head four miles away in the gloomy 
 depths of Pinkerry pool, right down to Simmons- 
 bath, peaty and amber - coloured, running from 
 rocky shallows into deep dark pools which seemed 
 to my fevered unsophisticated fancy the potential 
 haunt of whales. In reality they were the stamping- 
 ground of three-ouncers and quarter-pounders and 
 a legion of sprats upon whom a venerable fly-dis- 
 daining Triton or two, made raids when they felt 
 hungry. 
 
 Sometimes these big ones made a mistake, but it 
 was not generally the proffered fly of the boy that 
 thus deceived them. Occasionally one of our party 
 B 17
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 at the close of a long day, when the wagonette picked 
 us up at Simmonsbath, had a three-quarter-pounder 
 in his basket to be handled admiringly by envious 
 hands, for some measure of rivalry was inevitable. It 
 is these wild days on the Barle, enjoyed at intervals 
 for several years, that come back to me most readily, 
 and which most certainly had the strongest fascination 
 dark days when the clouds raced over the bare hills, 
 and the wind whistled in the rushes and bog grasses, 
 and scurried with driving showers up the still tails of 
 the pools. There were never any strange fishermen in 
 those days on the upper Barle. It hadn't been dis- 
 covered. There was, moreover, a certain eeriness to the 
 very young idea in those long stormy days in the wilds, 
 and an almost fearful joy in following down the grim 
 brown waters through what, at that tender age, seemed 
 quite awe-inspiring solitudes. I well remember, too, 
 the thrill with which I first heard the wild breeding 
 cries of the curlews that came in spring to nest among 
 those lonely hills. 
 
 Our own river below the rectory was a joyous 
 silvery stream, overhung with oak, ash, or alder, 
 fringed with steep green irrigated meadows or flat 
 narrow strips of rushy pasture crunched by red bullocks 
 in summer, and in hard winter the frequent haunt 
 of snipe. One discovered, too, even thus early under 
 this system no, not system, for its natural matter-of- 
 course procedure was its high merit how much 
 superstition had to do with the assured beliefs of con- 
 ventional life. One learned that it was quite natural 
 and harmless to walk about in the water even in 
 March and April, if a fly had to be released, or it was
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 convenient to shift your bank, though a long drive 
 home might be impending. One learned also that 
 to be rained upon heavily for many hours, beyond 
 the passing discomfort which was not to be recognised, 
 was of no consequence whatever. And I see by the 
 official report of the British rainfall that the annual 
 deposit at this particular spot is sixty inches, nearly 
 thrice that of the region from which I write ! One 
 learned to regard the neck comforter, so deplorably 
 popular with doting mothers and anxious guardians 
 generally, as an unthinkable effeminacy, and an over- 
 coat as only permissible in a winter railway journey 
 or a long drive in the snow. And the north-western 
 slope of Exmoor was as cold as it was wet. I don't 
 know what our fond mammas would have said if 
 they had suspected the deliberate recklessness of our 
 code; but our guardians seemed to be possessed of some 
 heaven-sent inspiration of how a boy should be dealt 
 with. Nobody ever had a cold. I suppose there was 
 a doctor some dozen miles away, but I have no recol- 
 lection of his existence. There was incessant shooting, 
 too, in winter, but the weather was not ever, I think, 
 taken into the smallest account unless we were abso- 
 lutely snowed up, which sometimes happened on 
 Exmoor. I was supposed to be delicate when I went 
 there. It is quite certain that the cure was more 
 effective than any doctors. By the close of the first 
 fishing season I was tolerably handy with small trout, 
 and a curious thing happened in the summer holidays 
 which requires a short preamble. 
 
 As my people, according to their usual habit, were 
 to spend it in Switzerland, I was dispatched together
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 with a pony to some friends of ours in Shropshire, 
 where from childish recollections I anticipated and 
 assuredly found a second paradise. The prospect 
 was faintly clouded, to be sure, by that of a holiday 
 tutor, whose instructions I was to share with the 
 remaining son of the house, then passing from Marl- 
 borough to Oxford, and consequently far my senior. 
 Like most of his race he was a mighty Nimrod even 
 then well on in the making, and long afterwards un- 
 happily killed in the hunting-field. He was very 
 kind to me, but hated fishing. So, except for occasional 
 rides when my pony and I were urged to jumping 
 adventures of a kind unprecedented in my modest 
 experience, I saw little of him except at meals and 
 during the tutorial interlude, which was happily limited 
 to a single hour after breakfast. During this weary 
 procedure I remember he always nursed a fox-terrier, 
 and seemed to me to make it bark by some subtle 
 action whenever he was involved in a difficult passage. 
 For myself, I think I looked out of the window most 
 of the time, to where the waters in the park shone in- 
 vitingly in the morning sun. Our tutor being only 
 an undergraduate was naturally not a disciplinarian, 
 though he became afterwards a distinguished Indian 
 official. 
 
 For this, I should say, was a famous, nay, a historic 
 place, though now passed from its ancient owners. 
 My hosts being near relatives of the latter, I had the 
 free range of everything out of doors that would 
 make glad the heart of youth. But at this moment 
 many sheets of water of various sizes with their enor- 
 mous possibilities held my fancy fast. I had left 
 
 20
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 Exmoor with a wholly new outlook on many things. 
 Above all, the streams and rivers that in traversing 
 England the train strode in its course, became objects 
 of life, interest, and speculation. Here were pools 
 and lakes almost at the door. I knew nothing of 
 bottom-fishing, but that very fact enhanced the 
 mystery and the adventure. None of that mild float- 
 fishing with nurse or governess, so often engaged in 
 by juveniles, had ever come my way. Now, however, 
 I lost not an hour. By the advice of a sympathetic 
 butler who rummaged out some tackle, and with a tin 
 of worms, I commenced operations in a round pool, 
 some hundred yards in diameter and known in local 
 geography as the marlpit. This resulted in my first 
 introduction to the roach, whose novelty of appearance 
 after the Exmoor trout gave some zest to its capture. 
 But a day or two later I found myself in Shrewsbury, 
 with a view, I think, to buying tackle, in company 
 with my very much looked-up-to friend, and we 
 turned into what was then a celebrated tackle-shop. 
 Its proprietor, as a matter of fact, was something of a 
 notability, and as an expert taxidermist rather closely 
 associated with the great house in the park, which 
 contained a fine private museum of stuffed birds and 
 beasts. The old gentleman suggested we should 
 lunch with him, which we did very handsomely in a 
 room above the shop, on a portion of a beautiful 
 salmon he had killed in the Wye the day before, after 
 a hard fight, which he described at length. So I 
 was getting on ! My companion rallying me at table 
 anent my devotion to the roach in the marlpit, 
 Mr. S remarked, ' Why don't you catch some of 
 
 21
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 the pike there ; I 'm pretty sure it has been stocked. 
 I '11 give you some gimp hooks when we go down- 
 stairs and show you how to fix a live roach on, and then 
 you can try them.' 
 
 He was as good as his word, and next day I pro- 
 ceeded to carry out his instructions. To my delight 
 in a very short time away went the roach, and care- 
 fully observing the time limit for gorging impressed 
 upon me, I eventually felt the little Exmoor fly-rod 
 bending before the rather sullen excursions hither 
 and thither of what seemed to my callow experi- 
 ence a rather unenterprising whale. It was really 
 only a two pound jack (which I estimated at twice 
 that weight). But two pounds was two pounds on 
 Exmoor very much so ! I had by this time acquired 
 habits of restraint and did not try to fling the pike 
 over my head, but our tutor, who had come to witness 
 the experiment and was not a fisherman, got greatly 
 excited. We hauled it out successfully, and to 
 shorten the story we (for my preceptor raised a rod 
 and joined in the fray) repeated the experiment 
 again and again till within the next four or five days 
 we had grassed about fourteen small pike. After 
 this there was a lull, of so persistent a nature, that 
 we turned our attention to wider fields of enterprise. 
 Some days later, however, I was sitting alone at 
 the same pond, fishing for roach with a view to 
 bait and another attempt at the pike, when a voice 
 behind me called out, ' Hullo, young 'un, what 
 sport ? ' 
 
 Turning round I beheld a smart-whiskered gentle- 
 man whom I knew to be the son and heir of the great 
 22
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 man who was here lord of all. He sat down on the 
 bank beside me, mighty Nimrod and celebrated shot 
 though he was, and discoursed learnedly on the best 
 baits for roach. I soon let him know, however, that 
 roach were not the limit of my aspirations or indeed 
 of my trophies, and, in short, that I was only in pursuit 
 of them for pike bait, following up with an account 
 of the recent triumphs. ' Pike ! ' said he. ' You 
 don't mean it ! How many have you taken out of 
 here ? ' 
 
 ' Fourteen,' said I without a thought that so 
 wonderful an achievement would be accounted as 
 aught but a merit. 
 
 ' The devil you have ! and that I believe is about 
 the number I put in here last Easter to stock the pond. 
 Hang it ! That is the precise number ! There are 
 none left ! ' 
 
 I felt like taking an immediate leap into the pond 
 and remaining there. 
 
 After a truly painful silence he began, to my infinite 
 relief, to laugh loudly, swore I was a dangerous chap 
 to be about, that he would tell his uncle (my host) to 
 send me home or I should be cleaning out the big lake 
 next, and so on. 
 
 Oddly enough I never caught but one more pike 
 in my whole life, and that was the very next year, and 
 it weighed almost as much as the whole fourteen 
 from the marlpit. On this occasion I was staying 
 with friends in south Devon, and we drove over one 
 day to Slapton Ley, that curious freshwater mere only 
 divided from the sea by a strip of beach. My kind 
 host, almost as an afterthought and purely for my 
 
 23
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 benefit, hired a boat with man and tackle from the 
 
 hotel, and we, he and I, went a-fishing. There were 
 
 two rods, one for small fry, perch and suchlike, the 
 
 other for pike with live bait and tackle. My friend 
 
 not being an angler took charge of the former. I, as 
 
 an angling maniac and on the strength of my recent 
 
 Shropshire performance, took charge of the pike-rod. 
 
 In due course I had a run, and when the time for 
 
 striking came I thought I had hold of the bottom of 
 
 the lake. But it wasn't ; it was an enormous pike, 
 
 and in about a quarter of an hour, with the help of the 
 
 boatman, we had it on board, and it weighed eighteen 
 
 pounds. Curiously enough it was the largest that 
 
 had been killed in that public water for many years. 
 
 If it had been January instead of August it would have 
 
 been much heavier. My kind friend had it mounted 
 
 for me by old Pulman of Totnes, and I have it still. 
 
 The veteran taxidermist and fly-tier was so tickled at 
 
 the notion of so juvenile an angler being responsible 
 
 for so large a fish that throughout the next year or 
 
 two when he forwarded my shilling or half-crown's 
 
 worth of flies he used to insert after my name on the 
 
 envelope ' The Great Pike Catcher ! ' It was the 
 
 last pike of my life. I rested on my laurels. As a 
 
 matter of fact it was a branch of the sport that never 
 
 came much in my way nor made any particular appeal 
 
 to me. That was in truth a memorable year to me. 
 
 For it had so happened that the very month before 
 
 I had by a very similar accident achieved an even 
 
 greater triumph, which must assuredly be recounted 
 
 as this is a chapter of childish things. 
 
 By the summer of this my second season on Exmoor 
 24
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 I had become pretty handy with a trout-rod for a boy 
 of fourteen, and could kill two or three dozen fish on 
 a good day, treat a half-pounder in the water with 
 respect, and spin a Devon minnow, when the state 
 of the river demanded that alternative, reasonably 
 well. A worm in our circle was for some reason 
 absolutely taboo. I think the prejudice against it 
 was, and still is, pretty strong in Devonshire. But 
 as previously recorded, I had learned a great many 
 other things too, particularly a good deal of physical 
 geography, with trout, incredible though the fact 
 may seem, as a sort of basis for it. I had already 
 divided England into two distinct portions, one 
 worthy of desire, the other of no account at all. I had 
 always in my mind an as yet imperfectly defined line 
 which ran down from Yorkshire slantingwise to 
 south Devon. West of this line was mentally tabu- 
 lated a good country, one of hills and moors and rapid 
 trouting streams. East of it was a dull stodgy region 
 of tame outlook and sluggish rivers, mainly given over 
 to coarse fish. Wales and the north, particularly the 
 former, as I had looked constantly upon its distant 
 mountains, both from Exmoor and from Shropshire, 
 was to me a land of dreams and future trouting possi- 
 bilities strongly tinged with romance. I have that 
 feeling about England still, with certain modifications, 
 and couldn't shake it off if I tried, though I know 
 nearly the whole of both sides of that line and can draw 
 the last with greater precision. The sentiment of 
 locality or atmosphere was extraordinarily active in 
 my youthful breast even then, and at seventeen or 
 eighteen it had grown stronger still. It was Catholic 
 
 25
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in that it was aroused by any sample of the one type of 
 country and as indiscriminately repelled by the other. 
 Just before the summer holidays, after which I was 
 going to a public school, I heard to my delight that 
 instead of the usual move to Switzerland of my 
 parents we were going en famille to North Wales. 
 Visions of real mountains, of lakes and streams, visions 
 partly romantic and partly trouty rose gloriously 
 before me. I fairly shivered as it occurred to me that 
 Norfolk or the Isle of Wight might for strong reasons 
 have been the alternative. Marvellous to relate, too, 
 came a maternal intimation that my father had some 
 idea of taking up trout-fishing and that I was at once 
 to choose him a rod. It appears that my boyish 
 ardour had proved infectious in a most unsuspected 
 quarter. So an order was dispatched to Bowden of 
 Exeter, and when the samples came a committee of 
 three, the rector in the chair, myself, and another, 
 undertook the selection of a rod for a middle-aged 
 academic dignitary who had never even seen a fly 
 thrown. I hope I may be forgiven for an ulterior 
 interest in that rod. It was impossible to resist the 
 conviction that it would in no long time be mine, 
 which indeed proved correct and I used it for years. 
 Indeed the rector I am sure privately shared these 
 unworthy anticipations, for he winked quite obviously 
 as he gave his casting vote for a serviceable little rod 
 ' very like my own.' 
 
 Llanfairfechan, a small place in those days, proved 
 
 to be our prospective headquarters, and as we sped 
 
 along the Holyhead line towards it I watched the hills 
 
 growing into real mountains with profound exaltation. 
 
 26
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 Now Llanfairfechan is very handy to mountain wilds, 
 and I lost no time in searching the map for brooks 
 and tarns, of which there are several obscure ones 
 within reach, and without more a-do proceeded to 
 range the waste, rod in hand. It was familiar enough 
 going after Exmoor with a difference only in the awe- 
 inspiring mountains of the Snowdon range which 
 bounded the near horizon and aifected me no little. 
 My boyish efforts on the then attenuated Welsh 
 brooks and unruffled tarns of a rather dry July were 
 naturally not productive. I did not yet realise that 
 trout required some freshening up of the waters to 
 bestir themselves in that most torpid month, or that 
 a breeze was indispensable for lake fishing. A showery 
 afternoon in the Aber stream below the waterfall, I 
 remember, provided the only gleam of success save the 
 great achievement to which all this is leading up. 
 For it so happened that by good luck, though at the 
 moment I did not look at it this way, I was persuaded 
 to go into Bangor and have an offending tooth out. 
 The Holyhead line, it may be remembered, just before 
 reaching that ancient little cathedral town, crosses 
 a viaduct under which the Ogwen river may be seen 
 rushing swiftly down into the bordering woods of 
 Penrhyn castle. It is a glimpse to make any fisher- 
 man's mouth water. It was altogether too much for 
 me in spite of a toothache at that fevered period, 
 when the mystery of unsatisfied experiences was over- 
 mastering. 
 
 When I returned to Llanfairfechan minus a tooth 
 and ready for anything, the Ogwen river was the 
 burden of my theme. My father had not even taken 
 
 27
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 his rod out of its case except on the lawn before 
 leaving home, when his only remark was that it re- 
 minded him of a whip, for he was very fond of driving. 
 Indeed, my efforts at great expenditure of time and 
 muscle had not been encouraging to his maiden 
 ones. Moreover in such a country, in fine weather, 
 other attractions had naturally been strong. But he 
 thoroughly sympathised with the gentle art though 
 he continued to leave it severely alone, and permanently 
 as it so proved. In a moment of inspiration, however, 
 it was remembered that my godfather was a relative 
 of the owner of this glorious glimpse of wood and 
 water, so a letter was dispatched forthwith to that 
 kindly soul, and in due course a missive arrived at break- 
 fast addressed to me from Penrhyn castle presenting its 
 distinguished owner's compliments and permission to 
 fish for two days in the Penrhyn water for trout (under- 
 lined). 'He thinks you are a grown-up,' said one of 
 my small sisters, surveying the address on the impor- 
 tant-looking envelope, a just remark no doubt. ' It is 
 quite obvious,' said my father drily, ' that your exploit 
 
 upon the marlpit at H has got about the world.' 
 
 For myself I had not read the Field diligently for two 
 years for nothing, and moreover salmon ran up our 
 Exmoor stream in late autumn to spawn. So I ex- 
 plained that this merely precluded me from fishing 
 for salmon. * And why shouldn't he catch salmon as 
 well as trout,' said my mother in a rather aggrieved 
 tone of voice an ingenuous remark, for which her 
 East Anglian breeding was, in those days, a sufficient 
 excuse. 
 
 A friend of ours from Bangor happened to turn up 
 28
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 that day, and hearing of my contemplated exploit 
 kindly offered to put me up for the night as being 
 nearer the scene of action. In the meantime, to my 
 infinite joy and the disgust no doubt of Llanfairfechan 
 generally, a heavy rain fell and the local brook, hitherto 
 a bed of large boulders, with an almost imperceptible 
 trickle between them, came down in spate. I judged 
 my time as it proved to a nicety, and a day or two 
 afterwards took an early train to Bangor and found 
 my way, I forget how, to the stretch below the railway 
 viaduct. The river was still a thought high but drop- 
 ping down into a nice colour. This was much the 
 biggest job I had yet undertaken, even without the 
 unimaginable adventure which it brought about. 
 Indeed, I had a rather disconcerting sensation of not 
 being equal to it. The river was much too wide to 
 cover from the bank, and at that moment too deep and 
 rapid to wade ; I felt my little Exmoor rod to be 
 distinctly inadequate. But I could throw a pretty 
 good line for my age, and succeeded in capturing a few 
 rather modest trout. Then came a moment of great 
 excitement, and I got into a sea trout whose sides 
 glittered gloriously as he leapt again and again out of 
 the water. It was only a small one, about three- 
 quarters of a pound, but a big fish to me when I got 
 him successfully out on to a gravelly beach. It was 
 not very long after this quite exhilarating event when 
 my tail fly, a Devon red palmer with gilt twist, as it 
 was sweeping round from somewhere near midstream, 
 was seized, and I experienced something of a shock. 
 The rod point went down, my line, of which I had 
 only thirty yards, began to whiz from the reel, and I 
 
 29
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 found myself chasing a leviathan down the banks at 
 full speed. Mercifully the rush was short, for just 
 below in a big pool matters came to a stop. I have 
 no clear idea how the fish and I kept on terms as the 
 former bored about the pool, but I had a pretty fair 
 notion of what gut would stand and had enough line 
 for immediate purposes. 
 
 At that ever-blessed moment, however, I heard an 
 exclamation, and the keeper, as it proved to be, ap- 
 peared beside me. The fish had not jumped, but I 
 did not need him to tell me it was a salmon, though 
 I needed him desperately to help me struggle with it. 
 If he had approached in just wrath at seeing an urchin 
 in round jackets fishing his best salmon water at the 
 very moment of its perfection, he bridled his choler 
 and entered into the spirit of the fray, shouting in- 
 structions in Welsh-English as the fish bored about 
 the pool. Just below us was a single large alder-tree 
 projecting from the bank. If the fish took another 
 dart down stream, we, or at least I, was absolutely 
 done, for the water beneath the tree was unwadeable. 
 This is just however what the salmon proceeded very 
 shortly to do, whereupon the Welshman snatched the 
 rod out of my hand, and slid into the river up to his 
 waist. Holding the little rod in his left hand, and 
 grasping the brush round the alder trunk with his right 
 he swung himself round somehow and scrambled out on 
 to the bank beyond and after the fish again, who came 
 to a halt in another pool just below. Here he returned 
 me the rod, and as there were no more rushes the 
 battle eventually ended in our favour, the keeper 
 tailing the fish on a bit of gravel beach. It was a 
 30
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 beauty, fresh from the sea and of just six pounds 
 weight. As it stretched its shapely length upon the 
 grass the earth for me swam round in wild career, and 
 I thanked heaven for my godfather and my once 
 accursed tooth. The keeper genuinely pleased, I 
 think, with so adroitly saving the fish, and possibly 
 melted by the momentary distinction I had achieved, 
 forbore to press the mystery of my presence in this 
 sacred spot. So it fell to me to take the initiative. 
 I produced my letter and was quite ready to go before 
 the magistrates or even to prison, if necessary, for 
 exceeding the conditions contained therein. How- 
 ever, the keeper only laughed. And when my pro- 
 spective host from Bangor appeared upon the amazing 
 scene, which he did very shortly as pre-arranged, 
 and gave the worthy Welshman five shillings, it was 
 a fitting crown to the great moment so far of my brief 
 life. 
 
 The pike raid of the preceding year faded into 
 insignificance beside this glorious day. The eighteen- 
 pound pike of the following month, though more 
 curious as a mere incident, did not exalt me to nearly 
 the same extent. The events of the afternoon are 
 not worthy of remembrance ; I looked for a salmon 
 every throw, but found only a few small trout. As 
 I walked that summer evening, however, through the 
 streets of Bangor carrying the fish conspicuously dis- 
 played, I was probably the proudest wight that ever 
 trod its pavements. My host had kindly asked two 
 or three boy friends to his bachelor dinner-table that 
 night when we ate the fish. They were older and I 
 dare say wiser than I, but they seemed to me on that 
 
 31
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 occasion mere children. A heavy rain that night and 
 rising water robbed me of my second day. But I 
 could bear even that now. I should have preferred 
 perhaps to have taken the salmon back to Llanfair- 
 fechan instead of only the sea trout and the minor 
 fry, as it would have made an impression on a family 
 innocent of these things, such as a mere narrative 
 supported by figures in avoirdupois could not do. 
 My father realised something at any rate of its import. 
 But my mother who, though she ate a great many of 
 my trout in after years, never grasped anything asso- 
 ciated with the catching of them, merely remarked 
 that she was glad I had caught one salmon at least, as 
 she thought the clause about the trout in my letter 
 of permission just a little shabby ! 
 
 Yet upon the whole I think the dinner in Bangor 
 gave greater satisfaction than would even the ex- 
 hibition of the salmon in the domestic circles. For 
 the other boy guests who had been some time at a 
 public school were no doubt prepared to be patron- 
 ising. My host, moreover, decided that we would say 
 nothing to them about the keeper's assistance. And 
 I dare say I comported myself as if a salmon was an 
 everyday occurrence. 
 
 School life in those days, when there was often no 
 Easter vacation at all, or a very short one, and the 
 summer holidays began at the end of June and closed 
 in mid August, was dead against trout-fishing. The 
 west country streams had generally run to nothing, and 
 the trout in any case waxed indifferent, while as for 
 the Kennet, it presented a solid surface from bank 
 to bank of flowering weeds, upon which you could 
 32
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 almost walk. One memorable summer, however, I 
 was voted old enough to appreciate Switzerland. Old 
 enough indeed ! My respected seniors little guessed 
 what hills and mountains had been to me this long 
 time. 
 
 We were a party of eight, six grown-ups, an Oxford 
 freshman, and myself, aged seventeen. I had ascer- 
 tained that there were trout in Switzerland and the 
 rod went along the one purchased for my father, 
 which had now, as foretold, been definitely handed 
 over. It got me into trouble at the very first start 
 off. For after a day or two in Paris, then in the hey- 
 day of the second empire, we were starting for Switzer- 
 land, and for some specific purpose or other I arrived 
 at the Paris station rather before the rest of the party. 
 To make sure no doubt that if all of our baggage went 
 wrong, a possibility that to a young and callow Briton 
 seemed imminent, my rod should not, I stuck to it, 
 and was walking up and down the platform with it in 
 my hand, waiting for the others. Now it so happened 
 that the screw of the spike at the end of the butt 
 had rusted in, and not being able to withdraw it, this, 
 to the French eye, apparently formidable spear-head 
 protruded beyond the case. I was presently tapped 
 on the shoulder by a gentleman in uniform who, 
 pointing to my Exmoor rod, asked me (I presume) 
 why I was carrying about a deadly weapon. My 
 French was that of the regulation two hours a week, 
 so contemptuously regarded at a public school, and 
 not calculated to oil the wheels of foreign travel. 
 
 So I could only look helplessly round for some of our 
 party to come and ease the situation. In the mean- 
 c 33
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 time I was disarmed or I would have unfastened the 
 case and displayed the ridiculously inoffensive nature 
 of the suspected thing. Then another official in the 
 uniform apparently of a field-marshal was called into 
 animated council, during which the two examined the 
 spear and felt its point. 
 
 I ought perhaps to say in possible extenuation of 
 these strange proceedings that attempts on the life 
 of the emperor were just then much on the official 
 mind. I was then beckoned to follow the two gor- 
 geous ones, and as they had my precious rod, there 
 was no alternative. I was conducted the whole length 
 of the platform, after the manner, so it struck me, of 
 a conspirator caught in the very act, and then into 
 a room where a third field-marshal was writing at 
 a desk. Then a tremendous discussion took place, 
 during which I was again accosted, and of course to 
 no purpose whatever. I tried to get hold of the rod 
 to undo its wrappings and expose the absurdity of the 
 business, but this perhaps was regarded as the action 
 of a desperado, and I was so disconcerted that even the 
 elementary French that had survived from the gover- 
 ness period refused to come. At last, however, a 
 brilliant inspiration seized me, and I ejaculated very 
 loud ' Mon pere et ma mere id dans la station? ' Ha 
 ha ! ' said the gorgeous ones taking me by the shoulder. 
 Another of the field-marshals bearing the deadly weapon 
 a-head, they marched me back along the platform, 
 where to my relief I espied our party just arrived. 
 They were a good deal startled to see me apparently 
 under arrest, and when I explained to them the cause 
 the ladies went into such peals of laughter that my 
 
 34
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 escort began to look more truculent than ever, and 
 I trembled lest in some way I should become the 
 innocent victim of their unseemly mirth. My father 
 however succeeded in maintaining a straight face, 
 and with the utmost politeness informed them, so I 
 gathered, that I was an innocent British schoolboy and 
 that the instrument I was carrying was only a fishing- 
 rod. This was accepted with salutes all round, and 
 thus was I snatched from the jaws of the Bastille and 
 restored to the bosom of my prodigiously amused 
 family. How little my respected sire guessed when 
 he inspired the purchase of that rod, and how little 
 we recked when we selected it on the lawn of the 
 Exmoor rectory, that it would ever be in the hands 
 of French officials as a suspected instrument for the 
 murder of the French emperor ! Seriously, however, 
 I have not to this day the remotest notion what these 
 people were after. 
 
 We had scarcely touched Swiss soil before my pis- 
 catorial ardour nearly landed the Oxonian and myself 
 in an awkward and ludicrous situation. My friend, 
 who is now, by the way, a most distinguished dean, 
 though he hailed from a trouting country, was not 
 much given over to the pursuit of fish. But we spent 
 a day and night at Constance, and adventuring the 
 shore of the lake at evening I hauled out a good-sized 
 fish, of the carp tribe, which acted so powerfully on 
 my companion's mind that we agreed to get up early 
 the next morning and repeat the experiment at the 
 same spot about a mile from the town. By a mere 
 accident I have my fishing journal for this year, and 
 the strange fish it recorded as an ' arle,' weight one 
 
 35
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 and a quarter pounds, and the bait cheese ! We were 
 abjured and implored to be back for breakfast and an 
 early start for the Engadine via Chur, and threatened 
 in case of failure to be abandoned to our fate as helpless 
 British boys, in a strange land, innocent of any speech 
 but our own. For I do not think I am doing my 
 friend the dean an injustice in saying that he was then 
 scarcely more effective than I in this particular, though 
 he was a scholar of his college. 
 
 We carried our scheme out only too thoroughly. 
 What possessed us I cannot think. Whether the big 
 fish demonstrated in tantalising fashion for we caught 
 none neither of us at this day can recall, or whether 
 we jointly suffered from mental aberration as to the 
 flight of time. But it is quite certain that the first 
 thing which awoke us to our situation was the rumble 
 of a train along the lake shore just behind us and frantic 
 shouts and waving of handkerchiefs from a carriage 
 window. Then we knew we were lost. We had no 
 money to speak of in our pockets, nor did I know 
 precisely whither our party were bound. Possibly 
 my companion knew just so much. A wild but, as 
 it proved, saving instinct seized both of us. Without 
 a moment's hesitation, I carrying the rod with the 
 bait still on the hook, we started off in pursuit of the 
 train, the demonstrations from the window, though 
 growing more distant, cheering us on. It was those 
 alone indeed that buoyed us on. We thought it 
 suggested some hope, absurd though it seemed to run 
 after a railway train, howsoever slow its pace. As a 
 matter of fact we proved by a mere accident to be 
 little over half a mile from the next station. But
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 we ran one of those agonising sprints that most of us 
 have had occasionally to suffer at one time or another. 
 Doubtless our party by painting the tragedy of the 
 situation, melted the heart of the stationmaster, or 
 possibly even oiled his palm. But at any rate we arrived 
 in time and fell panting and breathless, rod and all, into 
 the laps of our most indignant seniors. I am afraid that 
 this here veraciously narrated incident was told with 
 growing improvements, in the circle to which we both 
 belonged, for many a long year afterwards. Indeed, 
 I have listened to it oftentimes myself, how we raced 
 a slow Swiss train, caught it up in full career, and were 
 dragged through the window ; and for myself, I almost 
 came to believe in these, its heroic features. But at 
 the time far from being heroes we were in considerable 
 disgrace with the rest of the party for our quite un- 
 pardonable absent-mindedness. 
 
 A dull, cheerless, showery day at Chur, where some 
 small, attenuated, blue-looking boiled trout, served 
 cold, had aroused my curiosity and also contempt from 
 a culinary point of view, sent me out scouring the 
 country, rod in hand. The first mountains of six 
 thousand feet or so I had ever seen towered im- 
 mediately above, I remember, and impressed me 
 mightily. A mile or two away I came upon the 
 upper Rhine, a big stream sprawling just here over a 
 broad, shallow, stony bed. Having, as already noted, 
 the sentiment of topography strong within me, I 
 burned to record the capture of one trout at least in 
 the famous river. I succeeded just so far, wading into 
 cold, half blue, half milky-looking shallows and killing 
 one miserable specimen after the pattern of those 
 
 37
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 served in the hotel. However, I have it duly entered 
 in my journal. July 1st. Rhine, one trout. Settled in 
 the Engadine for most of the ensuing month, between 
 the mountain climbs or on wet days, of which last I 
 remember there was a fair sprinkling, I scoured the 
 lakes and streams over what is now the happy hunting- 
 ground, winter and summer, of thousands of tourists. 
 In those days it had only been partially discovered. 
 The hotels were few, small, and undeniably rough. 
 A sizeable caravanserai at St. Moritz alone suggested 
 any flavour of the outer world. But, large or small, 
 they seemed to me most dreary and forlorn, though I 
 probably troubled their interior as little perhaps as 
 any one. Though neither an epicure nor a sybarite 
 the food struck even me as unpalatable and painfully 
 monotonous. My seniors, who were old habitues, 
 came prepared to rough it and to depend largely on 
 bread, honey, stewed fruit, and boiled trout. I shared, 
 I am afraid, the schoolboy prejudice of that day for 
 a beef and beer diet. We were regaled to be sure 
 with portions of what my experienced elders alluded 
 to with holiday levity as goat, but I did not myself 
 see any fun in it. But the outdoor fascinations of 
 course far outweighed the indoor shortcomings of the 
 then primitive Engadine. The landlord seemed to 
 be on terms of old acquaintance with the few English 
 who then forgathered here, most of them university 
 dons or the like, all of whom seemed to know personally 
 one or other of our party. We were at Pontresina 
 mostly, and neither there nor anywhere else except 
 at the St. Moritz hotel could there have been accom- 
 modation for very many visitors. What the epicu- 
 
 38
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 rcan tourists of to-day would have said to the menage 
 I cannot imagine ! 
 
 The trouting potentialities of the Engadine, how- 
 ever, offered to my but half-experienced eye a great 
 and virgin field, not virgin in one sense, for the native 
 anglers were in considerable evidence, and doubtless 
 are so still, with gigantic bamboo poles, from which 
 they flung an impaled grasshopper on lake and stream. 
 They wondered at my little jointed rod and Mr. Pul- 
 man's flies, for I doubt if they had ever seen such an 
 outfit before. No Englishman, so far as I could learn, 
 had ever then fished there. I had compiled a fishing 
 vocabulary, which I, still have, of about forty German 
 words relating to the sport. So with the help of 
 gesticulations I could put leading questions to my 
 brother sportsmen if not exchange fish stories with 
 them. But they either did not answer at all, or over- 
 whelmed me with such torrents of eloquence that 
 I was glad to escape, no wiser than before. The trout 
 were small, sometimes of a colour and condition that 
 won my approval, sometimes of the blue and starve- 
 ling type suggestive of glacier water. I was not very 
 successful, but it was novel and interesting, and on 
 each occasion some fresh prospect held out untold 
 possibilities. The experiences of Devonshire no doubt 
 wanted some readjustment. But one or two ventures 
 did prove quite successful. 
 
 Now my Oxonian companion had been quite badly 
 bitten by my enthusiasm, and for lack of alternative 
 had invested a franc or two in a twenty-foot bamboo 
 pole. It was unhandy to be sure as an article of bag- 
 gage, and when we shifted quarters I well remember 
 
 39
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 him bearing it nobly aloft on an eight-hour walk over 
 one of the passes into Italy, which will attest the 
 measure of his new-born zeal. It happened that we 
 were all stopping a few days at the little hotel, then 
 the only one on the shores of the top lake of the En- 
 gadine Sils Maria, I think it is called. One afternoon, 
 just below the outlet from this lake of the river Inn, 
 where it swished gently through some hay meadows, 
 my friend and I struck a really good rise of fish, and 
 nice well-conditioned ones, too. We were pulling 
 them out almost every cast, the bamboo participating 
 fully in the sport, when we became aware of a tall and 
 portly figure advancing towards us with minatory 
 gesture. It was evidently the proprietor of the 
 meadows, and though the waters were not preserved, 
 it was, we learned, and is still, no doubt, in Switzer- 
 land a high misdemeanour to tread even harmlessly 
 upon the edge of hay-fields before the crop has been 
 cut. This may have been the situation, then, but we 
 did not realise it, or we may possibly have been merely 
 wading in the shallow edge of the water. At any 
 rate we held, and probably with justice, that we were 
 doing no damage. And when the old gentleman 
 opened fire with volley after volley, concerning the 
 purport of which there could be no manner of doubt, 
 we merely rejoined at intervals, I regret to say, with a 
 ' Nein Deutscb, nein Deutsch.' The sport was too good ; 
 we simply could not leave it. And I fear we didn't 
 till the rise stopped and our persecutor had long 
 retired shaking his stick at us and inveighing, no doubt, 
 with what breath he had left on the accursed British 
 race. On that occasion we quite filled a long botanical
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 tin I had borrowed from one of the ladies and used to 
 carry slung on a strap in lieu of a creel. On the next 
 day, I see by the before-mentioned journal, I got 
 nearly as good a basket close to the outlet of the lake. 
 A black palmer and a red-upright (red quill) being 
 recorded as the effective lures on both occasions. I 
 should have assuredly remembered the first item 
 without the assistance of the journal if only for an 
 amusing scene that occurred in the salle a manger of 
 the little inn where we were staying. The success of 
 these two days had greatly impressed our waiter, a 
 tall, sad-looking man, who apparently in his leisure 
 hours otherwise those of the night was an ardent 
 wielder of the bamboo and grasshopper. He ex- 
 hibited great amazement and curiosity at the fragile 
 and diminutive nature of our artificial flies. So I 
 presented him with a few black palmers, upon which 
 he fell on his knees upon the bare floor, and clasping 
 my two hands between his own, poured out a torrent 
 of gratitude before the rest of the party, who were 
 greatly impressed. He went out, so he told us the 
 next morning, and fished all night on the strength of 
 it, but alas ! caught nothing, as might, perhaps, poor 
 fellow, be expected under the circumstances. 
 
 I never shall forget, however, one tragic incident 
 that happened a few days after this, and though it had 
 nothing to do with fishing, it had everything to do 
 with a mountain stream. I cannot recall the name 
 of the place or the precise locality, never having been 
 in Switzerland since. But I think it occurred during 
 a few days in the Austrian Tyrol. I remember we 
 journeyed for hours in berg-wagons, by rough tracks 
 
 4 1
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 through pine forests and picnicked at an old bear- 
 hunter's hut. Thence proceeding, we reached a 
 valley village crossing at its entrance a little brook we 
 scarcely noticed, it was so insignificant. Just after 
 reaching the rustic inn, early in the afternoon, one of 
 the most fearful storms I have ever seen, either in the 
 old or the new world, burst upon the devoted spot, 
 accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning, while 
 the rain fell for three or four hours in solid sheets. 
 Possibly what the Americans call a cloudburst occurred 
 higher up. For within that period the trifling brook 
 had become a raging torrent, rolling great rocks before 
 it through the village as if they had been packing- 
 cases. The village itself was on a slope and no great 
 damage was done to the buildings, but the entire 
 breadth of tillage and meadow lands filling the floor 
 of the narrow valley, and on which the inhabitants 
 depended for their livelihood, was absolutely de- 
 stroyed ; not merely the crops of the year, which would 
 have meant mere temporary disaster, but the soil was 
 washed clean away and nothing left but the hard sterile 
 pan, littered with great deposits of sand and gravel 
 and masses of rocks and boulders. The despair of the 
 unfortunate people was dreadful, and it was in truth 
 a most harrowing scene, being unprecedented in the 
 experience of that generation. The women flung 
 themselves on their knees or rushed wildly hither and 
 thither with their menfolk. It fell to my father, 
 the only man remaining of our now diminished party, 
 to be the recipient, in the excitement of the moment, 
 of many woebegone out-pourings which I witnessed. 
 When we got home he wrote to the papers and got 
 42
 
 THE MICROBE 
 
 up a subscription for the ruined village, but I cannot 
 imagine how life went with them. For I have often 
 since that time seen alluvial valley land washed away 
 after the same fashion in America, and know well 
 what it means. But in such cases it was merely por- 
 tions of large properties, and the loss was not irretriev- 
 able. But still the land affected remains useless for ages, 
 and how these unfortunates fared, to whom their 
 land was their all, I cannot conceive. 
 
 43
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 II 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 THE cult of the Highlands has been so 
 dominant among south country sports- 
 men and tourists of later generations, that 
 the ancient fame of the Welsh Dee has been in a 
 measure eclipsed by its northern namesake. It 
 seems always to require the distinguishing prefix 
 which writers on the Scottish Dee appear to regard 
 as superfluous. Royalty, moreover, now dwells 
 upon the banks of the Highland river, and has 
 further glorified it. It is a long time since seven kings 
 rowed upon the Welsh Dee with their would-be Saxon 
 suzerain as cox, though how they succeeded with 
 such a lob-sided crew in trimming the boat history 
 does not say. The Angevin and Plantagenet kings 
 knew only one Dee, this Welsh one, and that pretty 
 nearly as well as they knew the Thames, and usually 
 to their great discomfort. And did not Henry of 
 Bolingbroke and his son know every yard of its banks 
 from Chirk to Bala through the long years before 
 they had finished with its unconquerable son Owain 
 of Glyndyfrdwy, Owen of the Glen of the Dee. More- 
 over, is not the Dyfrdwy by ancient tradition held as 
 sacred, a fact its very name proclaims to the initiated. 
 
 44
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 Divine mystic attributes have vaguely clung to its 
 clear restless waters since time began for bards and 
 seers, and it has pleased them all from Taliesin to 
 Tennyson to fancy that its streams whisper the for- 
 gotten secrets of ancient days. The dry-fly purist, I 
 know, feels none of these things. Nay, he seems 
 almost to resent their association with fishing. He 
 does not understand what they have to do with it, 
 and so there is nothing more to be said. But there 
 are no dry-fly purists upon the Dee. It is pre- 
 eminently a wet-fly river. For myself I admit without 
 shame that the romantic scenery of the upper, or 
 Welsh, half of the Dee, and more especially that which 
 I have chiefly frequented, added to the wealth of story 
 that gathers about its banks, has been to me an in- 
 finite addition to the more material but engrossing 
 pursuit of its fish. 
 
 Now, in the very heart of North Wales, fringed 
 with the gracious verdure of farms, hamlets, and 
 country houses, but in the lap of overhanging grouse 
 moors, Llyn Tegid, or as we usually call it from the 
 little town at its lower end, Bala lake, spreads its five- 
 mile length. The Dee comes brawling out of it a full- 
 fledged lusty river, having entered it but a trifling 
 brook. It is sometimes said, probably by those who 
 have had but a passing glance from the train windows, 
 that Bala lake is of no great scenic account. I don't 
 know how that may be. But from its unruffled bosom 
 on a still summer evening, I have seen the peaks of 
 Arran, which pile up some three thousand feet behind 
 its western end, reflecting their shapely masses in its 
 glassy surface as in a mirror. This I think is sufficient, 
 
 45
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 even if it were all or anything like all, to save the 
 character of a sheet of water that is hardly twice as 
 far from London as the Norfolk Broads ! Out of 
 these wild hills and moors that mass themselves 
 behind the head of Bala lake, as do other moors 
 and mountains farther back, and less obviously, to 
 the north and south of it, come leaping many 
 impetuous streams ; notably three, of which the 
 smallest and the middle one holds the honours, and 
 with piping voice proclaims itself the Dyfrdwy, other- 
 wise the sacred Dee. 
 
 Why it should be so I know not, for both the others 
 to the north and south respectively, the Twrch and 
 the Lliw, are quite sizeable fishing streams, while the 
 Dyfrdwy is something less than that. The habitual 
 traveller to Barmouth or Dolgelly knows it well, if 
 not its import, as the train climbs up the lonely pass 
 towards the seacoast watershed, for as a brown peaty 
 brook, playing among the mosses, the bogs, the rocks, 
 the alders, and the birches, it twists in and out of the 
 line till somewhere in the bosky foreground it dis- 
 appears from sight and mind. And if the traveller 
 cranes his neck a little and knows when to look up, he 
 will see for a moment or two the crest of Arran Benllyn, 
 with a patch of snow in most months upon its northern 
 tip. It is not for nothing that the infant Dee comes 
 breaking out from its foot, since it is this sombre birth- 
 place that made the great river below sacred in the 
 eyes of the men of old and in the ears of poets of all 
 ages. For here, following tradition, Spenser places the 
 scene of young King Arthur's upbringing by Timon, 
 his foster father.
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 His dwelling is low in a valley green, 
 
 Under the foot of Rauran 1 mossy hore, 
 
 From whence the River Dee, as silver clean, 
 
 His tumbling billows roll with gentle rore : 
 
 There all my days he trained me up in vertuous lore. 
 
 But it was not hereabouts that I used to go, and 
 occasionally still go, seriously a-fishing. For there is a 
 bit of the river, some seven miles in all, that for the last 
 quarter of a century has always held me as the period 
 of the March brown draws near sometimes only 
 in dreams, sometimes to accomplishment. This is 
 between the old five-arched stone bridge at Llan- 
 saintffraid lately re-christened Carrog, since there 
 are seventeen Llansaintffraids in Wales, and the chain 
 bridge over the rapids at Berwyn just above Llan- 
 gollen. From Bala to Corwen, a dozen miles, and 
 indeed on to Carrog, two miles below again, the 
 curving river sweeps through the meadowy vale of 
 Edeyrnion in alternating stream and pool and always 
 overhung by the high, waving barrier of the Berwyn 
 mountains. After this it enters the narrow troughs 
 of Glyndyfrdwy and thenceforward, amid a beautiful 
 confusion of wood and rock, pressed between unfold- 
 ing heights of quite imposing stature, urges its resound- 
 ing course into the famous vale of Llangollen. 
 
 The traveller by the Great Western to the west 
 coast watering-places, already invoked at the cradle 
 of Arthur, scarcely leaves the Dee, from its entry into 
 England at Ruabon to its source in the Arrans. In the 
 reaches I have in mind, however, the river is so buried 
 in woods that there is little to be seen of it after the 
 
 1 Arran. 
 
 47
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 burst of the leaf. In the days of that misnamed 
 insect, the March brown, however, otherwise early 
 or mid April, there are not yet any leaves. The larch 
 is having its brief hour of pre-eminence, and with the 
 radiancy of its fresh tender green is filling the souls 
 of men with thankfulness before they forget it in the 
 ampler promise of spring. The willows, too, are 
 helping to brighten the still brown and gray tone of 
 the woods, and the buds of the giant sycamores that 
 love the banks and hillsides of the Dee are but waiting 
 for a week of zephyrs and sunshine to strike yet one 
 more note of gladness in the great curtain of foliage. 
 I know nowhere any finer vistas of woodland and 
 fretting waters than unfold themselves to the few 
 whose privilege it is to follow them through the 
 lengthening days and through the ancient domain of 
 the mysterious hero of Wales. The railroad, moreover, 
 here abandons for once in sheer despair the tortuous 
 defiles of the Dee, and burrowing through the great 
 shoulder of a mountain, leaves the river to describe a 
 wide horse-shoe loop of several miles and to chafe the 
 broad green base of Moel Gamelin, whose crest, some 
 seventeen hundred feet in air, makes again and again 
 a perfect background to the glancing waters and the 
 encompassing woods. But you must be down in the 
 water to see all this, and the wading is as rough and 
 slippery as that of any bit of river it has ever been 
 given me to walk about in, and these have been a good 
 few. It is not nice to sit down suddenly, certainly 
 not in the Dee in April, for the chill of the snow is 
 generally still in the water. The trout are astir 
 betimes here, and it may be added they retire early
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 early in the season, that is to say. Save those of 
 the lower Usk, which are even more so, I know no other 
 river-trout in this respect so curious. Innocent wights, 
 from Liverpool or elsewhere, come along in June, to 
 say nothing of the next two months, and finding a 
 glorious-looking river just fining down perhaps from 
 a flood, take out a ticket, and, unless the look of the 
 wading scares them, labour diligently and full of hope. 
 But they never catch anything to speak of, not with 
 a fly at any rate, and comparing notes with other 
 innocents perhaps upon the bank, or with others in the 
 outside world, they decide that the Dee is no good, 
 or that there are no trout. They have never seen a 
 rise of March brown on the sacred stream, nor yet 
 those baskets, sometimes hovering on twenty pounds 
 weight, that in early April are lifted out of the coracle 
 in the evening at the horse-shoe weir by Llantisilio. 
 
 The basket, to be sure, may be proportionately 
 light, for Dee trout are tricky, but not often does 
 such misfortune fall to the coracle fisher of reasonable 
 skill under reasonable conditions. For it should be 
 explained that there are two methods of adventuring 
 these Glyndyfrdwy waters. You may wade them or 
 fish them dry-shod from a coracle as it bears you 
 swiftly or slowly, according to the river's momentary 
 humours, over the surface. The former is the more 
 usual method, for the excellent reason that only one, 
 or at the most two coracles with their skippers are 
 available, according to the rules of the Association 
 which controls these waters. And furthermore, when 
 the river is low, which in a dry spring is of course the 
 case, coracling is tiresome if not actually impossible. 
 D 49
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 There is nothing novel in a day's wading, though it 
 has its little incidents. But trouting from a coracle 
 in rapid water, as here practised, is an art unique, I 
 think, in Great Britain, though there are coracles used 
 under different conditions on some other Welsh 
 rivers. I shall therefore say something of it. Certainly 
 the exhilaration of those fevered hours, which once 
 a year I generally treated myself to, is not decreased 
 by the feeling that there are probably not twenty 
 anglers in the kingdom who ever share such experiences. 
 
 When I first embarked on those novel voyages 
 Evan Evans was the only licensed ' cwrwgle ' man 
 on the water, and both he and his craft abode at 
 Llangollen. His procedure then, like that of his 
 successors of to-day, was to come up with his coracle 
 by the morning train to Carrog station, and there, 
 two hundred yards away, on Llansaintffraid bridge, 
 to find his fare awaiting him. For it was more than 
 likely the latter would be stopping at that snug but 
 simple little hostelry The Grouse, just above the 
 bridge, where as many fish stories for the size of the 
 place and its company have been told, I should think, 
 as in any similar haunt in Britain, during the last half- 
 century. For there were many miles of streamy, 
 easily-waded waters handy to it for both trout and 
 salmon, and nine miles of rugged, woody, and strong 
 pent-up currents below. The inn windows, too, 
 looked right down on the old seventeenth-century 
 bridge with its five massive arches, through which 
 you could hear the river softly swishing as you lay in 
 bed at night. 
 
 Many an Easter tourist bound for Barmouth has 
 50
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 gaped wonderingly from the carriage window as Evan 
 Evans or his successor hauls his relic of the Brythonic 
 period out of the guard's van at Carrog station, 
 hoists it on his back, and waddles away down the road 
 towards the river, like some prehistoric tortoise on its 
 hind-legs. For a coracle is really rather an uncanny 
 thing at the first acquaintance, and there must be 
 something uplifting in the sight of it. Otherwise 
 its ejection from the guard's van at way-stations here- 
 abouts would not stir up the English passengers in the 
 way it invariably does the young ones particularly. 
 Indeed it is a fine opportunity for the Liverpool or 
 Birmingham quiverful, of historical temperament, to 
 test the diligence with which his offspring have perused 
 the glowing pages of Mrs. Markham or whatever 
 stands to-day for that incomparable book. I have 
 heard him myself in my innumerable journeys up 
 and down that bit of railroad improve the occasion 
 more than once. 
 
 Indeed I feel strongly the ancient British sentiment 
 of the coracle myself when I am rocking down the 
 river in it, so utterly unlike is it to any other craft, 
 while the romance of the passage heightens illusions. 
 It is true that the wickerwork is now covered with 
 tarpaulin instead of with the hides of ferce nature? ; 
 but that is a detail. The shape is intimidating to the 
 novice on first going aboard, a rough oblong, perhaps 
 five feet long and half as wide, riding high in the water 
 and pressed in a little at the waist, where a plank seat 
 is stretched across. Upon this two feet or so of board 
 the pilot and passenger sit side by side at extremely 
 close quarters. The former wields a short one-bladed 
 
 51
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 paddle, the handle of which is pressed into his armpit 
 while the blade is worked with one hand mainly under 
 water. The figure eight is the normal stroke, but 
 there are situations in a coracle's heady course down 
 a river like this when the Lord knows what hiero- 
 glyphics the supple blade is compelled to describe on 
 the churning waters. 
 
 Evan Evans was a man of method ever since he 
 had become a teetotaller, and that was some four or 
 five years before my visits to the river began. He 
 always commenced operations with two dock glasses 
 of port at The Grouse. When you asked him in 
 the ordinary course of procedure in those bad old 
 days what he would have, he always replied that he 
 had long since sworn off liquor, but that he wouldn't 
 mind a glass of port, which, it is needless to say, the 
 prescient landlady had as nearly poured out as decency 
 would allow. Then with the absurd freedom of those 
 days, tempered, however, by a just discrimination of 
 the effect of such an innocuous dose on a gentleman 
 with a past of which a word presently and the 
 prospective security of a long voyage with nothing 
 on board but your pocket flask, you asked him to have 
 another. This also he swallowed like a dose of medi- 
 cine and then declared himself ready nay, in a hurry 
 to embark. I never ventured to call for a bottle of 
 port in the most social hour at The Grouse, for the 
 whisky was excellent, but I had confidence in its 
 futility for evil in my pilot's case. You couldn't look 
 at him and doubt this. Besides he had experienced 
 one terrible warning, which indeed had forced him to 
 take the pledge. For the reader may not be aware 
 
 52
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 that port is regarded as a temperance drink in the 
 robuster circles of the class who are now our masters. 
 But I have since ascertained that this is so. For the 
 liberties of the pledged Evan Evans used to surprise 
 and even pain me a little, though I was weak enough 
 to pander to them. Now that I know better, I have 
 long since regretted my uncharitable thoughts. 
 
 Moreover Evan was a teetotaller practically under 
 compulsion, the committee of the Association having 
 been the determining factor. In former days he had 
 been more than a little addicted to cwrw l when on 
 shore, which in his case was for most days of the year, 
 like others who brave stormy waters and have more 
 excuse. Some three or four years previously he had 
 tipped over a member of Parliament in the Pentre 
 pool, and there had been a great to-do, though the 
 passenger with some difficulty got to shore and there- 
 by saved the Government the unpleasantness of a 
 by-election. The indignant politician said Evan had 
 come aboard under the influence of cwrw. Evan 
 stoutly denied it, and told his friends and all his 
 succeeding fares that the statesman had lunched too 
 well on the bank and upset him. It was awkward, 
 as Evan, being a sportsman and much in company with 
 the * shentlemens,' was a stout Tory, and in conse- 
 quence regarded askance by the minister of the chapel 
 that his wife went to in Llangollen ; while the 
 politician was a Radical who lived sumptuously, so 
 altogether it was rather awkward for Evan Evans. 
 Expert coraclists, however, are extremely scarce, so 
 the committee forgave him on the condition of total 
 
 Ale. 
 
 53
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 abstinence, which terms Evan accepted, and stuck 
 conscientiously to port ever after. 
 
 A short stiffish rod of eight or nine feet, a cast not 
 too fine, and three flies was the outfit for a coracle, 
 and after embarkation, which is always a delicate 
 business, we swung out on to the bridge pool and 
 commenced our seven or eight mile journey. We 
 had to make it in rather less than that number of hours, 
 for Berwyn station was the only point where the lower 
 half of the water touched the railroad or anything like 
 it, and as there were not many trains in April on that 
 single-track line, we both, I to return, and my pilot 
 with his boat to go on home to Llangollen, had to 
 catch the last one. We fished, therefore, after the 
 manner of coracle-fishing, as much water in an hour 
 as a wader hereabouts would cover in a day. For in 
 a coracle you are always on the move, slipping down 
 and down with the current, casting rapidly here and 
 there in the eddies, boils, or smooth fringes of the 
 tumbling streams fore-handed, back-handed, or any 
 way that comes convenient at the moment. 
 
 There is no retracing your steps. Frequently there 
 is no opportunity to throw a second time over a risen 
 fish. In so large a river as the Dee, when it is fairly 
 full, there is often a choice of routes through the long 
 reaches of rocky and troubled waters. You can't 
 indeed cover it all even in this hasty fashion ; there 
 is often an embarrassment of riches both to the right 
 and to the left, and one of them has to be passed by 
 untested. Sometimes one side is better than the 
 other in the choice of trouty spots, and Evan is not 
 likely to select the worst. Where the current is not 
 
 54
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 too strong, and extra tempting patches of surface come 
 within reach of your flies, the skipper, by violent 
 agitation of his paddle and some straining of body 
 and legs, will hold you in position against the stream 
 for a few fleeting moments. The aim of the coraclist 
 is to run down sideways, so that the angler is casting 
 crosswise with the streams while the pilot checks the pace 
 at which we should naturally run. It may be one bank 
 you are facing, it may be the other, or again the centre 
 of the river for a short space, where the fashion of the 
 rocks and ledges attract the angler's accustomed eye. 
 
 Till you get the right sense of proportion into your 
 head, the wavering trail of the coracle seems strewn 
 with vain regrets. All the time you are flitting over 
 good water which it seems you can merely scratch, 
 work as hard as you may and fish as fast as you can. 
 There are sometimes half a dozen spots within reach 
 at once, upon any of which under normal conditions 
 you would cast a careful and expectant fly. But as 
 it is, only one can be sampled, and that too both 
 quickly and with some scope for judgment. It is a 
 good test assuredly of the wet-fly fisherman's instinct 
 for the hidden lair of a trout, of the * smittle ' spots, 
 as they would say in Cumberland. Yet it is well to 
 cast from a coracle as fast and as frequently as you 
 can in reason. For it is not only that you thus cover 
 a larger proportion of the tempting water, but much 
 more often than not a trout takes a fly within two 
 or three seconds of its lighting on the water. It is 
 difficult to remember at first that though you are 
 leaving five out of the six accessible casts untested, 
 you are fishing say eight miles instead of one, which 
 
 55
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 more than equalises matters. Moreover the coracle 
 has access to a vast amount of water that the wader 
 cannot reach, and consequently to a less harried set of 
 fish. Finally the coraclist, if handy at his job, enjoys 
 the assurance that he will have a basket at the end of 
 the day certainly twice, probably thrice, as heavy as 
 any wader on the river. Dee trout run about three 
 to the pound excluding those returned undersized, 
 and that is a good fighting size in rapid mountain 
 water like this. It means of course in a good basket 
 plenty of half-pounders, and some odd ones running 
 up to or over a pound. One is undeniably rough 
 from a coracle upon those fish which can stand rough 
 treatment. Good water as well as time is lost in 
 playing a trout when drifting down, and the desire 
 to get the landing-net under them as quickly as possible 
 is overmastering. But you can't play pranks like this 
 with a half-pounder in the Dee, still less with a larger 
 fish. The best I ever got from a coracle was a pound 
 and a quarter. The river was clearing from a freshet 
 and but half-way back to the normal state with a strong 
 rise of March brown on. He fastened near the tail 
 of a strong smooth stream already quickening to the 
 head of some boulder-strewn rapids, which threatened 
 to put some strain on even Evan's powers of navigation. 
 It was not only the coracle but the fish had to be 
 forced back from the breakers, for trees kept us out 
 of the bank. It was a problem that produced the 
 most exciting ten minutes I ever had with a trout, 
 but was in the end successfully solved. Evan was 
 splendid, and it is amazing what a strain comparatively 
 thin gut sometimes stands when it has got to I 
 
 56
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 But there are quiet and less breathless interludes 
 even from a coracle. In the still reaches where the 
 fretting river rests betimes, it is delightful to take your 
 time and drift leisurely down over water that the 
 wader must feign pass by with longing eyes, and shoot 
 your flies beneath the trailing boughs. Here, if an 
 over-venturesome cast fixes your fly in a twig, dis- 
 engagement is easy. In the rapid water a similar 
 mischance, as may be imagined, lands one in infinite 
 difficulties and delays. Despatch is everything in a 
 coracle if fish are rising, quickness in casting, in secur- 
 ing the fish (for the skipper cannot help you), dis- 
 engaging the hook, or unravelling a tangle and getting 
 the cast on to the water again. A tangle is distracting, 
 so is a lost fly, for you cannot sit down on the bank for 
 repairs and go on where you left off, but may be 
 passing in enforced idleness over water that has been 
 fondly looked forward to. In high water, too, there 
 is an element of excitement in running some of the 
 rapids, if you look at it that way. But when Evan, 
 after surveying the angry surge and crowding rocks 
 both above and below, all of which he knew by heart, 
 used to say, ' I '11 try it whatefer,' one gripped the side 
 of the coracle, gave a passing thought to the Radical 
 M.P., and held tight. It was astonishing how he 
 would lift the little tub-shaped craft this way and that 
 as it rocked, rolled, and heaved along its apparently 
 perilous course among the boulders. 
 
 A good many men who have seen it or tried it don't 
 like coracling. For a large heavy man it is beyond a 
 doubt a tight fit. Nor has it always much attraction 
 for an individual who is not quite sure that he can swim 
 
 57
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in his clothes. To others again, unaccustomed to light 
 crafts, a coracle appears on the very face of it a truly- 
 perilous mode of conveyance. I discovered inciden- 
 tally that an acquaintance who lived in Hertfordshire 
 had once found himself fishing upon the Dee and had 
 been induced to make the full voyage with Evan 
 Evans, apparently on a high water. I asked him what 
 sport he had had. ' Sport ! ' said he, ' I had quite 
 enough to do hanging on for my life without fishing, 
 and was only too thankful to get safely down.' But 
 then he was six feet two. Moreover it was before 
 Evan had become a total abstainer, and under the in- 
 fluence of cwrw he may have ridden his coracle over 
 a line of country that two glasses of port would not 
 rise to. 
 
 He was an interesting companion too was Evan in 
 the slack moments of lunch on the bank or in blank 
 hours. There was nothing of the long-skulled, swarthy, 
 dreamy-looking Iberian aboriginal about him. Beyond 
 a doubt he was of Goidelic stock, with a face like a 
 harvest moon set in a halo of ginger whisker. He was 
 in short what is known as a c Red Welshman.' He 
 read the river as an open book, but he was neither a 
 poet nor, I am afraid, a saint. The rest of his in- 
 tellectual outfit mainly consisted of a stock of iron- 
 clad prejudices quite removed from those usually 
 associated with his nation. He hated a preacher, for 
 instance, as heartily as any Frenchman hates his wife's 
 priest. He hated March browns tied without red legs. 
 Above all he hated the wading fraternity, which 
 automatically included myself on all days but the 
 annual one, when he pretended to ignore my other
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 character. He declared they spoiled the river and 
 scared the trout, a superstition that experience would 
 hardly have endorsed. The waders by the way said 
 the same of the coracles. 
 
 He was very different, for instance, from old Rhys 
 the Watcher, who had no prejudices at all so far as I 
 could ever find out, certainly none against coracles ; but 
 then he had no English to speak of. All flies with him 
 were the best on the river, and every stray angler was 
 ' a capital shentleman.' He was a dear old man, like an 
 ex-lifeguardsman run a bit to seed, thin and tall with 
 snowy whiskers. He carried the Celtic predilection, 
 and a very nice one it is, for saying what he thought 
 would be pleasant far beyond the bounds of reasonable 
 veracity. But this was not because he was a liar, but 
 because his English was so limited and his vocabulary 
 only contained words of a friendly and optimistic 
 description. He hadn't bothered to learn the others. 
 Whereas Evan Evans's larger range included many 
 ' damnatory ' clauses indispensable to his stout convic- 
 tions. When Rhys upon his daily round descended 
 to the river, he always remarked it was a good day for 
 fishing, of which he knew scarcely anything, even if 
 it were a north wind and low water. But what was 
 more serious, he would sometimes report great doings 
 by the rod below before you knew him thoroughly, 
 when your own basket was innocent of a single fish. 
 He was worst of all on flies, as he had a stock phrase, 
 * Yes, yes, capital, the best,' to the great undoing of 
 innocent, information-seeking strangers who had rigged 
 up a cast effective enough perhaps in the Hebrides but 
 perfectly useless on the Dee. He was so courteous, 
 
 59
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 and wished so well to everybody, it was impossible not 
 to think he might extend his amenities to poachers. 
 Peace to his ashes, for he is long dead and was not a 
 teetotaller ! But I missed him very much one April 
 when a stalwart gamekeeper-looking man came along, 
 who asked me for my ticket as if I had just discovered 
 the river, and then informed me, rather more than 
 laconically, that my white-whiskered friend was no 
 more. 
 
 A run down the Dee on a coracle without a rod 
 would be the ideal method of seeing one of the most 
 delightful stretches of river scenery known to me. 
 But armed with one, unless peradventure the trout 
 proved obdurate, I cannot imagine a worse one. The 
 exacting, almost feverish nature of this style of fishing 
 excludes the romantic and the picturesque sufficiently 
 from consideration for the purest of dry-fly purists. 
 My sensations on stepping ashore in the evening by 
 Llantisilio weir after a good day, though fraught with 
 all the satisfaction of meritorious work achieved, were 
 not unlike that of landing after a long sea voyage, in 
 so far as the earth and all that is thereon appeared to 
 be in active motion. Otherwise my cheeks would be 
 burning, and a sense of having been all day endeavour- 
 ing to catch up something slipping always away was 
 strong upon me. There are blanks, however, as well 
 as prizes even at this business. 
 
 Now the Dee is what is known as an east-wind river, 
 and there are not, so far as I know, many such eccentric 
 streams. More than one of my most thrilling hours 
 have been spent here in a driving snowstorm, when I 
 have seen the river literally alive with tumbling fish, 
 60
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 March browns, and snowflakes all mixed up together. 
 But it does not do to count on this. One day, for 
 instance, at the end of March, some years ago, I had 
 arranged with Evan Evans's successor, a worthy veteran 
 of more note in the local angling world than the other, 
 to meet me at Glyndyfrdwy station two miles below 
 Carrog. It turned out in truth a fearful morning, 
 with a bitter north-east wind driving before it heavy 
 storms of snow. But knowing the Dee, or thinking 
 I did, I abandoned the cheerful breakfast-parlour of 
 The Grouse with a hopeful heart. It was indeed my 
 only chance on the river that spring, and I proceeded 
 to keep the tryst. So did Griffith with his coracle, 
 and when we met our eyes were so blinded with cold 
 snow that we couldn't see each other. For late snows 
 in spring and early snows in autumn commend me 
 to the valley of the upper Dee ! Griffith, unlike his 
 predecessor, being a Radical, had a Manchester 
 Guardian with him ; I being a Conservative had 
 brought along a Liverpool Courier, these two papers 
 dividing North Wales between them. 
 
 So we took off our coats in the waiting-room of the 
 little station, whose enigmatic-seeming name upon the 
 platform is of all others on this line the joy and wonder 
 of the Cockney tripper, and wrapped ourselves round 
 and round in the leading articles, market reports, and 
 advertisements of our respective organs. Buttoning 
 our coats over all, we walked to the neighbouring 
 shore, rigged up the tackle, and launched our bark on to 
 what looked like a waste of black waters surging dimly 
 through a thick white veil. We did not enjoy our- 
 selves, though we actually caught two or three fish in 
 
 61
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 the first reach. But the cold was too much even for 
 Dee trout, and the wind was nearly north and biting 
 beyond belief, and I have never yet heard of a north- 
 wind river. We did not enjoy ourselves even when 
 the air cleared of snow, but we were virtually com- 
 mitted to our long voyage, as you cannot retrace your 
 steps in a coracle on the Dee. But when, after three 
 congealed hours with some half a dozen indifferent 
 fish in the basket, we paused for lunch at Rhiawl rocks 
 beneath the foot of Gamelin, then a vast sheet of snow, 
 we both agreed that human endurance could no longer 
 hold out against the icy blast. The coracle was there- 
 upon thrust into a thicket and we parted, each on our 
 long weary trudge, Griffith down river to Llangollen, 
 I to the distant fireside of The Grouse inn and home 
 that night, where I was confined to bed for the next 
 two or three days with a bad chill on the liver. Griffith 
 survived that arctic voyage, but soon afterwards fell 
 from a high rock by the river and broke his neck. He 
 tied flies commendably, and had a touching faith that 
 with any other brand the fisher on the Dee was quite 
 inadequately equipped. In his snug parlour at Llan- 
 gollen, with its low oak-ribbed ceiling, seated in the 
 deep-set window amid his furs and feathers, his paddle 
 hung over the chimney-piece, his old wife knitting 
 by the fire, and the grandfather clock ticking away their 
 few remaining years, he made the centre of a picture 
 that still abides with me. 
 
 From a high cliff in that famous Shropshire park 
 
 of the last chapter where the pike were raided, a group 
 
 of bold shadowy heights used to be pointed out to 
 
 visitors as the vale of Llangollen, name of mellifluous 
 
 62
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 sound and vale of infinite beauty. I remember how 
 melodiously it rung in my boyish ears, stirring its 
 elementary sense of the music and cadence of words, 
 blended doubtless with one's earliest glimpse into the 
 then mysterious mountains of North Wales. And 
 my kind hostess used to tell me of the two famous 
 old ladies whom as a girl she had known intimately, 
 and indeed it was only the other day I was reading 
 some old letters from them to her. A mental 
 picture of the vale of Llangollen fixed itself then 
 and there in my mind, as such things do, and stuck 
 in it till, twenty and odd years later, I discovered 
 that the original infinitely exceeded the vale of my 
 dreams. 
 
 The Dee roars finely over the great rock ledges 
 above Bishop Trevor's fifteenth-century bridge in the 
 heart of the little town. The encompassing moun- 
 tains and the high, shining, limestone ridges of the 
 Eglwyseg and the woody steeps, the bosky glens that 
 come down from this side and from that, are Nature's 
 contribution to this enchanting vale. And of memories 
 what a crowd for those who happily can feel them in 
 this very gateway of North Wales. Abbey and manor- 
 house, castle and battlefield, the footprints of kings 
 and princes, monks and bards, lie everywhere. And 
 in the centre of the high encircling hills, perched on 
 a sharp green sugar-loaf many hundred feet above the 
 town and river, are the fang-like splintered ruins of 
 the ancient fortress of the chieftains of Powys and their 
 successors, the proud race of Trevor : 
 
 Relic of kings, wreck of forgotten wars ; 
 
 To the winds abandoned and the prying stars. 
 
 63
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 So sang Wordsworth, though more susceptible, per- 
 haps, to the shepherd's cot than to relics of the mailed 
 fist. Indeed he incurred, it is said, the displeasure 
 of his hostesses, the aristocratic old ladies of Plas- 
 Newydd, by apostrophising that picturesque, half- 
 timbered abode as ' a lowly cot by Deva's banks.' 
 Dinas Bran is not surpassed for pose and significance 
 among the great hill fortresses of Wales, though the 
 last note of its mediaeval story comes to us, not from 
 an epic but from a lovelorn bard a man, too, of fame 
 and note. And it was Myfanwy Trevor, the beauty 
 of the castle in the fifteenth century who broke all 
 hearts upon the Dee, that invoked the stanzas of this 
 famous one among her victims, Gutyn Owen : 
 
 The winds around thy towers may rave, 
 
 But there I roam thy form to see, 
 As brilliant as the dangerous wave 
 
 That murmurs o'er Caswennon's sea. 
 
 My song shall tell the world how bright 
 
 Is she who robs my soul of rest ; 
 As fair her face, all smiles and light, 
 
 As snow new fallen on Arran's crest. 
 
 So much for a sample in English of Gutyn's im- 
 passioned outpouring, a man who, though lovelorn 
 for a brief hour, admits elsewhere his partiality for a 
 good horse and a good dinner, and smacks his poetic 
 lips over the hospitalities of his neighbours the monks. 
 For in a glen at the mountain foot hard by, in the vale 
 of the pillar of Eliseg, are the stately ruins of the great 
 abbey of Valle Crucis, beneath whose turf-clad, roof- 
 less aisles lies the dust of the Powys princes, who
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 founded it and strove or temporised through the ages 
 with the ever-pushing Norman. 
 
 I have said a good deal of the coracle because it is 
 a strange and unknown craft. But most of my days 
 and hours upon the Dee have been expended not upon 
 its streams but battling a-foot with its outrageously 
 rugged bottom. The trout come early here into 
 condition and are forward in taking the fly, though 
 more capricious than most, probably from the amount 
 of bottom feed to which they give themselves almost 
 wholly over comparatively early in the season. It is 
 admittedly less interesting to fish a big river across 
 and down than to work a smaller one up stream. 
 There is unavoidably a good deal of what may be 
 called the salmon-fishing method about it, with its 
 inevitable touch of monotony. But it is after all a 
 change from the other, and that to me is one of the 
 charms of trouting. Moreover in the Glyndyfrdwy 
 water, over which we have just been in fancy drifting, 
 there is very little of that regular alternation of 
 stream and pool which distinguishes the Dee as it 
 sweeps down from Bala through the green vale of 
 Edeyrnion to Corwen and Carrog. On the contrary, 
 it is much broken and impeded by rocks and ledges, 
 and forced by the rugged road it has to travel into a 
 constant variety of shifting water and changing depths. 
 All this has labelled it dangerous, and at any rate it is 
 extremely arduous wading. It is assuredly not every 
 one's water. Wading is one of the minor arts of fish- 
 ing, and if either unused to it or physically unhandy, 
 it is beyond doubt in such waters extremely hazardous. 
 Swimmer or no swimmer, if you slither into a deep 
 E 65
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 pool in waders and brogues you are more likely than 
 not to remain at the bottom of it. It is bad enough 
 to sit suddenly down in cold April water up to the 
 third button of your waistcoat, though only pro- 
 blematically injurious. On the other hand you are 
 here quite certain to do this occasionally, whereas the 
 other faux pas you would probably not have a chance 
 of making twice. 
 
 Quite recently I revisited the Dee after a long 
 lapse of years. Of course it was a trifle melancholy ; 
 such things always are. The ripple of water over 
 stones sings many tunes, or rather touches many chords 
 the sad, the soothing, and the gay, but it is always 
 terribly reminiscent. It will bring back your boy- 
 hood, if you have always been a fisherman, with a 
 realism that nothing else can approach. It will recall 
 the forms, the faces, and the voices of the departed with 
 whom it has (for you) been once associated with pain- 
 ful clarity. I was not harrowed quite thus far upon 
 the Dee. For though Evan, Rhys, and Griffith were 
 among the shadows, they awakened kindly rather than 
 tearful memories. But on the other hand, there 
 are more important things you may forget, as I dis- 
 covered to my cost. One of these lapses caused merely 
 disappointment, the other gave me the worst ducking 
 I have ever had in the Dee. The day after I arrived 
 in the first week of April a cold east wind blew shrilly 
 over shrivelled waters. An impossible outlook by all 
 ordinary trouting estimates, into which last I had 
 relapsed by constant intercourse with other and more 
 normal streams in spring. So I felt annoyed to have 
 thus fallen upon such evil times. But I went out of 
 
 66
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 course the first day, and moreover killed, to my sur- 
 prise, quite a fair basket. Then of a sudden came the 
 freshet that everybody said the river so badly needed, 
 and after its abatement balmy zephyrs blew from the 
 south-west, the sun gleamed out, and the joyous 
 promise of spring was in the air. Two or three fisher- 
 men arrived, and everybody, even I who should have 
 known better, joined the chorus of * what perfect 
 weather and what perfect water/ And then we all 
 cast our flies through these perfect days on the perfect 
 water, and regularly returned at even with about a 
 quarter of an average basket, to spend the time from 
 dinner till bed trying to solve this fiendish mystery. 
 At least they did, being strangers. For myself, I 
 began to remember the mysterious ways of the sacred 
 stream. 
 
 It was in the prime of one of these exasperating 
 days, and I was pressing along a fearfully rugged 
 bottom under a thickly wooded shore, merely because 
 I had always done so in years past in order to fish the 
 top of a favourite pool. Indeed I had already made 
 a cast or two upon it, not a little hampered, as always, 
 by over - spreading boughs. On looking across to 
 the other shore it suddenly occurred to me what a 
 fool I was. For over yonder were nice, open, flat 
 ledges of dry, or barely covered rock along the bank, 
 with not a tree near. Surely, thought I, the river 
 must be unfordable in the shallows just above, though 
 it didn't look it, and it didn't prove so, and I reached 
 the other shore with ease. I then marvelled why it 
 was I had always laboured that pool from the other 
 bank. The ledges on this one sloped very gradually, 
 
 '
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 almost imperceptibly, into quite shallow water, whence 
 I could obviously command much of the great seeth- 
 ing pool. So I proceeded with all the usual circum- 
 spection of an habitual wader into the shallow water 
 which covered the smooth floor. In a moment both 
 heels went up and I slithered right in. Not into the 
 pool, thank heaven, but into about three feet of water 
 at its edge. And even as I went down the memory of 
 the past flashed through my brain, and before I 
 reached a sitting position, up to my chin this time, I 
 knew precisely why it was that I had always fished the 
 pool from the other shore with all its difficulties. I 
 am no geologist, but those particular slabs had a coat 
 of glass upon them that the most recently nailed of 
 brogues could not possibly have gripped. I had 
 known this well in former days from some only less 
 harrowing experience, but the fact had flown some- 
 how from the brain cell in which it was stored, to my 
 complete undoing. As I was scrambling out, a chill 
 and miserable object, the keeper turned up. But that 
 was of no use. Neither his eloquent sympathy nor 
 his clothes were any good to me. Despite his forcible 
 protestations I emptied my waders of water and went 
 on fishing, though I suppose I should have known 
 a great deal better at my time of life. But no harm 
 came of it, and I always have had a stout faith in the 
 innocuous qualities of trout-holding water. I never 
 caught a cold in my life through getting wet out 
 fishing. 
 
 There are both pike (unfortunately) as well as gray- 
 ling in the Dee ; also salmon and sea-trout in their 
 season. Upon the former, handsome and shapely 
 68
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 specimens of their unwelcome kind, though they be, 
 owners and committees wage more or less constant 
 war. The grayling here does not pay for his keep. 
 He will take your trout-fly occasionally in spring, 
 when he is of course out of condition, but for some 
 mysterious reason does not rise after the fashion of 
 his kind in autumn, when you want him to. Some 
 worm fishers may, for aught I know, take toll of the 
 Dee grayling. In years agone I remember a little 
 Yorkshireman who used to spend his September 
 holiday in their pursuit, wading up the half mile straight 
 of smooth gravelly glide that follows the salmon pool 
 under the noble old bridge at Corwen. He had not, 
 I think, great sport, but he got enough to keep his 
 family by his own account on a regular grayling diet 
 during their holiday, which must have sorely cloyed 
 them, unless they all shared his own enthusiasm 
 for their edible qualities. For himself, he used to say 
 he devoured them * roomp, stoomp, and 'ead.' I do 
 not go that far with him, though a grayling in con- 
 dition is a palatable fish. The sea trout which 
 jumped the weir above Llangollen and ran up in great 
 quantities were still more eccentric and were scarcely 
 ever taken with a rod. The salmon came up, sparsely 
 in spring, but in fair numbers with the autumn floods, 
 and rose reasonably through the ' back end,' though 
 not often in very good condition. Still, salmon-fishing 
 was a time-honoured institution on the Dee. Every 
 pool patronised by the king of fishes, from Corwen to 
 Llangollen, had its name, with sundry tall stories at- 
 tached to each. Many anglers came, and for the most 
 part with their families, who led the simple life in
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 quaint old farmhouses and other equally primitive 
 but less decorative abodes of Welsh-speaking natives. 
 So now, of course, the jerry-builder has been at work. 
 Looking up from the old bridge of Llansaintfrraid, 
 where all was once foliage and grey roof, there is now the 
 garish and exotic glow of new red brick. What was 
 formerly a small village with an inn, a shop, a post 
 office, a schoolhouse, a church, a vicarage, a blacksmith 
 and a bard is now an obvious competitor on a small 
 scale for the holiday visitor from Lancashire and the 
 Midlands. Since those days, however, the salmon- 
 fishing has greatly improved. 
 
 But Llansaintffraid, otherwise Carrog, is really a 
 place of high renown, concerning which something 
 should be said. For myself I owe more than I can tell 
 to the inspiration of the genius loci absorbed during 
 long days and weeks spent there or thereabouts upon 
 the Dee. This was actually the ancestral patrimony 
 and the home one of two, that is to say, quite near 
 together of the immortal * Damned Glendower.' His 
 property, inherited through varying fortunes, not vital 
 to these light pages, from his princely ancestors of 
 Powys, extended, speaking broadly, from Corwen to 
 Llangollen. In the old Welsh divisions it constituted 
 the whole commote of Glyndyfrdwy. Indeed, the 
 great patriot and chieftain's true and actual name, 
 when he was at home among people that could pro- 
 nounce it, was Owain of Glyndyfrdwy. This was too 
 much even for some of his Welsh friends who lived in 
 far counties, and he naturally became Glyndwr. His 
 English enemies and contemporaries ran, of course, 
 hopelessly amuck ; the nearest they ever achieved 
 70
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 when striving to be accurate and punctilious, was 
 Owen de Glendourdy. Usually they anathematised 
 him in their military dispatches and suchlike simply 
 as ' Glindor.' The Welsh frequently omit the particle 
 in this connection, though much addicted to place- 
 names, even to that of humble cottages, owing, of 
 course, to the tautology of their patronymics. Our 
 English Smith may emblazon his four-roomed villa 
 in a terrace as Chatsworth or Hurstmonceaux, instead 
 of more sensibly giving it a number. But no one 
 save the postman pays any attention to such aspira- 
 tions. Certainly the town does not speak or think of 
 him as ' Smith of Hurstmonceaux.' But in Wales 
 it is different. Mrs. Jones, who has labelled her 
 modest jerry-built cot Byrn-Hafod, is known to the 
 full extent she is known at all and spoken of invari- 
 ably as Mrs. Jones Bryn-Hafod, which has a fine 
 aristocratic ring, though nothing of that sort is 
 intended. 
 
 Now, a little way below Carrog, a cone-shaped 
 tumulus rises high above the river bank crowned with 
 half a dozen ancient ruddy-stemmed Scotch firs. It 
 looks right down the Dee, and is so cunningly placed 
 that, in spite of many intervening bends of the valley 
 and of folding hills, it commands full view of the high- 
 perched ruins of Dinas Bran seven miles away. It is 
 doubtless prehistoric, and its signalling advantages 
 as against enemies coming up the Dee, were probably 
 appreciated by its prehistoric raisers. They must 
 have been invaluable, however, in the later Anglo- 
 Welsh wars. It may or may not have been for this 
 that Glyndwr's mansion was planted at its foot,
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 though every trace of it but the upheaval of the turf 
 has vanished. Not so, however, some of the relics 
 of the chieftain. The little prison house, where for 
 long periods he immured certain notable captives, is 
 still standing in the village, inhabited when I last saw 
 it by an aged crone. To this day it is known as 
 cachardy Owain (Owen's prison house), a mere cottage, 
 and, I should imagine, one of the oldest in the kingdom. 
 The ancient little church is the same in which the 
 hero no doubt attended Mass, while the venerable 
 farmhouse beside the bridge is stoutly held by tradition, 
 a thing not to be despised among these long-memoried 
 people, to have been the site at any rate of Glyndwr's 
 farm buildings. An oak table is still treasured in a 
 neighbouring homestead as a relic of the manor-house 
 that once stood here above the Dee. A field below 
 is still known as the ' Parliament Field,' where the men 
 of the valley presumably met their leader in council. 
 Not far to the north is the strip of upland which, as 
 a cause of disputed ownership between Owen and 
 Lord Grey, the powerful Anglo-Norman baron of the 
 vale of Clwyd, led to the armed raid which made a 
 rebel of Glyndwr. Hitherto he had been a loyal 
 subject and a polished gentleman familiar with the 
 English Court. This little boundary dispute pro- 
 voked a war that for many years decimated Wales, 
 harried the border counties, and brought in a French 
 army, inured Henry v. at an early age, pace Shake- 
 speare, to arduous campaigns (he destroyed with his 
 own hand this very house of Owen's), and undoubtedly 
 worried the king his father into a premature grave. 
 All this may seem irrelevant. But it was fishing, 
 72
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 day after day, occasionally for salmon, mostly for trout, 
 beneath the fir-crowned up-lifted tumulus, beneath 
 which the wide waters of the mound pool surged so 
 temptingly, that filled me with strange longings to 
 gather something tangible of the indomitable warrior 
 who lived at its foot and owned the ancestors of the 
 trout and salmon that drew me thither. It seemed 
 odd that the Welsh who all over the country invoked 
 the hero as a sort of patron saint knew only a few odd 
 tags and legends about him ; a man, too, living and 
 laying about him as he did within quite measurable 
 time. 
 
 As the years went on, and the old tags went on, 
 and Welsh patriots of the political and pulpit type 
 grew more and more eloquent of the past greatness 
 and glories of Wales, hidden from the scoffing Saxon, 
 and but little understood, I fear, by most of them- 
 selves, the real Owen still remained hardly more than 
 a shadow. The Glyndwr of Shakespeare still held the 
 field ! He was on every local patriot's tongue, but 
 none of them seemed to want to know anything further 
 about a man so well worth knowing. The Dee valley 
 folk were only certain that he was born in Corwen ; 
 though, as a matter of fact, he was born by chance in 
 Pembrokeshire, his mother being a lady of South Wales. 
 The mark of his dagger, at any rate, flung in a fit of 
 petulance from the mountain-top above, was, and 
 still is, to be seen by the faithful on the wall of 
 Corwen church. Owen was almost as shadowy a 
 figure in the Principality as Merlin, though as real 
 and as recent a one as Henry v. himself, and 
 paramount in Wales for years. Every county had 
 
 73
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 its little trace of him, some fragment of story or 
 legend to tell. But they were for the most part quite 
 disconnected. 
 
 To cut short my story, the voice of the Dee sounded, 
 or seemed to sound, the name of its hero so insistently 
 in my ears, the romantic beauty of the vale seemed 
 to harmonise so perfectly with the romance of the 
 great chieftain's elusive personality, that after about 
 ten years the impulse to rescue him from something 
 like obscurity had grown too strong. In short, as I 
 took down my rod one evening by Glyndwr's mount, 
 I determined to write his life, if sufficient material 
 could be found for it, and if any publisher could be 
 induced to see eye to eye with me. Two or three 
 eminent firms, who were inclined to look kindly on 
 any reasonable suggestion of mine, laughed the notion 
 of Owen out of court at once. I was then advised to 
 approach one of those houses where many editors of a 
 less distinguished type lurk in various little rooms 
 while the roar of printing machinery turns out popular 
 stuff by the acre. It reminded me of a shoe factory. 
 I was shown into one of these bare little rooms de- 
 dicated, as I was told, to the ' historical department.' 
 Here a strange-looking wight with a blue chin and 
 attired like an American politician seemed but meagrely 
 equipped with a small table and a bedroom chair. It 
 was not in the least like such editors' rooms as I was 
 already familiar with. When I broached the subject 
 the departmental editor sagely stroked his blue chin 
 and tapped the top of a prematurely bald head with 
 a puzzled air. ' Yes,' said he very sententiously, and 
 I give his precise words, * I think I have come across 
 
 74
 
 THE WELSH DEE 
 
 the gentleman's name in some of my researches.' 
 This was enough and more than enough. 
 
 Ultimately the late Dr. Evelyn Abbot of Oxford, 
 then editing for Messrs. Putnam their ' Heroes of 
 Nations ' series, took a different, and, as it proved, a 
 shrewder view of my representations. And the 
 Anglo-American publishing house have not, I am 
 happy to say, had cause to regret it. In forecasting a 
 popular subject the publisher is generally right and 
 the enthusiastic author generally wrong, but there 
 are exceptions, and this was one. It was not to be 
 expected, however, that eminent publishers should 
 know very much about the mysterious heart of Wales 
 and its unproven attitude towards the biography of a 
 national hero. Perhaps I didn't know a very great 
 deal, but I knew more than they did, though they 
 would not believe it. I did misdoubt however, and 
 naturally, the native attitude towards the intrusion 
 of a Sassenach into this holy of holies though they 
 had shirked it themselves. But in this I did an in- 
 justice to a generous people, for nothing could have 
 been nicer than the way in which this little offering 
 of an alien to their national literature was accepted 
 by scholars, professors, antiquarians, and schoolmasters, 
 as well as by the unlearned masses. Even New 
 Englanders and Pennsylvanians were persuaded by 
 Messrs. Putnam to take an interest in Owen. So all 
 was well and more than well. 
 
 And all this came about from fishing, communicated, 
 so to speak, by the trout of Owen's own river, and the 
 atmosphere which, thanks no doubt to the magical 
 personality which all contemporary England believed 
 
 75
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 could ' call spirits from the vasty deep,' broods over 
 the spot. As for myself, it engendered an interest in 
 everything pertaining to the romantic part of what 
 is always to me the most physically delectable of the 
 three kingdoms of the island of Britain. The Welsh, 
 though always purposing, have never achieved a 
 national monument to the strongest and most mag- 
 netic personality of all their ancient history. 1 Perhaps 
 the preachers are fearful lest its martial signifi- 
 cance should encourage recruiting in His Majesty's 
 forces, which to them is anathema. The soul of a 
 soldier they believe to be irretrievably lost. The best 
 monument to the hero after all is the group of aged 
 fir-trees on the high tump above the Dee at Carrog, 
 bordering both the Holyhead road and the Great 
 Western Railway, where the impetuous waters of the 
 sacred river play the same accompaniment, no doubt, 
 as they piped to the harp of the Red lolo, Owen's bard, 
 as he sounded his patron's praises in verse, which we 
 may read to-day. 
 
 1 Owen's 'Parliament House' at Machynlleth has been totally restored 
 and dedicated to his memory.
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 III 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 IF you touch on Wiltshire fishing nowadays you 
 are expected to be serious ! Nature has linked 
 the county with Hampshire, and Hampshire 
 fishing in literature is a portentously solemn affair. 
 To crack jokes or look about you is accounted, I take 
 it, as mere foolishness, and to expect an entertaining 
 aboriginal upon the bank would, I fancy, be futile. 
 Unlike those of the north and west the rustics of the 
 chalk counties know little or nothing of trout-fishing, 
 and care less, though they hang betimes on the bridges 
 and watch the big fish, so conspicuous in these clear 
 chalk streams, with the same detached interest they 
 might exhibit towards pheasants feeding on a stubble. 
 And the great trout ignore them with a complacent 
 contempt which would astonish the timid quarter- 
 pounder of a Welsh brook, who dashes for his life on 
 any attempt at such familiarity. If you didn't know 
 better you might almost assume that they were easy 
 to catch, just as the Cockney scribe, moved to satiric 
 diatribes at the sight of hand-reared pheasants and 
 oblivious to the rest of the programme, thinks it must 
 be child's play to shoot them. 
 
 Wiltshire, from this point of view, means the upper 
 
 77
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Kennet, the Salisbury Avon, and the Wylie, together 
 with some tributaries and little brooks less known 
 to fame. Like the Hampshire rivers these are nowa- 
 days, I think, mainly fished by Londoners and aliens 
 with well-lined pockets. The country parson, the 
 doctor, the schoolmaster, the rural tradesman, the 
 village blacksmith has no interest, not even a detached 
 one, in trout, and it is altogether another country in 
 this respect from North and West Britain. The man 
 who cuts the weeds or attends to the hatches in the 
 water meadows and, for still more obvious reasons, the 
 miller, are on speaking terms with the fish, but have 
 no scientific interest in a craft that neither they nor 
 their belongings have ever had anything to do with. 
 There are here no aboriginal fly-casters or fly-tiers, or 
 deadly men with a running worm. In spite of its 
 beautiful streams Wiltshire might almost be Norfolk 
 or Suffolk so far as the local atmosphere is concerned. 
 These things are, and always were, for * the gentles,' 
 and mainly nowadays gentles from London and other 
 foreign parts well, perhaps not altogether on the 
 higher parts of the streams. Local interest still lingers 
 about the less coveted reaches : the parson, the 
 doctor, a big farmer or two, or even a leading trades- 
 man, reserve their privileges, cultivate the art of the 
 dry fly, talk fishing betimes in the market-place, and 
 give a little local flavour to the business. 
 
 I hardly know what happened to these Wiltshire 
 chalk streams generally before the introduction of the 
 dry-fly method, though I was reared on one. But I 
 do know, as may have been gathered from the first 
 chapter, that the fish had no sort of objection to a 
 
 78
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 wet fly nay nor yet to two of them fished across and 
 down when the wind served that way. It makes my 
 blood run cold to think that I have landed on occasions, 
 when revisiting the scenes of youth, four, five, or even 
 six brace of good fish on the Mildenhall water of the 
 Kennet in that dastard fashion. But then I didn't 
 know any better, though in the early eighties perhaps 
 I should have. About the same time a great friend of 
 mine, who, though very keen, was a most indifferent 
 fisherman, even with wet fly, killed ten brace on one 
 occasion by the same reprehensible method in the half 
 mile of water just below the town of Marlborough, 
 and that meant about five-and-twenty pounds weight. 
 He never showed the least contrition to his dying day 
 for the many fish he had taken out of the river with 
 two wet flies, nor could I ever induce him to see eye 
 to eye with me and agree that both of us, he par- 
 ticularly, as a perpetual resident, ought to look back 
 almost with shame upon those many pleasant days 
 among the water meadows below Savernake forest, 
 some of which we had enjoyed together. But then he 
 never consorted with dry-fly men or even read them. 
 They hadn't yet got up so high as Marlborough, and 
 it was impossible for me at second hand to depict 
 to my old friend, and one withal so much my senior, 
 the stony eye with which the dry-fly purist in his 
 first decades of exaltation regarded the ' Chuck and 
 Chancer,' and the opprobrious names he called him. 
 
 He has got steadily purer and drier ever since, to be 
 sure, but I think there is a better understanding now 
 between the two schools. It was upon the Avon, a 
 dozen miles away, in the vale of Pewsey, some thirty 
 
 79
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 years ago, that I got my first shock. It was a bright 
 sunny day, I well remember, and just before the first 
 hatch of mayfly was due. There was no breeze 
 stirring, and, after I had fished the two or three short 
 interludes of quick stream unsuccessfully, I was seated 
 in rather hopeless mood beside a long stretch of glassy 
 water, perhaps eighteen inches deep, and disconsol- 
 ately whistling for a wind. From my belated standpoint 
 the day was assuming a more and more impossible 
 aspect, when all at once a strange angler broke upon 
 my solitude. 
 
 As it was obvious we must both be friends of the 
 owner we naturally forgathered. I was magnani- 
 mous enough to feel sorry for him, as well as for my- 
 self, as he had come even farther than I had. Indeed 
 I was looking at the spot only the other day ; the 
 white-railed bridge over the clear, gliding, little river, 
 the tall Lombardy poplars swaying above the old 
 water-mill, a bow shot to the left, the long fir-tufted 
 billows of Salisbury Plain cutting the southern sky, 
 the bolder ramparts of Oare and Martinsell rising 
 fainter to the north. But the stranger didn't seem 
 at all depressed. When he had put his rod together he 
 sat down beside me, lit his pipe, and remarked that 
 we could see a fish rise as well there as anywhere. As 
 we could see the bottom for fifty yards, the remark 
 struck me as irrelevant, as was the prospect of a rising 
 fish unlikely, even had there been just then any fly 
 on the water. 
 
 When he had finished his pipe and no sign appeared, 
 he knocked the ashes out and said he would go up a 
 bit and see if he could spot a fish lying in this looking- 
 80
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 glass stretch. This struck me as a mere natural history- 
 expedition, harmless enough in itself but with no 
 bearing at all on the business we were out for. So 
 off he went stealthily up the river bank for about a 
 stone's-throw, then suddenly stopped and beckoned 
 to me, whereupon I proceeded, also stealthily, towards 
 him. ' There 's one,' he said, ' just to the left of that 
 dark bit of weed,' pointing to a mark about thirty yards 
 away. ' Don't you see him ? ' Now I should have 
 been no little huffed had I been told I couldn't see a fish 
 in the water as well as the average angler, but like the 
 latter I had never gone in for trout-stalking as an art, 
 and I had to confess I couldn't. He was a little im- 
 patient at this, so after a few seconds I basely dis- 
 sembled and pretended I could. ' Will you try him 
 or shall I ? ' I didn't at the moment know that I had 
 one of the best fishermen in Wiltshire at my elbow. 
 But if I had known him to be the worst, I should have 
 handed him over the job with pleasure. Hunting 
 up your fish before you caught them seemed utterly 
 subversive of every article of the angler's creed as I 
 till then had known it. Moreover the essay in that 
 shallow, transparent water, to say nothing of the 
 length of line required, seemed mere foolishness. I had 
 always fancied I could throw an ordinarily decent line, 
 and had followed in wet-fly fishing the ' fine and far 
 off ' method with assiduity and conviction. Un- 
 doubtedly I could lay out as long a one as is ever 
 requisite in quick waters or on a chalk stream with a 
 ripple of a wind, or again I could pitch one handily 
 between boughs or under roots a good deal of 
 extra schooling in North American forest streams had 
 F 81
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 conduced to this. But my new friend's performance 
 was a revelation and his floating fly was another, for I 
 must ask the reader again to remember that this was 
 thirty years ago. Well, he got that fish, and then he 
 spotted another and got that, and then another, 
 and secured that one too. We had then reached the 
 mill, where we had our lunch and a pipe and some 
 illuminating conversation. My companion now 
 realised my benighted condition, and I learned for the 
 first time that things had been happening on the chalk 
 streams, though they hadn't yet struck the upper 
 Kennet on which for three or four days in the year I 
 cast my two wet flies with tolerable success and perfect 
 satisfaction, as I have already intimated. 
 
 It is quite certain that the trout there at any rate 
 had not yet become disabused of their absurd old- 
 fashioned notions. I don't think they have wholly 
 abandoned them even yet in spite of London syndi- 
 cates whose members, when they think no one is 
 looking, often fish a wet fly down stream, for I have 
 myself seen them at it. But in those days, before the 
 syndicates, there was a glorious interlude, after the old 
 marquis, alluded to in the first chapter, excellent 
 man, but absent-minded about fishing, was laid in the 
 vaults of his fathers. For another marquis succeeded, 
 who somehow realised, good soul as he was, that three 
 or four miles of as excellent trouting as there was in 
 England was intended by providence to be enjoyed. 
 So any local angler, past or present, of which there 
 were then mighty few, was treated very handsomely. 
 With another regime came still worse times in agri- 
 culture, and with them the alien syndicates or their 
 82
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 equivalents, more or less all down the river, and the 
 local angler mourned. As an ex-local I enjoyed that 
 year, among others, the usual liberty upon the Kennet, 
 with the further privilege, always thoughtfully ac- 
 corded, of taking a friend. My professor of the Avon 
 jumped at the opportunity of joining me in the latter 
 capacity, as was very natural, and we had another 
 day together on the Mildenhall water. 
 
 Now every traveller on the Bath road must know 
 the hill-top where, emerging from Savernake forest, 
 you first catch sight of Marlborough lying below, at 
 the foot of a mile-long steady slope, down which the 
 coach-drivers of former days used betimes to terrify 
 their fares by making up a lost five minutes. The 
 sight of the old town with its red roofs, its two 
 hoary church towers, and the beautiful spire of the 
 school chapel in the background, lying snugly in its 
 green trough with the waste of downland spreading 
 into space behind, is the best thing yet in all the 
 seventy-seven miles from London. For you sweep 
 just here out of the cramped country, out of the 
 stuffy home counties into the glorious downland that 
 rolls away towards the glorious west, the noble beeches 
 of Savernake making a fitting portal for such an 
 advent. Glistening brightly out of the old town as 
 you cross the rubicon and descend the hill comes the 
 Kennet, coiling through the water meadows and 
 slipping down from mill to mill by Polton, Mildenhall, 
 Stitchcombe, and Axford on its way to Ramsbury and 
 Littlecote. Here my new friend, the professor, had 
 a further opportunity of demonstrating this new art 
 to my discomfiture, and incidentally to my enlighten- 
 
 83
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 ment. For it was another warm and windless day. 
 The quick glides where the fish sometimes rose well 
 to the wet fly and even the swirling tails of the lashers 
 were irresponsive. The still waters were like glass 
 unruffled by the faintest puff. So the dry-fly expert 
 had all the fun and I, not altogether unprofitably, a 
 good deal of looking on. 
 
 They are better and larger trout, too, than those 
 of the upper Avon, which are white of flesh and far 
 less palatable, in spite of a fair supply of mayfly, none 
 of which hatch out higher up the Kennet than Rams- 
 bury. But the Kennet trout, mostly of a pound or 
 a bit over those that rise, that is to say, for there 
 are monsters in the water are firm and usually pink- 
 fleshed, and for chalk-stream trout the best of eating. 
 In the mayfly season lower down, at Ramsbury, 
 Littlecote, and on into Berkshire by Hungerford 
 and Kintbury bigger fish than pounders, of course, 
 are taken. In the commoners' water at Hungerford, 
 which, on account of their municipal privileges, is alone 
 in the chalk counties, so far as I know, a town of fisher- 
 men, huge trout have been taken on a minnow and 
 even fly within my memory. Doubtless they are 
 taken still. Ten and eleven-pounders were at least 
 annual events. I believe, as a matter of fact, the 
 Kennet is recognised as having the largest record of 
 heavy trout in the kingdom. But we didn't catch 
 these sockdolagers either with a sedge or Wickham 
 dry, or an alder and blue dun wet, about Marlborough 
 not much ! The miller's net mentioned in a previous 
 chapter used to scoop out an occasional whale or two 
 of five or six pounds, and no doubt a live minnow,
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 had it been a permissible or popular bait in the upper 
 waters, would have accounted for some surprising fish. 
 The little river Og, which runs into the Kennet just 
 below Marlborough and, three or four miles up, shrivels 
 to a winter bourne, dry as a board in summer-time, 
 while its lower streams are stiff with weed, the old 
 keeper used to declare held even larger fish than the 
 Kennet. 
 
 I never fished a Wiltshire stream again after that 
 day with a wet fly, though my days upon them, it 
 should be said, have been only occasional ones. This 
 was not from any particular enthusiasm or predilection 
 for the dry fly as a cult, for the rough water streams 
 and everything connected with them bind me to them 
 with an infinitely stronger tie. You can fish parts of 
 these last, to be sure, if you like, with a dry fly ; but 
 there is no great excess of art and no special difficulty 
 in this case, and usually you would not kill so many 
 fish as with two wet flies requiring quite as much skill 
 of a rather different kind. But in the comparatively 
 still and more monotonous surface of the chalk stream 
 it is quite different. For myself, I surrendered in a 
 single day. It seemed obvious that for waters like 
 this the new style though I believe on the Test it had 
 been going some time was the right thing. There 
 really was something of the ' chuck and chance it ' 
 reproach attached to the old wet-fly fishing of these 
 chalk streams. The phrase, it would be charitable 
 to think, was coined by persons who knew no others, 
 and then echoed by a thousand fools who knew very 
 little of any rivers, wet or dry, and applied it in- 
 discriminately. Nor had there been, I am sure, any- 
 
 85 '
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 thing like the same amount of fishing on the chalk 
 streams in the old wet-fly days, and what there had 
 been was, I fancy, mainly local. 
 
 At any rate whenever on a Wiltshire stream after 
 this I always followed the dry fly scrupulously and to 
 the best of my very moderate ability. Sometimes, 
 to be sure, if I couldn't beguile a rising fish with the 
 orthodox presentation I have given him a wet fly and 
 got him. But that was the fish's look out. He was 
 supposed to be in a sufficiently advanced stage of 
 education as to be above taking a wet fly, so it was 
 high time he was superannuated. Once, on an odd 
 day in September, kindly conceded me on the sacred 
 waters of the Wilton Club, upon the Wylie, I killed, 
 I blush to say, four rising graylings, one after the other, 
 with a wet fly, though not until in each case I had 
 presented it dry and tastily at least a score of times to 
 each without avail. This preliminary was only due, 
 as a mere matter of common courtesy, to a corporation 
 whose privileges I was enjoying. For the man who 
 would deliberately fish the Wylie Club water with 
 a wet fly would probably shoot a fox. I have read 
 of such men in what may be called the criminal 
 columns of the sporting papers, and felt glad that I 
 did not stand in their shoes. The four graylings 
 weighed nearly seven pounds and were far the largest 
 sequence of that graceful fish that have ever fallen to 
 my rod. This, no doubt, because I have scarcely 
 ever fished for chalk-stream grayling, and the other 
 sort with which I am on easy terms don't weigh up 
 like that. 
 
 But in regard to fish refusing a quite nicely cooked 
 86
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 fly and then taking it wet, the biggest I ever killed 
 upon the upper Kennet came to grass that way, and 
 through no fault whatever of mine, but purely by 
 reason of its own incredible, inconceivable stupidity. 
 I remarked in my first chapter that all my fish adven- 
 tures occurred in early youth and that I never had 
 another, but I had forgotten this one. The others 
 appealed straight to what might be called the gallery, 
 sisters, cousins, aunts anybody. There were not six 
 people in Marlborough, however, to whom the last 
 adventure would have had any meaning whatsoever 
 beyond the not very startling fact that I had an extra 
 good fish in my basket. It was the largest, to be sure, 
 that had ever been killed above the town with fly. But 
 then being only two pounds and a quarter, and many 
 much bigger ones than that swimming habitually 
 about in the Kennet, this would be a mere detail, 
 interesting only to the local craftsman. I did not, 
 I blush to say, disclose to any of the half-dozen how 
 I caught it except that it was upon a small Wickham, 
 which was true and of no significance whatever, for, 
 as this was only half a dozen years ago, dry fly had long 
 been there the order of the day. I merely sent the 
 fish to my old friend, the owner of the water, with 
 my love, as it was in beautiful condition. I was torn, 
 in fact, between reluctance to spoil gratuitously my 
 little triumph and my desire to unfold a strange tale. 
 So I compromised by enjoying the first at the moment 
 and then unfolding the details a year later. And this 
 is what happened, for the benefit more particularly 
 of dry-fly, chalk-stream readers. 
 
 Now there are only about two miles of fishing above
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Marlborough, and then the river, as so frequently 
 happens in the higher waters of chalk streams, begins 
 to squander itself in shallow, gravelly trickles among 
 cresses and subaqueous vegetation, though for some 
 distance farther there are occasional small hatch-holes 
 where monsters lurk ready and anxious, so I have been 
 told by a friend who has tried it, to take a natural 
 minnow directly it touches the water. But there are 
 only two miles, at the most, of fly water above the 
 town, and in it the surface-feeding fish run smaller 
 and are less numerous than in the larger waters and 
 greater preserves below. The upper half of this 
 stretch, however, the very topmost fishable bit of the 
 river in short, had afforded me many a pleasant hour 
 when a lad in the bad, old, wet-fly days, and a good 
 many brace of three-quarter-pounders picked up in 
 odd hours. On the occasion in question I had not trod 
 these particular banks with a rod for nearly thirty 
 years. A generation of fly-fishers and dry ones, of course, 
 had grown up even on this little stretch of water since 
 then. Every one who has been to Marlborough knows 
 it well, that reach along the foot of the old churchyard 
 at Preshute, past the foot of Preshute house garden, 
 under the arched bridge, and for a couple of meadows 
 beyond towards Manton. It was a lovely June after- 
 noon, and I had gone down about tea-time, and in 
 those half-pleasant, half-painful memories that the 
 waters of youth so vividly stimulate had spent a quiet 
 hour or two on the once familiar stretches, but had 
 only basketed one just sizeable fish, as there was practi- 
 cally no rise on. There was still, however, the pet 
 spot of my wet-fly youth remaining, and that was 
 88
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 where the current, after gliding under the brick bridge 
 of the drive up to Preshute house, runs with a bit of 
 life in it against the low walled-up end of the garden, 
 where two small bushes, the very same ones as of old, 
 no whit altered, sprout out of the masonry and hang 
 slightly over the water. This had been almost the 
 only fishable spot, except the hatch-hole, in the wet-fly 
 period when the breeze dropped on the whole half 
 mile of otherwise still water. It was a rare place in 
 any case for fish to lie, and there was at least one 
 average-sized trout there on this occasion. 
 
 Whether I could merely spot him or whether he 
 rose I forget, but I tried him long and patiently, 
 though to no purpose, with a small sedge from the 
 meadow bank opposite. It was simple fishing and easily 
 covered, the only drawback, as of old, being the bridge 
 immediately above, liable at any minute to be occupied 
 by passing schoolboys, for Preshute is the most out- 
 lying of the school boarding-houses, and if a fisherman 
 chanced to be at work, a natural curiosity pulled every 
 wayfarer up short at the parapet, and away down 
 stream went the trout into the weeds below. A bevy 
 of boys did me this dis-service now, and if only my 
 coy three-quarter-pounder had sailed down I should 
 merely have reeled up and gone home without annoy- 
 ance, as time and a dinner engagement pressed. But 
 to my astonishment a great big fish, very big indeed 
 to be waiting there in that eminently surface-feeding 
 spot, went down with him. My pulse beat a bit 
 faster as I felt I had been fishing over such a prize, for 
 I had searched with my fly the whole ten yards or so 
 of brisk water under the wall on spec. I guessed,
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 however, he would be back in five minutes, for the old 
 custom of the fish below that bridge if it were left in 
 peace came back to me as an open book. So I sat 
 down, changed my fly for a small Wickham and waited, 
 and sure enough back he came into the feeding spot, 
 though I could not see exactly where he took up his posi- 
 tion. It wasn't very promising under the circumstances, 
 nor did it prove so, for I tried the little run over again 
 to the best of my skill and care without response, and 
 then as the school and town clocks across the water 
 meadows were ringing out for me, urgent notes, I 
 proceeded to wind up without more ado. It was 
 now this strange thing happened. For as my Wick- 
 ham came jerking up out of the three-foot water into 
 the clear shallow of no depth at all which sloped up 
 towards my feet I beheld to my astonishment my 
 lusty friend heading straight for me. For a brief 
 moment I failed to realise that he could be making 
 such an inconceivable ass of himself, as events proved, 
 and merely thought it strange that an unusually large 
 fish should come out into shallow, gin-clear water 
 on a sandy bottom merely to pay his respects. All 
 this, as the novelists say, occurred in less time than 
 it takes to tell. But the incredible truth struck me 
 somehow that he was actually following my fly, of 
 which the very hook and tinsel was plain enough even 
 to my eye, so I trailed it slowly towards me in six 
 inches of shallow water, till looking me practically 
 in the face, not four yards from where I stood, I 
 saw the white of my friend's gills as his mouth 
 opened. As he closed it I struck, and though I 
 could scarcely credit my senses, so impossible seemed 
 90
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 the whole business, I had him firm. At the same 
 moment a score of flannelled cricketers homeward- 
 bound swarmed on to the bridge. I was only just in 
 time ! 
 
 And then ensued a great fight, the only really ex- 
 hilarating contest I ever remember to have had with 
 a chalk-stream fish. There were hopeless banks of 
 weeds indeed the river was a solid mass of them 
 just below the open run, and the cast was of drawn 
 gut. Again and again the fish dashed for the shelter, 
 and as often it seemed a very touch-and-go whether 
 my cast would hold. The gathering company upon 
 the bridge, lusty sons perhaps, some of them, of my 
 ancient schoolfellows, manifested great excitement. 
 Some of them jumped into the meadow, which was 
 strictly out of bounds, and at least three of them 
 wanted to net the fish for me when he was at last 
 beaten. Not knowing the state of their temperature 
 or the extent of their fish-lore I took no such risks. 
 Most of us have seen an excited schoolboy as well as 
 an unsophisticated grown-up making perilous play 
 with a landing-net. The trout scaled, as already 
 noted, just two pounds and a quarter when I got 
 home. He was a beautiful thick Kennet fish, in the 
 very pink of condition, and my old friend the doctor, 
 and owner of the water, said he cut as red as a salmon 
 on the table. But I never could have believed it to 
 be within the wildest bounds of possibility that such 
 a trout, or indeed any trout, could slowly and de- 
 liberately make such an astounding fool of himself. 
 And he was the largest, too, ever taken on a fly above 
 Marlborough ! 
 
 9*
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 In the crack waters of the chalk streams the weeds 
 are of course kept regularly cut, and as some think, 
 to the detriment of the breeding haunts of the natural 
 fly. It seems tolerably certain that on some much- 
 pampered waters the insect supply has declined, and 
 indeed new stock has been actually introduced. The 
 pedigree of the trout themselves in some of those 
 rivers must by this time be pretty intricate. It 
 would puzzle a Wylie fish, I imagine, to locate his 
 grandparents, and we may fairly assume that exotic 
 trout may be seen on many club waters rising at im- 
 ported flies. When the weeds have got ahead and 
 form big patches about the water, they offer great 
 possibilities to the fighting fish if he can get into them. 
 With only one fly, as in dry-fly fishing, the angler has 
 reasonable possibilities of getting him out. In wet- 
 fly fishing with two or three hooks, as happens occasion- 
 ally in lakes, one's only chance is to haul the kicking 
 captive willy-nilly, and chance a rupture, over the 
 top of the bed and net him instantly and anyhow, 
 without regard to the proprieties. A chalk-stream 
 fish who thoroughly understands weeds, however, 
 has a useful trick of holding on to the stalks below 
 water with the grip of his teeth, and then you may 
 haul away till you break, or he gets tired of it, or rubs 
 the fly out. 
 
 A day or two after the adventure at Preshute bridge 
 I was mayfly-fishing on the Avon at Chisenbury, 
 just where that pretty little river enters the Plain. 
 There were some thick patches of weeds about, and 
 a trout hooked at the edge of one of them was a little 
 too quick for me, and fixed himself down in the very 
 92
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 heart of it. After the usual amount of pressure, 
 without any result, and not knowing whether the fish 
 was still on it or I was merely fast in the weeds, I 
 thought I would at least save my cast, and at the same 
 time quench my thirst, for the fish were not doing 
 much, and it was a very hot day. So I laid down 
 my rod and wa^ed to the village, nearly half a mile 
 away, where I secured a long bean-pole from a cottage 
 garden. On my return I raised my rod with one 
 hand and probed the depths of the weeds with the 
 other. Whereupon, to my surprise, out came the 
 fish on to the top of the bed, when I gave him the 
 shortest shrift and had him in the net before he had 
 time to take in the situation. 
 
 That is a delightful bit of Arcady along the riverside 
 below Upavon, with its old church tower, and between 
 the green heights of Casterly Camp and Chisenbury 
 Ring. Through clean, narrow strips of meadow the 
 stream speeds ever onward, rushing over hatches into 
 swirling pools, swishing under the rambling boughs 
 of bordering copses, scooping out deep holes at sharp 
 corners, and purling away over gravel to lash the roots 
 of oak or willow at yet another elbow, till it seems 
 suddenly to remember that it is a dry-fly river, not 
 a mountain brook, and steadying down, rolls brim- 
 ming and placid between pollard willows to the mill- 
 dam at Chisenbury, which is the material cause of its 
 return to sobriety. Here on the bank stands the 
 ancient mill-house, and beyond lush paddocks and 
 patches of waist-deep burdock rise stately elms beneath 
 whose shade stands the fine old manor-house of that 
 Wiltshire Grove who took part in the Wiltshire 
 
 93
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Penruddocks' rising against Cromwell, and lost his 
 head. 
 
 But enough of this. The booming of cannon, 
 the rumble of commissariat wagons, the cracking of 
 musketry, and rush of squadrons is now not far away. 
 Thus far down the valley and a little farther peace 
 still reigns. But away beyond, from the great church 
 of Enford to the woods of Netheravon, and from 
 Netheravon by Durrington and Figheldean to Ames- 
 bury the stir of martial things is always in the air, and 
 in the campaigning season it seems odd to some of us 
 to read in the newspapers of two great armies fighting 
 along the whole line of the quiet, secluded, little trout 
 stream we used to know so well. Sometimes the 
 designers of the great autumnal war-game lay it down 
 that the Avon is to stand for a sea-coast which is to 
 be defended from an invading enemy, and we find in 
 our morning papers a large-scale map of its course, with 
 all its mills and villages and little bridges set forth 
 in capitals as strategic points upon which the great 
 British public are requested to fix its critical eye. Of 
 a truth times are changed on the Avon and on the 
 Plain! 
 
 The prettiest bit of the Kennet, to my thinking, is 
 where with quickened pace it runs over gravelly 
 bottoms through Ramsbury Chase, hard by the lake 
 below the manor-house, which its waters feed, and 
 where trout of fabulous size disport themselves. And 
 again, below where it steals on to that haunted Little- 
 cote, under whose Tudor gables wild Barrel is credited 
 by local legend with such heinous deeds, and which 
 with much greater certainty sheltered Dutch William 
 
 94
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 while opening negotiations with his royal and fatuous 
 father-in-law. Littlecote, like Ramsbury, was famous 
 for large fish. There used to be a stew there in the 
 days of the Popham prosperity, wherein a certain 
 number of large trout were kept in what might be 
 termed honourable captivity, and encouraged to 
 laziness and good cheer. They were lifted out occa- 
 sionally and placed upon the scales. A well-known 
 local sportsman and raconteur used to maintain that 
 an actual spirit of rivalry grew up among these pam- 
 pered captives. One old Triton, regarding whose 
 reputed weight I dare not trust my memory, grew 
 so pleased with himself, according to the aforesaid 
 sportsman, that he used to come regularly up to the 
 edge of the stew to be weighed, and lie like a lamb 
 on the scale. And when the tray went down in evi- 
 dence of his increased well-being, which it generally 
 did, he would flap his tail twice in great exultation. 
 Much, however, must be forgiven to men who live on 
 the banks of streams like this, where the fish do really 
 achieve so large a size that strangers from far counties 
 are apt to be incredulous, and thus put local patriots 
 on their mettle. I remember not so very long ago an 
 amusing encounter with such a man from a very far 
 county, who proved a luminous example of how little 
 one half of the trouting world know how the other 
 half lives, to paraphrase a common aphorism. 
 
 It was on a bright summer morning, and I was 
 travelling by train up the Wylie valley to fish a friend's 
 water at Codford. The only other occupant of the 
 carriage was a rosy-faced commercial gentleman in 
 black broadcloth and a top-hat. By the time the 
 
 95
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 train draws towards Codford the Wylie has shrunk, 
 it must be confessed, to extremely modest dimensions. 
 The obvious nature of my intentions seemed to rouse 
 the commercial gent, who had been apparently taking 
 stock of the little river from the corner seat, to satiric 
 utterance : ' We shouldn't,' said he, with rather a 
 truculent note and an accent that located him pre- 
 cisely, ' call that much of a river where I come from.' 
 * There are some fine fishermen up there, I can tell 
 you,' he continued, * and the rivers are something 
 like.' He then spoke eloquently of the Wear and the 
 Tees, both of which I happened to know, and returned 
 again to quite uncalled-for strictures on the pleasant 
 little stream below us. By this display of untutored 
 complacency I was rather moved to take it out of him 
 a little, so asked him if he would be surprised to hear 
 that the average trout of the little stream he regarded 
 with such contempt would swallow the average fish 
 of the noble rivers he so extolled, without feeling 
 much inconvenience. Moreover, that we should 
 have to return here as unsizeable a trout that would 
 almost certainly be the largest of a good basket on the 
 Wear. Finally I ventured to point out that though 
 the Wylie was full of fish it was almost equally certain 
 that the doughtiest of the performers he had in mind 
 would, if dropped down here of a sudden, fail to catch 
 one of them. He quieted down a little on this. In 
 fact he received these crumbs of local information in 
 stony silence, only remarking that he was no fisherman 
 himself, but that he had many friends who were. In 
 such case he probably coupled me with them as a son of 
 Ananias, and profited nothing by my well-meant efforts
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 at enlightenment. In such frame of mind I left him 
 at Codford station, and having apparently thrown 
 away precious truths I was very sorry there was no 
 time to tell him the Littlecote story. The biggest 
 Kennet trout recorded weighed nineteen pounds. 
 Just before this chapter went to press I curiously 
 enough encountered on the banks of a Welsh lake a 
 keeper who for several quite recent years had charge 
 of the Ramsbury fishing. He had the record of his 
 catches by net and rod at his fingers' ends. They even 
 more than justify what I had already set down here. 
 
 The Wylie is, I think, the most pellucid, and at 
 the same time adorns the prettiest vale, of all the 
 Wiltshire streams. As with the Avon, a chain of de- 
 lightful thatch-roofed villages clustering round, in 
 almost every case, an ancient and interesting church, 
 stretches from Wilton to Heytesbury. There are 
 more than a dozen of such hamlets with fine, old, 
 sonorous names, and indeed, for abounding and 
 genuine thatch commend me to the chalk regions of 
 Wiltshire. People don't go there much, and when 
 they light upon half a dozen thatched cottages in a 
 village in the home counties they sit down at once and 
 write an idyllic essay for a halfpenny paper or a maga- 
 zine article upon the fact that there are bits of old 
 rural England even yet. It is amazing the number of 
 people possessed of the writing habit to whom the 
 fifty-mile London radius apparently stands for Eng- 
 land ! Fishermen of course know better. 
 
 The water of the Wylie is of astonishing clarity. 
 In some of the deep, narrowish pools in the Wilton 
 Club reaches, for example, you can see the big trout 
 G 97
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 and grayling, of strange and varied origin, lying 
 packed, cheek by jowl, near the bottom, as clearly as 
 if but a foot of water flowed above them. That de- 
 lightful classic, The Vicar of Bullhampton, it may also 
 be noted, is laid in the Wylie valley, though Trollope, 
 with that whimsical habit of his, introduces a name or 
 two from elsewhere to throw his reader off the scent, 
 and then proceeds to give himself away to the man of 
 local knowledge. Codford claims to be the precise 
 scene of the story. The South Plain spreads away 
 from the narrow green vale of the Wylie into spacious 
 solitudes upon either hand, as did the North Plain from 
 the Avon banks of yore, before war ministers came on 
 the scene with all their brick camps and corrugated 
 iron, and gives a fine quality to the river the only 
 one of note, by the way, which lives its whole life from 
 its source to its mouth in the county. 
 
 To return for a moment to the Avon, below Ames- 
 bury, by this time quite a large stream. Resuming its 
 wonted calm, and fringing on its way the grounds of 
 more than one historic manor-house, it pursues its 
 peaceful course to Salisbury. All along here, how- 
 ever, grayling and, unfortunately pike, share its waters 
 with the trout. Lower down still, the latter gets 
 scarcer and larger, and the coarse fish more numerous. 
 Soon after passing into Hampshire at Downton, and 
 certainly at Fordingbridge, the Avon practically 
 ceases to be a trout stream. But then again, at Ring- 
 wood, it asserts itself in the most surprising manner, 
 for this class of water, and becomes a salmon river, as 
 everybody knows, and calls itself, in fishing parlance 
 at any rate, ' The Christchurch Avon.' I have no doubt
 
 SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 
 
 many people think of it as a Hampshire river, though 
 nearly every drop of water in it comes out of the 
 Wiltshire downs ; in addition to which it carries the 
 Wylie with it from Salisbury to the sea. Nor, by 
 the way, do I know of any big town in England 
 where from its very streets you can watch large trout 
 rising, as is the case at Salisbury. For the river 
 prattles upon a gravelly bottom right through it, to 
 wash a little later the back of the cathedral precincts 
 in truly picturesque fashion. Here and below Salis- 
 bury are trout, I think, almost as heavy as the monsters 
 of the Kennet. An oil painting of a twelve-pounder, 
 killed near Downton, comes back to me at any rate 
 from the study wall of an old angler with whom I 
 was intimate long ago. Indeed, I cannot imagine a 
 river more likely for the heaviest type of trout than 
 the lower Avon. 
 
 99
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 IV 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 THE waters that spring from the bosom, or born 
 in remoter wilds, wash the skirts of the 
 great Merioneth mountain are many and 
 bright. Chief among the latter are the Wnion from the 
 slopes of Arran and the Mawddach from Trawsfynydd 
 wastes, which mingling their streams at Dolgelly and 
 meeting the tide, form that long, winding estuary 
 to Bar mouth, which is, to my thinking, one of the 
 loveliest gems of all British scenery. On the other 
 and southern side, nurtured by the many spouting rills 
 which foam in the deep green troughs above Dinas 
 Mowddwy, sweeps down the strong, swift torrent of 
 the Dovey, swelling as it travels seaward with yet more 
 limpid waters from the boggy, russet uplands of old 
 Plinlimmon. Shedding its brooks to the right and 
 to the left into these wide-wandering rivers, Cader 
 herself can claim at least one lusty, and assuredly no 
 less beautiful, stream for her own particular nursling. 
 And this is the Dysynni, which rises high up in her 
 very throat within the dark shadow of the rocky preci- 
 pice whose crown forms the mountain-top, and that 
 ' chair ' whence the giant Idris, according to ancient 
 faith, used to survey a trembling world, and when out 
 
 IOO
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 of temper throw rocks at it, which last may be seen 
 lying here and there in the valleys to this very day. 
 One might fairly say that the Dysynni was born in the 
 gloomy tarn of Llyn-y-cav, which lies almost under 
 the shadow of the precipice. For the rills that feed 
 it are so tiny and so near their source, that in the pro- 
 found silence, which is rarely broken but by the croak 
 of the raven, the call of the curlew, or the bleat of 
 sheep, you can scarcely hear their feeble piping in the 
 drowsiness of high summer. 
 
 Llyn-y-cav is full of smallish trout. A friend of 
 mine who is tolerably reliable in such matters tells 
 me he once filled a basket there. Others declare they 
 have toiled all day and caught nothing. But this is 
 the way of tarns, and there are a good many on the 
 Cader range. A mile or two below, after much 
 plashing and plunging down a moorland, rocky bed, 
 the infant Dysynni ripples through some narrow 
 meadows into the beautiful and quite famous little 
 lake of Tal-y-llyn. I take the last epithet to be not 
 amiss, since for the better part of a century the lake has 
 been the resort of fishermen from far and near, not 
 in great numbers for the restricted nature of the ac- 
 commodation, but as numerous in the late spring, at 
 any rate, as the capacity of the old, white-washed 
 farmhouse hostelry upon the shore admits of. When 
 I was a boy, a dear old gentleman and angler, beneath 
 whose roof in the Midlands I spent many a week of 
 many Christmas holidays, used to sing the glories of 
 Tal-y-llyn, and in this case literally to sing them. 
 For, being of a cheerful temperament and not very 
 musical, he was fond of humming old and familiar 
 
 101
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 songs, with more regard to words than melody, and 
 sometimes paraphrasing them to suit his own mild 
 adventures, past and prospective. His boys, my 
 cronies and contemporaries, were of course budding 
 fishermen, and often on some dark January morning 
 in that dull, clay country, smirched even there by the 
 smoke of Birmingham, we would all sit down to fly- 
 tying in the snug library under the auspices of my 
 cheery, white-haired host, while he talked of streams 
 and lakes and fishing holidays already, or to be, en- 
 joyed. I can hear him now singing an extemporised 
 refrain of his own, * And now, boys, now, we '11 be off 
 to Tal-y-llyn.' A little sketch of the lake hung upon 
 the wall, and as I didn't see the subject of it till my 
 old friend had been many years in his grave, the senti- 
 ment of early association was strong within me when 
 that day came, and I eagerly turned to the well-worn 
 visitors' book for the, by that time, faded signature I 
 knew so well, with the boys' names underneath. For 
 they too, even then, alas ! had joined the majority. 
 
 Set in a deep trough, with the mighty mass of Cader 
 rising from its northern shore, the lofty ridge of Arran- 
 y-Gessel springing as sheer and steep upon the other, 
 and the high pass towards Dolgelly shutting out its 
 eastern end, this is assuredly one of the most beautiful 
 little lakes in Wales. It is nearly a mile in length, but 
 narrow in proportion, and though enclosed by moun- 
 tains is neither sombre nor gloomy. It is not, for 
 instance, like Llyn Ogwen, and still less like Idwal, 
 inspiring in their own way as are these grim Snow- 
 donian lakes. Tal-y-llyn is, in short, not a big tarn, 
 but a lake. The lower mountain slopes, though steep, 
 
 102
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 are verdant. There are touches also of meadow and 
 woodland ; a little farm at the upper and two more at 
 the lower end strike a harmonious note of pastoral 
 life, while the outpouring river plunges down into 
 the green vale of Abergynolwyn beneath the walls 
 of a rude and ancient little church. The two farms 
 at this end of the lake are the regular resorts of the 
 visiting angler, the notable one, an inn, already alluded 
 to, and a smaller house, which in my day at least was 
 of slight account. The former, the Tyn-y-cornel, had 
 then, I fancy, the sole right of putting boats on the 
 water. Any one, I believe, could fish from the 
 shore, but there were very few people in those parts 
 to exercise the right. The Tyn-y-cornel, however, 
 in my time, was more usually known as ' Jones's,' and 
 possibly is so still. For though this worthy has been 
 gathered to his fathers, his daughters, I believe, still 
 maintain the ancient ways of the pleasant if un- 
 pretentious snuggery. The waters of the lake lap 
 up close to the door, before which the coaches from 
 Dolgelly in the tourist season, which is not, however, 
 the trouting season, unburdened themselves betimes, 
 and for a brief hour disturbed the blessed calm, causing 
 the colonels in residence, of whom anon, to swear 
 horribly. The garden at the back opens straight on 
 to the mountain, and the prospect all round is glorious. 
 On a fine May day it is a spot for the gods. 
 
 There were some half-dozen boats attached to the 
 inn, and I don't think the latter held more than a 
 dozen people, so even if all were fisher-folk the pro- 
 cedure was simplicity itself. Moreover there was no 
 charge and no boatmen, the latter omission, from my 
 
 103
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 perhaps perverted standpoint, being an infinite ad- 
 vantage. I am not, to be sure, a very enthusiastic 
 fisher from a drifting boat, and still less enamoured of 
 the all-day company of the average boatman, unless, 
 of course, he is a man of parts and character, which 
 makes a vast difference. Otherwise, if he is not bored 
 and blase, I cannot help putting myself in his place 
 and feeling sure that I should be. I would sooner 
 have a brother fisherman at the other end and share 
 with him the toils of the oar, or, failing that, as often 
 happened on Tal-y-llyn, manage the boat myself. 
 Indeed, this gives a little extra interest, though a 
 little too arduous when a strong wind is blowing. 
 Tal-y-llyn, a curious feature for a mountain lake, is, for 
 the most part, less than ten feet deep, with a soft, weedy 
 bottom, and has, in consequence, fine feeding qualities. 
 April, May, and early June, speaking broadly, consti- 
 tute its season. After that I think the sport is gener- 
 ally poor. I have occasionally gone up there for the 
 day in the after months, not generally on fishing bent, 
 but for the mere charm of the place, or for a day's 
 outing, in the company of friends, and the resident 
 anglers at such season, if not actually depressed, were 
 never in serious or industrious mood. When they 
 have kindly offered to take me out in their boat, as 
 has sometimes happened, they have been always 
 suspiciously ready to take the oars while I wielded 
 their rod, an entertainment I never found profitable 
 at that season, nor they either, I think. 
 
 I once, however, spent a good part of May at Tal-y- 
 llyn and then all was energy, and we caught lots of 
 fish which averaged about half a pound, an excellent 
 104
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 standard, to my thinking, for any lake certainly 
 for one of the accessible and less costly kind, for it 
 means more fish of a handsome and respectable type 
 and more sport. Till you get to the very large fish, 
 which is another matter, plenty of half-pounders are, 
 I think, more comforting than occasional pounders, 
 for the latter have little more chance of defeating you, 
 if properly hooked in the middle of a lake, than the 
 former. The west wind blowing up the open ten 
 miles of valley from the sea, even if it were not the 
 fishermen's wind, is the one to be invoked on Tal-y- 
 llyn, shut in as it is upon the other three sides by 
 mountains. Sometimes it lashes the short mile of 
 water into raging billows and blows you down the 
 drifts, despite the big stone hung overboard as a drag, 
 with deplorable velocity, and the inevitable pull back 
 against the storm a dozen times perhaps in a day puts 
 you out of conceit with the fancy for being your own 
 boatman. But this is only on occasions as rare, perhaps, 
 as those still worse ones which from morn till eve 
 confront the lake fisher with an unbroken surface of 
 glass, when the only thing to be done is to go up a 
 mountain no bad alternative either at Tal-y-llyn. 
 
 The fish here are emphatically short risers, as only 
 becomes a breed whose ancestors have been fished 
 over for a hundred years. Above all, when soft 
 breezes just ruffle the face of the waters and the season 
 advances, the Tal-y-llyn trout are preternaturally 
 sharp, and you have to be painfully wideawake. It 
 is then, no doubt, that the highest skill, or rather the 
 keenest alertness, is required in lake fishing. Three 
 flies of small size were used, and it is needless to say, 
 
 105
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 upon the finest gut. The partridge-green comes back 
 to me as a Tal-y-llyn favourite, as it is on so many other 
 Welsh lakes. On favourable days we generally had 
 some ten pounds, or about twenty fish, to the boat of 
 two rods firm, well-conditioned, hard-fighting fish 
 too. A modest-seeming haul, no doubt, to the wan- 
 derer by far-off, less sophisticated, and more highly 
 appraised waters. But then, after all, there is some 
 satisfaction in killing sophisticated fish, while as for 
 environment you might range the three kingdoms in 
 vain for a more perfect beauty spot than this secluded 
 little lake resting so bewitchingly in the lap of Cader. 
 There had been up to that time, I think, no re-stocking, 
 an omission, if indeed such it is (a rather open question), 
 that has no doubt been since remedied. A pounder 
 was my best fish during that May, and I remember it 
 very well as I was alone in the boat, and a gale raising 
 high waves was fast driving me on to a rocky shore. 
 The Tal-y-llyn boats, to be sure, were not easily staved 
 in, an advantage which was less apparent when you 
 had to scull them back after each drift for three- 
 quarters of a mile into the teeth of a west wind. But 
 these things lent variety, and even at times excite- 
 ment, to the rather even placidity of lake trouting 
 from a boat. 
 
 A little later in that same year I found myself afloat 
 on Lake Vyrnwy, that five-mile stretch of water which 
 the Liverpool corporation have dammed back into 
 the wild heart of the Berwyn mountains. I did not 
 enjoy that so well, though the expense, and not per- 
 haps without justification, was about twice and a half 
 as much again. This was not altogether because the 
 1 06
 
 fish were rising indifferently, and certainly not for 
 lack of scenic charm, for Lake Vyrnwy is both imposing 
 and beautiful. Moreover I had known that seques- 
 tered mountain valley before its submersion, together 
 with its little church, its vicarage, its inn, and scattered 
 homesteads. There was something uncanny in cast- 
 ing one's fly over the top of these ancient abodes 
 abandoned to mud and slime, to water-weeds, and eels, 
 and the haunt, no doubt, of cannibal trout whom 
 anglers at the hotel caught in their dreams, but never 
 in their waking hours. But I got very tired of my 
 boatman, a miner from Ruabon, particularly when at 
 times the light breeze failed us. It was obvious he 
 would sooner have been singing hymns in a Ruabon 
 chapel or watching a football match. There was, 
 and still is here, a very comfortable, modern, well- 
 equipped hostelry, too much so, perhaps, for my no 
 doubt heretical notions. 
 
 You are apt to get parties in too sumptuous apparel 
 glaring at one another from separate tables. You 
 have the lady angler, too, who is just acquiring the 
 jargon of the craft, and displays it with naive assiduity 
 for the benefit of the neighbouring table. You enjoy 
 many other advantages of civilisation, which are very 
 nice if you are taking a course of waters at Harrogate or 
 Llandrindod, but to my prehistoric notions, when one 
 goes a-fishing, strike a rather jarring note. The con- 
 ventions seem better left behind. Heaven forbid that 
 I should be thought to single out Lake Vyrnwy as 
 a mark for my belated prejudices ! It merely sug- 
 gested a type, and one, too, that I am quite sure nowa- 
 days is in general demand. It is a beautiful and well- 
 
 107
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 stocked lake, in exclusive possession of this comfort- 
 able and delightfully situated hotel. 
 
 But for myself I like the old-fashioned fishing-inn, 
 the simple parlours, the cosy bar, even the stuffy bed- 
 rooms. I like the old-timers that haunt, or used to 
 haunt it, and can suffer their expanded fish lies, or, to 
 be more polite, their terminological inexactitudes, with 
 joy and gladness for all the fish that they have really 
 caught, and all the waters that they have really fished. 
 They do not, I am afraid, exchange their fishing outfit 
 at night for a boiled shirt and dress jacket, but stick 
 their stockinged feet into felt slippers. Nor, I fear, 
 do they call for gingerade, nor hot water neat, nor 
 soda-and-milk as the hour of rest approaches, but for 
 whisky unabashed, and with a slice of lemon in it, 
 for auld lang syne, like the immortal Silas Wegg. And 
 sometimes the calls of ancient friendship demand a 
 second, which leads to another bit of coal upon the fire, 
 and then they wander over old ground from the Tamar 
 to the Tay. What they are when at home, some of 
 these ancients sharp enough fellows when they have 
 got their business coats on again, no doubt you might 
 crack with them, and fish with them for a month and 
 never guess, so thoroughly and so completely are they 
 soaked for the time in the passion of their holiday 
 hours. Perhaps they are passing away, or have already 
 passed. The world, maybe, is getting too rackety 
 and too complex nowadays to breed such characters. 
 When anybody can get anywhere by motor in a few 
 hours without thought or without trouble, the senti- 
 ment, one might say the charm, of these old, wide 
 wanderings is more than half destroyed. The inner 
 1 08
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 sanctuaries are vulgarised, the mystery of sequestered 
 places has vanished, or is vanishing. And then the 
 charm of finding them, and knowing them, and sharing 
 the knowledge with a few kindred souls, has gone too, 
 together with many other things of a quieter world, 
 which could not be had without a little enterprise and 
 a little trouble, and were surely the sweeter for it. 
 
 There were the colonels, too, under which term I must 
 include majors and captains, in the old days. There 
 was nearly always one at every quiet fishing-inn, very 
 often a rather thirsty soul, and sometimes, it must be 
 admitted, a bit of a nuisance. For I have not, of 
 course, in mind the active warrior on short leave, nor 
 even the retired one of recent and abstemious days. 
 But an earlier generation, who had worn side-whiskers 
 as subalterns and pushed the bottle briskly at mess, 
 seems to have been prolific in half-pay bachelors who 
 drifted in their later days almost instinctively towards 
 the fishing-inn, and made it practically their summer 
 residence. Almost inevitably, too, they came to fill 
 what might be called the chair in the ever-shifting 
 company, and sometimes filled it a trifle autocratically. 
 It was not good for their health, in spite of the counter- 
 acting advantages of the outdoor life, which gave them 
 no doubt a longer innings. No human wight with 
 convivially sociable tastes could keep pace with relays 
 of old-timers who could afford to be cheerful and let 
 themselves go a little for two or three idle weeks of a 
 busy year. So the colonels, I am afraid, went under 
 sooner or later. Sometimes the descent to Avernus 
 became painfully obvious, and when they began to 
 remain over the winter it was always the beginning 
 
 109
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 of the end. A good many of them, forgotten in their 
 premature decline by old comrades and relatives alike, 
 lie in country churchyards among the mountains of 
 Wales, the victims of too much leisure, otherwise too 
 much conviviality, and indirectly, alas, of a love for 
 the rod. 
 
 Three veterans, by no means colonels, however, 
 used to meet annually at Tal-y-llyn. It was an un- 
 alterable fixture, a law of the Medes and Persians. 
 One came from Yorkshire, the other from South Wales, 
 and a third from London. Their respective wives, 
 I have some reason to believe, had never seen each 
 other. Not belonging precisely to the same grade of 
 society, they would, doubtless, have refused to meet ! 
 But for this the three ancients, I am sure, cared less 
 than nothing. They were great cronies. The best 
 boats and the boats as well as the oars were anything 
 but a level lot at Tal-y-llyn were reserved for them 
 as a matter of prescriptive right. Even the colonel, and 
 there was very much of a colonel, and sometimes two, 
 at the Tyn-y-cornel in those days (both have gone 
 under), took a back seat in the choice of boats for these 
 three weeks. The trio were also men of method. 
 Whitmonday always fell some time in their holiday, and 
 as punctually upon that morning they all drove to 
 Machynlleth in Mr. Jones's cart, and took the railway 
 to Aberdovey, where they fished in the sea that after- 
 noon and the next morning, returning at night to 
 renew their labours on Tal-y-llyn. 
 
 Every one of middle age familiar with the Wye in 
 its higher reaches, knows the pathetic story of the 
 three fishers, not Kingsley's, < who went out into the 
 no
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 west when the sun went down,' but old cronies who 
 for a lifetime resorted every year to that once famous 
 old hostelry, The Three Cocks, near Glasbury. And 
 how first one died in harness, then the other ; and 
 how the survivor, when too feeble and rheumatic to 
 wield a salmon-rod, used to come down to the old 
 quarters and wander in mournful guise along the river 
 bank. It is no legend, but a true tale. I know the 
 inn well, and have seen some of the tackle they left 
 behind them there, carefully treasured. 
 
 Now displayed upon the wall of the parlour at the 
 Tyn-y-cornel there is, or was when I frequented it, 
 a life-size illustration of a trout, executed by one of its 
 former fishing colonels, who was also no mean artist. 
 This picture was a great asset to the inn, for its sub- 
 ject presented a perennial and practically insoluble 
 problem. It provoked the curiosity of the newcomer 
 as soon as ever he had found his tongue ; and then the 
 oldest habitue in residence, probably the colonel, or if 
 he was resting, the next guest in seniority of associa- 
 tion, as a matter of right and etiquette told the story, 
 which is in truth a sufficiently marvellous and withal 
 a perfectly true one. 
 
 Near by the roadside on the wild pass leading up 
 from the head of Tal-y-llyn over the mountain and by 
 the old Cross-fords inn to Dolgelly is an insignificant 
 tarn, historically entitled to the designation of Llyn-y- 
 tri-graien, or ' the lake of the three grains,' but vul- 
 garly known, doubtless for its very insignificance, as 
 Pebble pool. The three grains, I might remark, are 
 represented by three rocks which Idris, whose passion 
 for stone-throwing has been alluded to, flung down 
 
 ill
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 there in a rage as they had got into his shoe and in- 
 commoded him. If memory serves me you could 
 almost throw a biscuit across the pool's shallow, 
 transparent waters. There are no fish in it, nor from 
 its appearance would any passer-by for a moment 
 expect there to be. Some thirty years ago it looked 
 just the same, nor did any traveller upon this often 
 travelled highway suspect that the shallow, trans- 
 parent pond was the haunt of anything bigger than 
 a minnow. 
 
 One day, however, a well-known local character, 
 while driving by, saw what he believed, though he could 
 scarce credit his eyes, to be a monster trout. So, of 
 course, he stopped at the inn on his way down the valley 
 and related the astounding vision to all there con- 
 cerned, and as this was in the fishing season everybody 
 in the house was greatly moved thereat. For the way- 
 farer was a man of standing, fish knowledge, and sober 
 habit. One of the colonels, indeed the very artist who 
 immortalised the fish on the parlour wall, being in resi- 
 dence, it fell to him of course to take the necessary steps. 
 Being then in his prime and not long on the retired 
 list, he set off at once for the lonely pool, near the head 
 of the pass, armed for the fray. I knew him well in 
 after years, and he often told me the tale of the great 
 capture which, in fact, was a brief one and of slight 
 interest compared to the mystery of the trout itself. 
 For the latter took his natural minnow almost, I think, 
 at the first offer, which was not after all very strange, 
 as he had probably denuded the pond by this time of 
 its live-stock. The fish was brought to the bank 
 successfully after a lively contest, and weighed just 
 112
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 five pounds a positive whale for these mountains, and 
 in any case a phenomenon, as the sole denizen and 
 product of a little patch of what might almost be 
 mistaken in golfer's phrase for ' casual water.' How 
 long had he been there ? whence came he, and why 
 had no one ever before seen him ? Nor again was 
 there any access up the smallest water-course to the 
 pool. However, the fish had got there somehow, 
 presumably in infancy, and acquired cunning perhaps 
 as he waxed and fattened, lying perdu by day and 
 raiding his preserve of grubs and minnows by night. 
 But these are the things that have kept the tongues 
 of the wisest at Tal-y-llyn wagging to small purpose 
 for over three decades, and the problem, I have no 
 doubt, is as fresh and mysterious and insoluble as 
 ever. For there, I am told, is the fish still upon the 
 wall, and there beyond any doubt by the roadside, high 
 up the pass for every wayfarer to see, is the Pebble 
 pool, and those who have seen both can guess at the 
 life-story of that mysterious sockdolager in such fashion 
 as may seem good to each of them. 
 
 When I began this chapter I had no intention of 
 lingering so long at Tal-y-llyn, seeing how much more 
 time I have actually spent upon the river which runs 
 out of it and away down towards the sea which it 
 meets near Towyn. I have not so much as set eyes 
 on either lake or river for a dozen years. But away 
 back in the eighties a little group of us, old friends 
 and all fishermen, and what was infinitely more remark- 
 able at that remote date, not being North Britons, 
 all golfers, used to repair thither with our belongings 
 for the month of August and perhaps a little more. 
 H 113
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Our men-folk persuaded their wives that it was the 
 nicest place in Wales because there were no trippers, 
 and by a more convincing argument that on its rather 
 melancholy but level sands the children couldn't get 
 drowned if they tried. For one or more in every 
 party of infants invariably makes an attempt at self- 
 destruction if they have half a chance. The tyrant 
 sex, too, liked to feel when they were away up the 
 Dysynni, sewin fishing, that their progeny were quite 
 safe. It was some years before the ladies struck, if so 
 harsh a term may be used ; the children and the men 
 never did. Towyn was very small in those days, and 
 was proudly regarded by its inhabitants as particularly 
 select. The last time I went through it and stopped 
 to call upon my old friend and everybody's friend, the 
 chemist and fishing-tackle vender, he almost shed 
 tears at the social slump in the way of summer visitors 
 that had taken place. A psychical moment had in 
 fact occurred some years before in the history of 
 Towyn. It was a question of making a golf-course, 
 where nature had provided them with almost a ready- 
 made one of the finest quality, or building a long, 
 expensive, and dreary asphalt promenade. 
 
 Now there was not a single golf-course then in the 
 whole of Wales. Aberdovey close by, the first in the 
 Principality, was not quite yet laid out. We had 
 already in our off hours played for many Augusts over 
 as fine a natural surface with sand-hills, bunkers, and 
 keen turf as could be desired, to the amazement of 
 natives and visitors, none of whom had ever before 
 seen the uncanny thing. Such a chance, and at such 
 a moment, never offered itself to a little watering- 
 114
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 place. The southern courses could have been then 
 counted upon the fingers of two hands. But the 
 southerner was already inoculated, and we beheld the 
 coming boom as plain as daylight. But to the arbiters 
 of Towyn's destiny our urgent representations seemed 
 so much foolishness. So they spent thousands (the 
 great man did) in an effort, mostly vain I think, to 
 decoy the negro minstrel, the tripper, and the brass 
 band, where hundreds laid out on a golf-course would 
 have made a different place of it, and * the select ' fled 
 before the asphalt with its possibilities. Hinc illae 
 lachrymae of the patriotic chemist. The monstrous 
 blunder has been tardily rectified. Our old stamping- 
 ground, where we astonished the natives, and despite 
 the terrors of wandering black bulls of truculent char- 
 acter enjoyed ourselves, save perhaps on our im- 
 provised putting-greens, is now, I believe, what it 
 should have been made twenty-five years ago. But 
 to what purpose, speaking relatively ? For the coast 
 of Wales north, west, and south is now a chain of 
 golf links ! 
 
 There was always, too, an annual cricket match 
 between the visitors and the local club, all working 
 men, whose mother and only tongue was Welsh. 
 There was something racy in playing a team who had 
 no English and whose captain placed his men and 
 shouted his instructions in the ancient tongue of the 
 Cymry. There was something more than risky in fac- 
 ing fast bowling on the local wicket. For myself, I 
 always looked forward with dread to the inevitable 
 encounter, and instead of a bold and cheerful mien 
 always walked to the wicket in a cold sweat. We had
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 some talent, and could have given our opponents great 
 odds on an average English village green. But so 
 utterly were we cowed by the rugged irregularities of 
 the pitch that we were generally beaten. It was only 
 an afternoon match, but all four innings, when such 
 were necessary, were easily completed long before the 
 limit hour, so frequently did a wide to the off take your 
 leg stump or the reverse. 
 
 The Dysynni was a very interesting and a very 
 beautiful river. It was tolerably good for one that 
 comes within the scope of a light-hearted domestic 
 holiday. The ladies thought us rather brutal, and 
 with some justice, as we were always praying for rain. 
 In our heart of hearts we couldn't have enough of it, 
 though we didn't perhaps say so. For the rain took 
 the sewin and some salmon up, and though there was 
 a great deal of netting at the mouth, a fair number 
 escaped. One great merit of the Dysynni lay in the 
 fact that from Peniarth, some four miles up, where the 
 rapid water ceased, the river ran deep and slow, and 
 was slightly affected for some distance by the tide. 
 Above Peniarth it was swift and broken with all the 
 characteristics of a mountain stream ; so that after rain, 
 when the water was in condition, we could fish the 
 upper part to advantage, and when that ran low and 
 clear we could apply ourselves so long as there was a 
 breeze to the deep, sluggish reaches below. The 
 sewin and trout lay and rose, when they felt disposed 
 to rise, in both. But the brown trout in the upper 
 water were usually of the smaller breed, those in the 
 lower waters were mostly pounders or thereabouts. 
 This was, of course, ages before the days of motors. It 
 116
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 was before the days even of safety bicycles. I don't 
 think fishermen, not perhaps being a venturesome race, 
 ever rode those high, fearsome things of ancient times, 
 a fall from which seemed to portend certain death. 
 So our party used to drive in a rusty wagonette from 
 the Corbett Arms to the old stone bridge near the 
 village of Bryncrug, when we fished the lower water, 
 and by rough roads to Peniarth, when we fished the 
 upper reaches. It was all association water, but there 
 were not many fishermen on it in those days, and there 
 was abundant room. I recall those jog-trot drives 
 up the valley as not the least pleasant part of the pro- 
 gramme. We were always happy and in high good 
 temper as we went out, particularly if a light rain was 
 blowing up from the sea in a dull sky. 
 
 On looking back, pangs of remorse seize me that we 
 ought to have thought more of our dejected families, 
 threatened with a whole day's imprisonment within 
 the walls of Towyn lodging-houses, looking out upon 
 a dreary sea. We ought not to have been so cheerful. 
 It was utterly wrong. But man is a selfish animal and 
 woman a long-suffering one or she used to be. A 
 lady the other day begged and implored me to make 
 a fisherman of her husband. Of course he may have 
 bored her, and if I had felt certain of that I would 
 have done my best, but they seemed to be a reasonably 
 devoted couple, and I absolutely declined to have a 
 finger in any such business, particularly as it would 
 have been a hopeless task. Our drives home were 
 not always so cheerful, but after a good day they were 
 the best of all. I look upon it as one of the stoutest 
 evidences of the nobility of woman, that after being shut 
 
 117
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 up for the whole of a rainy day in cramped quarters she 
 can get up as much excitement over the turning out 
 of a good basket on to a kitchen dish as the captor 
 himself secretly feels, though of course he always 
 takes it coolly, as if it were an everyday affair, well as 
 his wife knows it to be nothing of the kind. 
 
 On the two miles or so of dead water between 
 Peniarth and Bryncrug bridge, along whose margin 
 a thin fringe of bulrushes was always whispering, the 
 procedure was curious. At any rate I have never 
 fished any other water in the same way, and indeed 
 I am not sure if I know any quite like this one. We 
 used small flies of ordinary trout pattern, two and 
 sometimes three of them on moderately fine gut. 
 We fished straight up stream, of which last, however, 
 there was practically none, for the sufficient reason that 
 the necessary breeze always blew up the valley. The 
 river was just about a long cast in width, but we did 
 not concern ourselves much with the middle nor 
 exert ourselves to test the opposite bank. Experience 
 and there was a great deal of concentrated local ex- 
 perience in the matter held it to be unprofitable. 
 The sewin seemed nearly always to be within a yard 
 or two of the bank close to the reeds. So, though not 
 wholly neglecting mid-stream, we mainly cast and 
 worked our flies close to the near bank. It was a rather 
 monotonous method, as the river was like a canal save 
 for its clear mountain water and the game fish that 
 swam in it. But against this we had the consolation 
 of remembering that it was only possible to fish it on 
 so many days because of this monotonous character. 
 Had it been a merry, shallow, chattering river, as in 
 118
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 fact it was above, and like most sea-trout rivers, it 
 would only have been fishable in times of fresh water. 
 It was for these staunch and enduring qualities we 
 so greatly esteemed it, though that of patience on our 
 part was sometimes severely tested. The sewin ran 
 from one to four pounds, and the occasional trout 
 generally exceeded the former weight, and all were 
 shapely, clean fish. How beautiful is the leap of a 
 freshly hooked sewin a bar of silver in the sun- 
 shine ! A mediaeval Welsh bard thought a sewin in 
 the sunshine was the most beautiful sight in the world, 
 next to the ladies of Merioneth. We usually got a 
 brace or two a-piece (sewin, I mean), though both 
 red-letter days and yet more blank ones rise to 
 memory ; or more often perhaps, in the case of the 
 latter, have sunk into oblivion. 
 
 Grey days in summer time, when waters are ruffling, 
 woods blowing, reeds bending, rushes or moor grasses 
 whistling in a warm wind, have always had for me a 
 strange and unfathomable charm. I cannot analyse 
 it, but can dimly trace its origin to boyish days on 
 luxmoor and feel its fixed abiding charm. It was the 
 same at twenty-five as at fifteen, at well, we won't 
 go on ! Enough that it remains almost for some- 
 thing of life's freshness must fade as strong as ever. 
 Water, no doubt, is the centre of all the ingredients that 
 make up this particular landscape effect, which has for 
 me such a peculiar fascination. It has been pronounced 
 eccentric ! Familiars who cannot understand it have 
 stoutly protested that it has something to do with 
 fishing. I could not positively swear that its origin 
 was wholly dissociated from trout, but not in the almost 
 
 119
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 brutal way they would have it. There are lots of 
 people who are always shouting for sunshine, every 
 day and all the time, and wishing they were in Italy, 
 or California, or Mexico, or some other parched-up 
 country with a ' superb climate.' I worshipped at 
 the shrine of the sun-god, not over willingly on his 
 account, for a good many years, and when we did get 
 a dull day, how glorious and stimulating it was ! 
 Even the sun- worshippers gave thanks. Even 1911 
 in Old England, a mere trifle of course in the matter 
 of heat, gave pause to the devotion of some. 
 
 Dysynni memories are much associated with such 
 grey days, for the good reason that we had a great 
 many of them, and I recall them with infinite tender- 
 ness. If the lower river and its fringe of swaying reeds 
 was a bit sombre, rolling through level meadows to 
 the wide open level mouth of the valley against which 
 the grey seas tumbled, what glories of hill, mountain, 
 and woodland lay all about it ! The wild, lofty ridge 
 that shut us out from the Dovey valley, furrowed 
 with pellucid streams which spouted down from their 
 high bogs through bosky glens of oak and fern ; the 
 Craig-a-deryn too (* Bird rock '), which shot up for 
 six hundred feet sheer in the midst of the narrowing 
 valley, while to its rocky crown the sea-fowl travelled 
 over our heads in great companies every evening from 
 the coast. And ever in front of us, at the far head of 
 the vale, beyond the folding foot-hills, the great pile 
 of Cader lifted itself against the sky. All these things 
 were assuredly no less effective and inspiring when 
 storms brooded over them and they opened and shut in 
 whirling clouds ; and when, peradventure, the morn- 
 120
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 ing sun shone upon them the next day, what radiancy- 
 was theirs ! what sparkling meadows, what glowing 
 hillsides ! 
 
 Those much less frequent days when the upper and 
 rapid part of the water was fishable, and provided a 
 change of venue, always brought pleasurable antici- 
 pations and sometimes pretty fair results, as results 
 were counted on the Dysynni. The river is smaller up 
 here, just an ordinary trout stream of the less rugged 
 Welsh sort, a stream of pools and gravelly glides easily 
 compassed from its meadowy bank. It soon ran down 
 out of condition, but in the process we generally had 
 a fairly merry time with the sewin, which sometimes 
 took a Devon minnow in the clearing of the water 
 from porter to brown sherry colour. All this fishing, 
 both upper and lower, was known as the Peniarth 
 water, and that ancient mansion of the Wynns, amid 
 its thick, wind-buffeted woods, stood here near the 
 river bank, the repository at one time, and still I 
 think in a measure, of the famous Peniarth MSS., one 
 of the most valuable collections of ancient manuscripts 
 in Wales. Most of this Peniarth water had been 
 handed over to the association for the benefit of 
 Towyn and its visitors. 
 
 But above these reaches, and running up through 
 the narrowing and always lovely valley to the village 
 of Abergynolwyn, came a long stretch of private water 
 preserved by its owner, who was both resident and a 
 keen fisherman, though now long dead. I always 
 admired that unselfish soul, though I scarcely knew 
 him to speak to. One of our party had a slightly 
 nearer acquaintance, so his generosity to us was per- 
 
 121
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 haps a little less remarkable. But any respectable 
 visitor at Towyn who wrote to him for a day's fishing 
 was granted it with the further privilege of bringing a 
 friend. If he hadn't been a fisherman, though most 
 non-fishermen don't look at it that way, the concession 
 would merely have been a piece of civility creditable 
 under the circumstances, but which cost practically 
 nothing. Here, however, was a keen sportsman 
 with two miles of excellent sewin water, when and 
 while it was in order, inviting strangers whom he had 
 never seen to come and, so to speak, share it with him 
 in the best four or five weeks. Now I know a man, 
 and a wealthy one too, who lives upon and owns six 
 miles of as fine a rapid trout river as you would find 
 anywhere. Half a dozen rods upon it every fishable 
 day of the season would do it rather good than harm. 
 He, too, is a keen fisherman. He is an old school- 
 fellow of mine, and once being in the neighbourhood 
 I lightly suggested (fortunately I got no further) to a 
 third party, who knew him well, that I should ask him 
 for a day or two's fishing. The third party roared with 
 laughter : ' Old schoolfellow ! Why, I doubt if his 
 own brother could get a day. I know his own rector 
 can't, who has fished the river all his life till this en- 
 gaging alien swooped down upon it. He might ask 
 you to dinner (which, by the way, he actually did). 
 He 's quite normal otherwise, but a day's fishing ! Not 
 much ! ' I was further warned by the strongest hint 
 from his wife, and all this is quite true. Six miles 
 think of it ! and then have regard to this generous 
 Welsh major ! 
 
 I always felt sorry that the major was out on the 
 122
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 very day in all the years that we made our bumper 
 basket on his water. I use the plural for brevity, but 
 it will require much qualifying, just as the regrets 
 that the owner was out on a presumably propitious 
 day will require some explanation. Now by long 
 odds the most successful sewin fisherman of our 
 party was an old friend of my youth. He was the 
 Nestor among us as regards the Dysynni, and had fished 
 it for I don't know how many years, having some 
 old connection with the neighbourhood. At any rate 
 he had established an understanding with the Dysynni 
 sea-going fish that no one, local or alien, ever I think 
 quite equalled. His favourite fly a variety of claret 
 and mallard, if I remember rightly was dressed 
 especially for the Towyn tackle-vender, and called 
 by my friend's name and recommended to all strange 
 fishermen. Possibly it is still. Wickham, HofBand, 
 Francis, and other classic characters writ large on the 
 parchment margin of the Towyn chemist's case of flies 
 took a back seat, and the well, never mind, bade 
 fair to give my friend immortality upon the banks of 
 the Dysynni. Sea-trout fishing theoretically is simple, 
 straightforward work, calling apparently for no special 
 deftness, nor pregnant with any great mysteries like 
 trouting. But my friend had some gift, and possibly 
 an unconscious trick of so manoeuvring his flies, even 
 in the dead waters where one cast was exactly like 
 another, as to kill more sewin than anybody, and if a 
 salmon was about and was to be caught at all, he 
 always nipped it. Probably he was also what is known 
 as a lucky fisherman. 
 
 But at any rate on this occasion he and I, armed 
 
 123
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 with the major's permits, started in at the head of his 
 water, just below the village of Abergynolwyn, where 
 the river is quite small. It was a perfect fishing 
 morning. There was exactly the right amount of 
 water, and it had fined nicely down into fly condition 
 after a day or two of heavy rain. The sun was shining 
 upon grove, mead, and mountain, which fairly sparkled 
 as only West Britain can sparkle when illuminated 
 after summer storms, and a beautiful soft breeze was 
 blowing. We did nothing, I think, till we got to the 
 confluence of the stream from Llanfihangel, at the foot 
 of Cader, with the Dysynni. Nor do I think at 
 sandwich-and-flask time, half a mile below, had we 
 more than a couple of sewin, and a few respectable 
 brook trout between us. Then as we proceeded lower 
 my friend began to work his conjuring tricks. To 
 shorten my tale, he killed that afternoon, if memory 
 serves me, nine sewin and certainly three grilse of from 
 five pounds to six pounds a-piece. Fortunately he had 
 his son with him to carry them. As for me, it was one 
 of those evil days in which one fancies some accursed 
 imp must be seated on one's shoulders. It is of no 
 consequence, and all of us are liable to them. Every 
 sewin, but a miserable brace basketed, that took me, 
 either went off with the fly through my fault or that 
 of the gut and a very stiff rod, or else shook himself 
 free in the encounter. Nor was it likely that a salmon 
 was going to look at anybody so hopelessly out of 
 favour with the gods. 
 
 But it did rather disturb us under the circumstances 
 when in the evening we met the major and two friends 
 who had been fishing the lowest reaches beneath the 
 124
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 house, that they too had practically nothing be- 
 tween them. And when my friend's son, staggering 
 under the weight of his father's catch, laid it out upon 
 the bridge for inspection, the major would have been 
 more than human if he had not felt something of an 
 inward twinge at the contrast, and on his own water 
 too. But being, as I am sure he was, very much of 
 a sportsman and a gentleman, he had nothing but 
 hearty congratulations on the sport his water had 
 provided for a comparative stranger. 
 
 Now, at the mouth of the Dysynni, where a mile or 
 so north of Towyn it runs under the Cambrian rail- 
 road bridge into the sea, there used at certain con- 
 ditions of the tide to be very good bass-fishing. One 
 summer an impulsive Irish friend of mine joined our 
 party for a time a young man of great originality, a 
 fine horseman, and something of a poet, but of so 
 mercurial a temperament and such impetuous habit 
 that he seldom came into a room without chipping 
 a piece of furniture or knocking something off the 
 mantelpiece. But, as there was practically no furni- 
 ture in the Towyn furnished apartments, and nothing 
 on the mantelpiece but photographs of deceased 
 dissenting ministers with leonine manes and Newgate 
 fringes, we thought it safe to ask him down, as we were 
 much attached to him. Though otherwise an ex- 
 tremely personable young man, he had a close, tightly 
 curled crop of the reddest hair I have ever to my 
 knowledge seen. And I don't think this description 
 can be much too strong. For I once introduced him, 
 suddenly as it so happened, and without warning, 
 to a plain American of the homespun type on tour. 
 
 125
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 This gentleman was so taken aback, that instead of 
 releasing his hand after the conventional shake, or 
 even saying ' I 'm happy to meet you, sir,' he gripped 
 it fast and held it there, as if concerned lest a 
 side-show that hadn't been mentioned in Baedeker 
 should escape him before he had thoroughly examined 
 it. When his deliberate inspection was concluded he 
 found his tongue. ' I didn't rightly catch your name, 
 sir, but you 've a mighty red head, anyway ! ' and then 
 he released him. I might remark, in extenuation of 
 the Homespun's freedom of manner, that my poppy- 
 headed friend was under twenty at that time. The 
 ladies, however, who are better judges of such things, 
 always maintained that he had the most beautiful hair 
 they had ever seen. Beautiful or otherwise, it ex- 
 pressed his breathless, heady temperament to a fault. 
 
 His first visit to me had been at another fishing- 
 place when he was perhaps eighteen. I didn't know 
 him to speak of at that time and had advised him to 
 bring tackle. So he arrived with a new rod and fly- 
 book. The stream there happened to be steep and 
 torrential, a mass of crags and boulders and deep pools. 
 He was of East Anglian rearing though of Irish blood, 
 and had never beheld such things, nor even a trout. 
 An old ex-keeper took him in hand and told me that 
 he had never seen such a young gentleman in all his 
 life, that he had never laughed so much since he 
 was born, and that his sides still ached. He couldn't 
 keep his feet, the old man said, for thirty consecutive 
 seconds, and at the very start he slid clean over his 
 head into a deep pool. Dick had apparently spent 
 the morning upside down in water of all depths. 
 126
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 Being a humorist, I half suspect he appreciated the 
 paroxysms of mirth into which he threw the old 
 keeper, and once wet through continued to indulge him 
 by a series of subtly planned disasters. Anyway, it 
 was his first and last day's fishing till the occasion, years 
 later, to which all this is trending. He did, to be sure, 
 insist on coming up the Dysynni as bearer of my net 
 and basket one morning, but very soon disappeared, 
 and incidentally with the landing-net, which he carried 
 over various mountain-tops till eventide. 
 
 Now there was a very sedate, retired, and solitary 
 Anglo-Indian staying at Towyn that summer. He 
 was very fond of fishing, though he affected, I think, 
 other waters, and we knew him but slightly. He 
 was also a keen bass-fisher, which we were not. For 
 the Dysynni, it should be said, after lingering in broad, 
 irregular, tidal reaches about Towyn, draws together 
 under the railway bridge, and with brisk current once 
 more in the guise of a river, races for a few hundred 
 yards swiftly to the sea. This spot at nightfall was 
 the bass-fisher's haunt. The fish here ran about five 
 pounds a-piece, and were angled for with a fearsome 
 fly (so-called) about the size of a water-wagtail, and 
 armed with one or more hooks that would have gone 
 through your arm and out at the other side. It was 
 not a dry fly ! They fished it wet generally in the 
 gloaming and into the dark when the tide served. 
 This stretch between the bridge and the sea was short, 
 and if half a dozen sportsmen were at work together 
 the hurtling of their respective missiles through the air, 
 I have been told, for I never joined their ranks, made 
 intimidating music in the ear of the next in the pro- 
 
 127
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 cession. They were all of course safe men, but in the 
 dark anything may happen, so I was rather surprised 
 one morning at being accosted in the street by the 
 grave Anglo-Indian. 
 
 'What a nice young fellow that is staying with 
 you.' 
 
 ' Yes,' I said, * he 's a capital chap.' 
 
 * He has kindly promised to come out bass-fishing 
 with me to-night.' 
 
 * Going with you ? Surely not ; he never fished in 
 his life ' (the sole occasion above-mentioned did not 
 seem worth allusion). 
 
 * So he told me, but I have promised to lend him 
 a rod and tackle, and it 's pleasant to have a com- 
 panion out there at night and for the walk each way.' 
 
 i Undoubtedly, but do leave it at that, and don't 
 put a rod into his hands whatever you do, or he '11 
 smash it, if it 's smashable ; but if you don't mind 
 that, on no account go within fifty yards of him. 
 He will hook you to a dead certainty, and possibly 
 even drown you.' I felt bound to put it rather 
 strongly, though I couldn't of course justify these 
 portentous forebodings. But I knew my young friend 
 pretty intimately from the soles of his boots to the top 
 of his head, and felt absolutely certain that this Anglo- 
 Indian would somehow rue his generous but reckless 
 overtures. But he only smiled, and said he would take 
 good care of himself. 
 
 ' So you 're going bass-fishing with Colonel Lucknow, 
 are you, to-night ? ' 
 
 Rather shamefacedly Dick admitted the soft im- 
 peachment. For he had railed at the gentle art ever 
 128
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 since he had played the porpoise in the mountain stream 
 seven years back. Nor had our luck so far in the few 
 days of his stay been such as to inspire an unbeliever, 
 for which last I was devoutly thankful. But it trans- 
 pired that he had seen some very big bass brought in 
 the night before, the size of which and the Anglo- 
 Indian's amiable solicitations had touched his ardent 
 temperament. I have noticed that the unbeliever, 
 if otherwise a sportsman, is often warmed up at the 
 notion of a big fish. A tarpon or a sturgeon appeals 
 to him, which of course only emphasises his hopeless 
 state of mind. Relative tackle means nothing to him. 
 He sniffs a sort of personal encounter in the deep a 
 kind of pull-devil, pull-baker business, a tug-of-war. So 
 the solemn colonel and Dick passed out into the gloam- 
 ing that evening, each armed with a big rod and the 
 fearsome projectiles with which they were to thrash the 
 dark waters of the out-flow. I watched them out of 
 sight, as there was something so delightfully incon- 
 gruous in the spectacle, and then settled comfortably 
 down before the fire, thanking heaven I wasn't the 
 colonel. 
 
 It now becomes imperative to relate that the warrior 
 in question always wore a soft hat of slightly eccentric 
 make and fashioned of some peculiar rough material, 
 which was almost obscured by the flies in it. Most 
 of us have a few on our headgear when on the war-path, 
 but the colonel's hat had become quite one of the jests 
 of the Towyn season. We opined that he dispensed 
 with a fly-book and carried his whole outfit on his 
 head. It was a sort of fore-and-aft contrivance with 
 a little tuft upon the top. Now it may have been ten 
 i 129
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 o'clock or thereabouts when a rap at the window an- 
 nounced Dick's return, and proceeding to open the 
 front door I was quite relieved to see the colonel with 
 him and apparently sound. I couldn't set down the 
 precise reason for this sense of relief, because the reader 
 never knew Dick, and there probably was never any one 
 quite like him. But as the older man with rather a 
 depressed good-night went off into the darkness 
 towards his lodgings, I noticed that he had some- 
 thing like a white napkin tied round his head, and 
 then I instinctively knew there had been an adventure 
 of some sort. Of course there had ! ' Dick,' said I 
 when we got into the sitting-room, * what have you 
 done to the colonel ? ' 
 
 And then the long pent-up humour of the thing 
 broke forth, and the incorrigible youth sat on the horse- 
 hair sofa and shouted with laughter for about five 
 minutes. When he had done I said sternly, ' What 
 does that bandage round his head mean ? ' 
 
 ' Lord ! it isn't a bandage, it 's only a knotted 
 handkerchief instead of his hat.' 
 
 * Where 's his hat ? ' said I. 
 
 1 Half-way to Ireland by this time.' 
 ' What ! the hat ? ' 
 
 * Yes, of course, the hat, flies and all,' said the in- 
 corrigible one, falling into another unseemly burst of 
 mirth. 
 
 And then in due course I learned that Dick's beastly 
 fly, if such a projectile can be called a fly, in one of his 
 wild, untutored whirlings had fastened in the colonel's 
 hat as it lunged forward, lifted it deftly off his head, 
 and laid it on the surface of the dark, rapid waters of 
 130
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 the Dysynni where they rushed into the deep. Not 
 a living man in Great Britain could have done that 
 by accident except Dick. And if my readers can 
 think I can tell such a foolish tale if it hadn't happened 
 exactly as related, I cannot help it. 
 
 ' Did you get any fish ? ' said I. 
 
 1 Not a fish,' said he ; * this is my second attempt, 
 and it will be my last.' 
 
 ' That is fortunate for your friends,' I replied. 
 
 I saw the colonel the next day, and he was very 
 depressed. He said that at least ten shillings' worth 
 of flies, three casts, and his favourite hat, made to 
 order, had gone out to sea. 
 
 He said further that his opinion of my friend as an 
 entertaining companion had suffered no whit, but as 
 a fishing partner my estimate of him was only too 
 true. They had fished of necessity more or less along- 
 side of one another, and so long as it was dusk he 
 managed to elude the wild whistling flights of his 
 neighbour's fly. But when it grew dark, what with 
 the constant eloquence, sociability, and reckless pro- 
 cedure of the other he was compelled to take his 
 chance. ' It might have been worse,' he said, * for 
 again and again he grazed my ear, and when the blow 
 fell it just took the tufty button of my hat and swept 
 it clear into the river. I wish I had taken your advice, 
 but we live and learn, though I couldn't have imagined 
 there was such a feather-headed chap on earth.' 
 
 Poor Dick, he died this long time ago, but I still use 
 to this day the fly-book he gave me in his prompt 
 disgust with fishing, with his name scrawled in a boyish 
 hand upon the parchment. He just missed being a
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 genius. Nature, I am quite certain, meant him for 
 one, and then disgusted with his utter indifference to 
 her approaches, changed her mind. I have a printed 
 metrical, pseudo-classical drama of his written when 
 he was twenty, and staged amateurly in the town hall 
 of a considerable provincial town with success. The 
 cadence and the language suggest a precocious youth, 
 soaked in the classics and the English poets. But a 
 brief fourth-form career at a public school and a year 
 or two of the same stamp with tutors brought his 
 education to an end at sixteen, and was all he ever had 
 or, it must be owned, he seemed to want. But for a 
 desultory dip, perhaps, into Shakespeare or Tennyson, 
 I don't believe he opened another book worth reading 
 for the rest of his life. Very, very occasionally, he 
 wrote an article or poem which was generally accepted 
 in rather fastidious quarters. He came into some 
 money, and men unworthy to black his boots lived on 
 it, till he died and that was all ! The only thing he 
 could ever stick to was the back of a buck-jumper. 
 There was a good deal, I fancy, of the Lindsay Gordon 
 about him without the maturity. But there is infinite 
 allowance to be made for a brilliant, lovable, im- 
 petuous nature, born by some freak into a gloomy, 
 rigid, Calvinistic family, and of course destroyed by it. 
 I have implied that the lodgings in bygone Towyn, 
 select though it may have been, were Spartan. Our 
 landlady, Mrs. Jellybag Jones, made up in a measure for 
 the meagreness of her accommodation, the element- 
 ary nature of her cooking, and the rather dispropor- 
 tionate scale of her terms, by her personal qualities. 
 She was cheery and motherly to a degree, like most 
 132
 
 THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 
 
 Welsh women, particularly stout ones, and we were 
 all fairly young then. Though low in stature, yet 
 weighing eighteen stone, she did all the work of the 
 house, and her wheezings as she went about it cut us 
 to the heart. But we were comforted by the thought 
 that she had ten months in which to recuperate. She 
 used to laugh betimes uproariously, and during this 
 mirthful process shook all over like the condiment 
 after which we christened her, to distinguish her from 
 all the other Mrs. Joneses with whom our friends and 
 acquaintances were quartered. We were great friends, 
 and went back to her, I think, for three summers, 
 though we often wondered why, except that there 
 wasn't very much choice. Occasionally, but rarely, she 
 flew into a most frightful passion with one or other 
 of us, all about nothing. These paroxysms lasted about 
 thirty seconds and alarmed us dreadfully, not on our 
 own account but on hers, for we thought she would 
 burst. We were seldom able, even by turning the 
 matter over carefully among ourselves, to arrive 
 at the cause of these explosions. They were like 
 frightful thunderstorms bursting suddenly from a 
 summer sky. She would be apologising for them in 
 less than a minute from the first scream and say it 
 was her Welsh blood. And then we used to apologise 
 for things we had never said or intended to say, and 
 the atmosphere was all summer again. I have known 
 much of Wales since those days and hundreds of Welsh 
 people, including dozens of landladies, and never knew 
 one whose Welsh blood boiled with such amazing 
 celerity and on such slight provocation as that of 
 Mrs. Jellybag Jones. 
 
 133
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 To show how select Towyn was in those good old 
 times, and how justified its leading citizen was in 
 bewailing, as related, its after decline, we were suc- 
 ceeded in these same quarters our last autumn by a 
 bishop, and a very distinguished one too, with all his 
 family, though to be sure they overflowed into the 
 next house. I had the privilege of meeting his lord- 
 ship soon afterwards, and naturally inquired how he 
 liked Towyn, not venturing to tread on what might 
 have been the unwelcome subject of bed and board. 
 He told me that personally he saw nothing of the 
 country, as he was indoors all the time hard at work at 
 a magnum opus which is now a classic, but that the air 
 suited him finely for his purpose. So he must have 
 seen a good deal of Mrs. Jellybag, and heard more of 
 her as she wheezed about the house. I wonder if 
 she gave him a sample of her Welsh blood, for I do 
 not think that the bishop had a protecting Mrs. 
 Proudie by his side. Possibly the awesomeness of 
 his office kept even the Celtic fluid in abeyance. I 
 never saw Mrs. Jones again, but I expect her rent went 
 up after that summer, till the promenade came and 
 shattered the aristocratic reputation of Towyn, so 
 far as I know, for good and all. 
 
 But for situation, for fresh breezes, for noble inland 
 prospects, for accessibility to glorious scenes, to say 
 nothing of its river, I still think it one of the pleasant- 
 est spots in Wales for August and September. 
 
 134
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 I ALWAYS think of the streams of the Welsh 
 Border, that is to say, of the English counties 
 bordering Mid and South Wales, as in a class by 
 themselves. This is in part, perhaps, but not I think 
 wholly, a mere personal caprice, come of frequent in- 
 tercourse with them. They all have much the same 
 characteristics, and as a group come midway, as it 
 were, between the frankly impetuous streams of Wales 
 and the slow-moving waters east of the Severn. The 
 Lugg, the Arrow, and the Teme, the Monnow and the 
 Honddu, the Corve, the Onny, the Rea, and the little 
 Camlad, the only river this last which runs from 
 England into Wales, may be accounted a fairly ex- 
 haustive list, and if you know them all you may 
 consider yourself to be on terms of tolerable intimacy 
 with what is often but not quite accurately designated 
 the Marches of Wales. A strong family likeness runs 
 through them all, but the breed is one of quality, not 
 of that common order which satisfies folks to the east 
 of the Severn and south of the Trent and artists who 
 cannot paint fast waters. The fish, too, speaking 
 broadly, like the scenery, come midway between those 
 of Wales and of the slow waters of low-pitched Eng- 
 
 135
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 land, and average from a quarter to three-quarters 
 of a pound. Though essentially wet-fly rivers, some 
 of them are excellent for dry-fly fishing, if you pre- 
 fer that method. Practically all of them rise in the 
 Welsh mountains and carry their natal impetuosity 
 into English valleys, whose oftentimes gentle gradients 
 succeed in partially curbing it and creating that com- 
 promise between the rapid and slow river which is 
 the ideal of many trout fishermen. Lastly, some of 
 them, notably the Teme and Lugg, are also natural 
 grayling rivers of the first order. 
 
 As an item of useful information it may be noted 
 that the whole of them are preserved by owners, 
 lessees or members of clubs. There is very little 
 hotel water and scarcely any free or association fishing. 
 I have myself fished here and there at different times 
 on all these streams, but more frequently of recent 
 years upon the Lugg, though more often to be sure in 
 quest of its grayling, rather than of its trout. There 
 is probably no better portion of the Lugg for a com- 
 bination of trout and grayling than those pleasant 
 reaches by which it winds its purling way from the 
 battlefield of Mortimer's Cross to Leominster, where 
 it meets its smaller sister the Arrow. It is strange 
 that its upper waters should have been the scene of two 
 historic conflicts : the greater one just mentioned, 
 which seated Edward iv. upon the throne and wrought 
 such havoc among the Lancastrian notables ; and that 
 other less known one of Pilleth, which ushers in the 
 first act of Shakespeare's Henry IF. and marked the 
 first formidable blow of the 'damned Glendower.' 
 For the Lugg, like the Arrow, rises in the wild moor- 
 136
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 land of Radnor forest, and thence runs down towards 
 Presteign, a babbling alder-shaded brook in a narrow 
 vale, where below the hill of Pilleth Mortimer's levies 
 were rolled up in 1400 by the Welsh, and eleven hun- 
 dred Herefordians bit the dust. Hence came spurring 
 eastward to London and King Henry that ' Post from 
 Wales loaden with heavy news.' 
 
 On leaving Presteign the little river has to fight its 
 way through fine uplifted woody hills, to thread the 
 bosky gorges of Aymestry, through which the Yorkist 
 army marched to Mortimer's Cross, and so out into 
 the pleasant pastures of Hereford. The old grey tower 
 of Kingsland church, which witnessed the fearful 
 slaughter of that sanguinary day, and no doubt the 
 heavenly portents which ushered in its fateful morn, 
 rises significant and conspicuous above the woods and 
 pastures of the now wide opening vale. The river 
 seems here to attune itself to its gentler surround- 
 ings, slipping down between crumbling red sandstone 
 banks from gravelly run to rippling pool, and thence into 
 interludes of quiet and deep water. Trees overhang 
 much of it on one bank or the other, occasionally on 
 both, and as wading is neither customary nor desirable, 
 the fishing has generally that flavour of difficulty about 
 it which is or should be accounted to its credit. I 
 doubt if there is a better bit of grayling water in the 
 kingdom than this, or one where they rise more freely 
 in the early autumn months. No worming is prac- 
 tised here as on the Border and in Yorkshire. There 
 is no occasion for it. For when the water is 
 clear in September and October, no matter what the 
 wind's quarter or what like the day, the grayling is 
 
 137
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 more or less ready to take the fly, and certainly no flies 
 that I for my part ever offer them or have seen my 
 friends offer are more effective than the red-tag and 
 the mid-blue. 
 
 In a short week during each of now many successive 
 years on this water, it is curious to remember when 
 comparing it with any trouting record, that half a 
 dozen fish is the nearest to a blank day recorded in 
 my journal. And the Lugg grayling are strong and 
 shapely, averaging like its trout about two to the 
 pound. No reference to written data, however, is 
 needed to recall many a good basket from this alluring 
 stream. Several times while pursuing my homeward 
 way across the big ox pastures to a certain hospitable 
 roof upon the green slopes beyond, I have been thank- 
 ful that the Lugg is not a wading river, and that the 
 burden of waders and brogues is not added to the 
 burden on one's back. Once or twice I have had to 
 cut short my day from the fact that my tolerably 
 capacious creel would not hold another fish. And it 
 may be remembered that there is no object in sparing 
 grayling whatever might be desirable in some waters 
 with regard to trout. They can always more than 
 maintain themselves against any onslaught of the fly- 
 fisher. Moreover, where the trout shares their water 
 one feels that the more grayling fairly killed the better, 
 as the less noble tenants of the stream are apt in this 
 case to be over pushful towards their betters. In 
 the north, as we shall see, the grayling has in this 
 way worked havoc. But I think in streams like those 
 of Herefordshire, where nature has placed these kin- 
 dred breeds side by side, she somehow preserves the 
 138
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 balance. Still a vague and no doubt erroneous feeling 
 that a captured grayling makes room for an extra 
 trout removes any compunction to basketing just as 
 many as you can catch, or on those occasions hinted 
 at, as you can carry even to keeping the little ones. 
 
 Thymallus is a queer customer. No one who knows 
 him, so far as he allows himself to be known, denies 
 that. He is in truth rather a mysterious beast. It 
 will generally be noted in technical works on angling 
 that the wise men write with intimacy about trout. 
 But if you read a chapter on grayling a little between 
 the lines, you will see at once that the writers are not 
 on nearly such frank terms with their subject and 
 do not pretend to analyse it so exhaustively. There 
 is, in short, a good deal left to the imagination, and 
 that is quite honest, for it is the only thing to be done. 
 I am not of course alluding to the life and habits of 
 the grayling, but to its impulses and attitude towards 
 the angler on the bank. For my part I have assuredly 
 nothing fresh or original to contribute. The more 
 grayling I catch the less I seem to know about the 
 workings of their mind, and while correcting this very 
 chapter for the press I have yet further to admit 
 that I know less about the grayling than I thought I 
 did when I wrote it but a few months since ! As 
 practical jokers, for instance, the trout cannot touch 
 his prolific cousin, though happily this keen sense of 
 humour does not seem to extend itself to the denizens 
 of the Lugg. I have fished nearly all day upon the 
 Till and risen hundreds of grayling to every known 
 grayling fly, and except by a rare and occasional 
 accident never touched one. And what is more, I 
 
 139
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 come to realise that such a desirable consummation 
 either with wet or dry fly was virtually impossible. 
 A friend of mine, a very fine dry-fly fisherman, 
 tells me he has had precisely the same experiences 
 upon the Berkshire Lambourn. Now trout couldn't 
 do this if they tried, not keep it up, that is to 
 say, for hours and hours. Small trout, to be sure, 
 can be very persistent and exasperating at this game, 
 but they all take risks and are not nearly as expert in 
 making themselves quite safe. You will have a poor 
 dozen or two at anyrate after a day's entertainment 
 of this kind, and though you may feel very ruffled, 
 and very hot, and very tired when it is over, your 
 state of mind will be nothing to the exasperation 
 aroused by a couple of hours of it with three to the 
 pound grayling. I remember at my first encounter 
 with this mood on the Till, after being wrought up 
 into a state of high fever, resorting to the floating 
 fly and killing a fish on the very first two presen- 
 tations of it. * Now, my friends, I am going to take 
 it out of you,' was my triumphant ejaculation, for 
 they had probably never been introduced to this form 
 of presentation in their lives. But it was no good. 
 The word was evidently passed up stream and down 
 that some devilment was on, and they flicked con- 
 temptuously and harmlessly at both wet and dry fly 
 for the rest of the day. 
 
 But the Lugg grayling never do this sort of thing. 
 They come very short at times, of course, which is 
 within their rights, and occasionally they do not 
 come at all, but they have not the diabolic sense 
 of humour of these others. Perhaps, after all, it is 
 140
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 a characteristic of the imported grayling and un- 
 developed in the indigenous species ? Indeed, it is 
 hardly too much to say that in September, providing 
 the water is clear and not too high (a condition they 
 abominate), grayling are always to be caught upon the 
 Lugg. Till almost this moment of going to press, I 
 should have said with confidence that whether the 
 wind is east or west, warm or cold, whether the skies 
 are grey or sunny, you might count at the worst upon 
 a basket of, say five pounds, including a pound or so 
 of little fellows filling in the chinks, and retained for 
 reasons already stated. I never fish dry for grayling 
 myself, as it is I think seldom necessary. On the other 
 hand, my friend and host on the river usually does, as he 
 prefers it for its own sake. A grayling doesn't gener- 
 ally lie near the surface like a trout, but dashes up at 
 the fly from near the bottom. Indeed, it is an axiom 
 on the Lugg that the bigger grayling, those between 
 one and two pounds, are more often caught by a deep- 
 sunk fly fished down stream in the heavy pools. But 
 the best ordinary grayling water is in the smooth, 
 gentle glides from two to three feet deep which are 
 so abundant on the Lugg between the pools and stony 
 shallows. 
 
 It is no use pretending that the grayling is as shy 
 or as hard to catch as the trout, when he means taking, 
 for he is not by a long way. You may often, for 
 example, see them lying in clear water and catch two 
 or three with a wet fly. When they are really on the 
 take, too, you may fish a streamy pool down and 
 without moving kill three or four big grayling, the 
 disturbance made in playing the first victim or victims 
 
 141
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 having no deterrent effect on the others. This in- 
 difference is of course much modified in clear, gliding 
 water, but even then it is occasionally surprising how 
 callous to disturbance a matured fish shows himself. 
 I well remember how the grayling in a pool on the 
 Teme, in the very last ten minutes of a long, weary, 
 fruitless day after trout, saved in a measure the situa- 
 tion and transformed a practically empty basket into 
 one that at any rate turned out handsomely upon a dish. 
 It was in that, for anglers, and indeed for some 
 other people, awful summer of 1911, when I happened 
 to be spending most of July in Ludlow, a sojourn I 
 had much looked forward to as incidentally affording 
 opportunities of trouting in many excellent and not un- 
 familiar streams. Among others was Lord Plymouth's 
 admirable water on the Teme above Bromfield, 
 and never having sampled it, I was looking, for- 
 ward all the more keenly to making its acquaintance. 
 What a summer that was ! Yet even in that gorgeous 
 June before the parching time had come and turned 
 the thirsty land to dust and ashes, the mayfly had 
 more than half cheated us on the Lugg. Its waters 
 had already dropped deplorably low, and the trout, 
 failing the expected mayfly, regarded our smaller lures 
 with exasperating indifference. A wet July and 
 fresh water and revived fish seemed a certainty after 
 all these rainless weeks. But not a bit of it ! Every 
 one remembers that July, so recent as it is, to say 
 nothing of the succeeding August. Many of us, 
 familiar with an American summer, felt for the first 
 time in our lives that we were breathing and feeling 
 day and night an American atmosphere in Great 
 142
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 Britain, while the landscape took on the colouring of 
 Pennsylvania or Virginia in a dry season. It had done 
 so, to be sure, in the five months' drought of 1893, 
 now forgotten except by elderly farmers and anglers, 
 but then without the great heat. It was not only, as 
 it so turned out, that July fishing would have been 
 absurd ; that often happens, but the very idea had a 
 sense of repulsion about it that I never felt before in 
 England and never expect to feel again. One heard, 
 and heard truly, that trout and salmon were dying in 
 some rivers. 1913 in Wales and the Marches was bad 
 enough, but what water there was left at least re- 
 mained cool. The shrunken streams of 1911 looked 
 positively oily, and had not been washed out for months. 
 I felt I could not have brought myself to eat a fish 
 out of the briskest of them as the parching summer 
 dragged on its semi-tropical, un-English course into 
 the autumn. My last day in the neighbourhood, the 
 second of August, had come, and not a line had I even 
 dreamed of wetting. But I was so anxious to have 
 a look at this portion of the Teme that I overcame my 
 distaste and determined to exercise my long-hoarded 
 privilege. Trout were the ostensible object of pur- 
 suit, for the grayling were not yet quite ready. 
 
 It proved, of course, rather a pitiful business : the 
 jaded, cracking meadow-banks, the tired foliage, the 
 stuffy air, the thin, warm streams, the weary, lifeless 
 pools, the insufferable flies that made any rest for 
 the weary angler impossible even with a pipe. At the 
 end of a longish day of hard fishing, for the simple 
 reason that repose was impossible, I had as the result 
 a brace of half-pound trout, and considered that I was 
 
 H3
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 fortunate in having even so much in the basket. The 
 sun was just setting, and as I had some miles to cycle 
 home, I was reeling up my line, thinking what a fool I 
 was at my time of life to go toiling all day long in such 
 an atmosphere at such a hopeless job, when I noticed 
 there was one nice rocky pool still stirring quite briskly 
 just below, the very last, as it so happened, on the 
 water there available. As I could spare another five 
 minutes I strolled down and cast wearily and mechani- 
 cally into its head. Almost immediately, to my 
 amazement, a good fish took me, and for a few seconds 
 I thought I was into a trout, but it turned out to 
 be a three-quarter-pound grayling. To shorten my 
 story, I took seven grayling, one after another, in that 
 rather limited pool, and as they were all about the same 
 size, and were now legally just in season, they were 
 under such parlous circumstances extraordinarily wel- 
 come. For I was in no mood to be critical. It isn't 
 often given to one, after say seven hours and three- 
 quarters' fishing, to turn a one-pound into a six-pound 
 basket in the next quarter of an hour, and in the very 
 last fishable spot ! 
 
 As half an hour later, at dusk, I crossed the still 
 sweltering, drowsy market-place to my quarters, I 
 encountered a local friend and expert angler standing 
 in light attire and trying to cool off after a hot day in 
 his office. ' Fishing,' said he ; * good Lord ! I needn't 
 ask if you 've done anything.' I happened to be carry- 
 ing the basket in my hand, and passed the strap into 
 his outstretched grasp. Down went his arm, of 
 course, with the quite respectable weight, and out of 
 his mouth proceeded some brief emphatic testimony, 
 144
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 to his frank amazement. It was getting dark, and 
 when he opened the lid, as I had put the trout at the 
 top, he took the rest for granted, for the grayling had 
 hardly yet come into consideration. * Confound it ! ' 
 he said, * you must be a conjurer.' And being the 
 professor he was, he may well have been staggered 
 seeing the abnormal fishing famine that then prevailed. 
 I left it at that, resumed the basket, said good-night, 
 and passed on in a state of semi-exhaustion to much- 
 needed food and repose. I didn't see my friend again, 
 as I departed next day. We had constantly shot in 
 company in old days, but never fished together, and I 
 have no doubt his opinion of my prowess in the latter 
 department is of a most unduly exalted kind. The 
 incident was the more curious as the grayling isn't 
 much of an evening fish. The morning, even in 
 warm weather, is usually his most responsive time. 
 
 Ludlow and the Teme are associated in my mind 
 with another pleasant, and indeed much pleasanter, 
 dry-weather surprise. It was some five years before 
 the trifling incident just related, when I was staying 
 in that delightful and, as I always maintain, aestheti- 
 cally unrivalled town, during a hot and dry August. 
 Fishing, as a matter of fact, was not greatly in my 
 mind on this occasion. Nor, indeed, is that sulky 
 month calculated to stir an angler's ^cravings, at any 
 rate outside a mountain or a chalk-stream country. 
 Nor again did I at that time know personally any of 
 the surrounding waters. Moreover, the neighbour- 
 hood of Ludlow is so rich in scenes of natural beauty, 
 and in antiquities of abounding interest, that if you 
 are anything at all besides a fisherman there is little 
 K H5
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 cause to quarrel with fine summer weather. On this 
 occasion we found ourselves in the ordinary course of 
 such things quartered beneath the roof of anything 
 but an ordinary couple. The man had been a shoe- 
 maker, but any one further removed from the con- 
 ventional notion of that sedentary, radically inclined 
 type of humanity I never met. His wife, a strong, 
 dark, rather masterful woman, had been a substantial 
 farmer's daughter. They were, as in due course 
 transpired, a quite devoted but childless couple, and 
 at that time, with the aid, I think, of a little com- 
 petency, lived by letting lodgings. These last were 
 redeemed from some obvious disadvantages by the 
 civilising atmosphere of much good old furniture and 
 a most glorious view from the window right up the 
 valley to the Stretton hills. To be frank, we were a 
 little put off by the lady till we recognised the sterling 
 qualities that lay behind her rather disconcerting 
 bluntness ; while our landlord, who was both modest 
 and gracious, so rarely emerged from the subterranean 
 quarters which they inhabited beneath our feet that 
 it was a little time before we discovered his qualities 
 and hers. The fact was that both of them, as I 
 afterwards found, were consumed with a passion for 
 everything associated with country life, though now 
 caged, cabined, and confined in the rather uncongenial 
 atmosphere of narrow precincts in a country town. 
 The man was then in somewhat indifferent health, 
 and we were sensibly touched by the way in which 
 the strong and, to us, offhand lady took the burdens 
 of life off his hands. 
 
 Now it so happened that I had been granted a couple 
 146
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 of days, whenever I chose to take them, in the Downton 
 Castle water on the Teme no little of a privilege, as 
 I afterwards realised, and in those days, at any rate, not 
 very readily conceded. I knew nothing at all of the 
 water, and in a persistently dry August, which showed 
 no sign of a change, held my prospective advantages 
 somewhat cheaply. However, it was but ordinarily 
 dry weather, not an American summer, as in the case 
 of 1911, so after a few days I thought I would make 
 my first trial of the water, and at any rate explore the 
 river. It was only when I disclosed to them the fact 
 of my permit and my intentions that I came to realise 
 the true inwardness of my landlord and his spouse, or, 
 I should rather say, of my landlady and her husband. 
 The one ceased to be the rather blunt personage 
 who took orders for meals, laid the table, and pre- 
 sented the bill ; the other changed altogether from 
 the gentle being who crept up from the basement 
 occasionally for a few seconds with an armful of 
 extremely well-cleaned boots. Both in short got 
 pleasurably excited, and I discovered that not only was 
 the man a keen angler, as well as most other kindred 
 things, but that the lady was too. Nor was this all, 
 for both of them, through some keeper connection, 
 had actually fished this sacred water many times in 
 former days. The atmosphere now lightened all over 
 the house. Domestic things went cheerily instead of 
 rather drowsily. I might, perhaps, be a duffer they 
 thought, but I was at any rate a fisherman. 
 
 My rod had hitherto been concealed, I think, among 
 sticks, golf clubs, and umbrellas, and other accessories 
 not unpacked. It was indeed pretty hopeless weather 
 
 H7
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in the most hopeless month. But the quality of the 
 fishing was such, my friends opined, that even a be- 
 nighted stranger from a far country for it is thus 
 the locals are apt to rate one might pick up a fish or 
 two. The excellent couple gave me quite a send-off. 
 The good man, full of new-born zeal, strapped my 
 waders, brogues, and rod on to the bicycle himself, and 
 the lady showed more personal interest in cutting 
 sandwiches than she had ever done in serving up 
 dinner for four people, though the dinners were all 
 right. And they both stood at the door at my de- 
 parture and bestowed their blessings, so to speak, on 
 my enterprise. Excellent souls, their hearts, of course, 
 went with me, and they would both have given their 
 eyes to have been in my place. I felt I must do some- 
 thing to justify all this fervour, though there seemed 
 mighty little prospect of it. In fact, I felt something 
 of a fool thus loaded up for fishing on such a day, with 
 a bright August sun above my head and two inches 
 of dust on the road beneath my feet. In such self- 
 conscious mood, I fancied I could detect a pitying 
 smile on the face of every wayfarer above a tramp that 
 passed me on the Shrewsbury road, and was quite 
 relieved to turn off at Bromfield and pursue the less- 
 frequented route that follows the high ground above 
 the valley of the Teme to Leintwardine name 
 familiar enough in angling gossip and literature for its 
 famous fishing club. I had got my bearings from 
 my hosts, but it is a difficult country on first 
 acquaintance, the hills are high and the vale woody 
 and deep ; but eventually I found my way on foot 
 down to the bottom of the preserve marked by an 
 148
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 abandoned mill, and in some broken water there at 
 once killed a half-pound trout. 
 
 Moving up I soon found myself in the castle park, 
 and upon characteristic Teme water, ill adapted to 
 a bright August day thin shallows and long, glassy 
 pools, with no sign of a fish moving. I was a little 
 sad when, after an hour or two of bootless endeavour, 
 I sat down to eat my hostess's carefully made sand- 
 wiches on the bridge at the top of the park. I could 
 see nothing ahead of me, for the river came breaking 
 with refreshing energy out of a densely wooded 
 gorge just above. It was in the afternoon when I 
 actually got up into this tangle, that I began to under- 
 stand my entertainers' enthusiasm, and when I began 
 to catch fish I understood it still more. This is 
 assuredly a wonderful mile or so for a gentle purling, 
 rippling river like the Teme, and seems nothing less 
 than a freak of nature. For leaving the placid streams 
 and pools of Leintwardine the Teme has here to 
 force its way through a high limestone ridge, and is 
 transformed for the time into a Welsh mountain 
 river ; plunging over rocks, seething in dark pools, 
 spreading out again into wide but fishable shallows, 
 broken by long ledges into tempting eddies, or again 
 gliding swift and smooth under mossy cliffs. This 
 is in truth a place as meet for the artist's brush as for 
 the angler's fly. Trees of every variety planted a 
 century ago by the celebrated horticulturists who then 
 owned the soil, overhung the river and thickly draped 
 the steep sides of the glen. The August sunshine, too, 
 was sensibly tempered up here amid the shady foliage. 
 Cool draughts, laden betimes with spray, breathed 
 
 149
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 down the rocky flumes, while the low state of the 
 water was less noticeable among these rugged channels. 
 And, best of all, the trout proved superior to the con- 
 ventions of their kind on such a day at such a season. 
 In brief, I picked up, that afternoon, seven brace of 
 nice, even trout, half-pounders and third of a pounders. 
 When I got home that evening my sporting hosts 
 almost embraced me. The pleasure my comparative 
 and perhaps, by them, unlocked for success gave them 
 was a very different thing from the benevolent grati- 
 fication of the ordinary landlord or landlady that their 
 guest is enjoying himself, and will come again or 
 recommend them to his friends. There was nothing 
 of that here. I had to tell them the exact spots 
 where I had caught each fish, and what flies had taken, 
 with every detail, and then I had their own experiences 
 and those of others in past days on the water which, 
 under good conditions and in the right season, must 
 in truth be a grand bit of wet-fly fishing. As the 
 weather showed no signs of improvement I went up 
 again the next day but one, missed all the park water 
 this time, and fished the gorge up stream twice over, 
 and brought back eight or nine brace of nice sizeable 
 fish, which established me more firmly than ever in 
 the good graces of this estimable couple. This new 
 attitude extended to the rest of our party, and things 
 were quite different for the remainder of our stay. 
 The gentleman no longer crept up from below and 
 left only the boots at the top of the stairs, but if I 
 was about lingered long in the hall and poured out 
 his heart on the things that, next to his wife, held 
 possession of it. 
 150
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 As regards the latter, so far from a severely business 
 attitude while spreading our board, tales of modest 
 experiences by flood and field, but the more genuine 
 for their limitations, sometimes interfered with strict 
 punctuality. For this worthy pair were not only 
 addicted to rods but to firearms. The lady had a 
 rifle of her own and, according to her admiring spouse, 
 could knock over rabbits with unerring aim. Their 
 opportunities, poor things, were now woefully re- 
 stricted. They had little truck, I think, with their 
 neighbours, and seemed sufficient unto themselves 
 with their dreams of fields and woods and streams, for 
 both were naturalists in their way. Not entirely 
 dreams though, even then, for there were friendly 
 farmers about in the neighbourhood with rabbits, 
 wood pigeons, and the chance of an occasional crack 
 at a partridge or pheasant, who knows ? And let the 
 better-placed reader who has never knocked one over 
 without a game licence throw the first stone. These 
 were red letters in the year to be looked forward to 
 and treasured afterwards. And sometimes the lady 
 went too and took her rifle along. 
 
 They astonished me one day by the remark that 
 ' deer shooting ' opened on such and such a date, and 
 that my gentleman was looking to his gun in readiness 
 for the campaign. This sounded something tremen- 
 dous, mysterious, and even criminal, and no wonder ! 
 But the explanation proved simple, though interesting, 
 since, I believe, the situation is unique in England. 
 For in the near neighbourhood of Ludlow there rises 
 a range of lofty hills, clad for miles with dense unbroken 
 woodland the scene, in fact, of Milton's Comus, which
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 he wrote at Ludlow. Throughout these forests 
 fallow deer have roamed in a wild state for generations, 
 and are accounted asferte natures. They are not very 
 often visible, and, of course, the woods are preserved 
 on other accounts, but the deer sometimes wander 
 at night or early morning on to the surrounding farms, 
 where they may, I believe, be lawfully shot by the 
 occupants. Hence my friend in the surprising char- 
 acter of a deer-stalker ! The end of the story up to 
 date of this singular couple must surely be told, as it 
 is a pleasant one. When next in Ludlow, two or 
 three years later, I lost no time in looking them up, 
 but encountered to my disappointment a strange face 
 at the door, and found that my friends had flitted, 
 to some place in the country, their successors believed, 
 but were vague as to locality. This was surely as it 
 should be, and eventually I tracked them down a mile 
 or two out of the town, in a roomy, picturesque 
 cottage on a by-lane at the edge of the big woods. 
 I think they were pleased to see me, and for their part 
 seemed at last in their true element, with twenty acres 
 of fine grass-land, a good garden and orchard, pigs, 
 poultry, a few beasts, and all the rest of it. Monsieur 
 was happy in recovered health, and madam had lost 
 none of hers, nor yet of her eloquence on things of 
 the open air. She had a cheerful, snug sitting-room 
 further embellished with her nice old furniture, and 
 let it occasionally to a summer visitor in search of 
 quiet and a serene Arcadian atmosphere. 
 
 I was talking not long ago to a land agent I hap- 
 pened to know who had just been appointed to the 
 charge of a great estate, which incidentally contained 
 152
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 four miles of excellent rapid-water trouting with 
 the owner non-resident. The agent, though other- 
 wise a sportsman, was no angler, but he had sound 
 and benevolent ideas as to giving local people the 
 preference in regard to the two or three days a year 
 permission he proposed to grant to a reasonable 
 number of applicants. He was quite liberal, sensible, 
 and well-intentioned. ' The trouble is,' he said, ' to 
 fit them in,' and turning to his notes remarked, 
 ' Here, for instance, Jones wants to come on the loth, 
 and so does Brown, which is awkward. And now, 
 what days would you like ? (I was a candidate, and 
 though not a local, had some equivalent claim). I 
 have Thompson down for the I4th and iyth.' * I 
 don't care a hang,' I replied, ' so far as I am concerned, 
 whether Brown, Jones, or Thompson are fishing the 
 water concurrently. There is plenty of room for 
 half a dozen rods, to say nothing of a couple in four 
 miles, and I am quite certain that these other in- 
 dividuals, if they are fishermen of reasonable know- 
 ledge and sanity, will be of the same mind. I don't 
 want four miles all to myself. On the contrary, it 
 would be far more interesting to me if there were one 
 or two other rods out.' I don't think my friend saw 
 it, though ; I don't suppose he ever will, but will 
 continue, no doubt quite conscientiously, to give him- 
 self no end of superfluous trouble, as well as frequently 
 to inconvenience many of his beneficiaries. 
 
 This naming of days is in truth an absurdity, and 
 most unfair to the nominees, unless, of course, it is a 
 very small stretch, which is rarely the case when these 
 formalities are necessary and tickets printed. The 
 
 153
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 water may be in flood or under a rasping east wind. 
 Give a man his one or two days at discretion within, 
 say, a fortnight, if a limit is necessary. If any incon- 
 venience should arise, which is most unlikely, that is 
 surely the angler's not the owner's look-out. The 
 former, I am sure, would far sooner take such remote 
 chances of undue congestion than be tied to a hopeless 
 day or days, as if a river were a pheasant cover or a 
 golf-course. It doesn't cost anything to be merely 
 sensible ! Moreover, if A fishes the top mile, 
 and B the middle, and C the lower (say half-mile, 
 if you like) from ten o'clock on, or whatever mutual 
 arrangements they may agree upon, the water is pre- 
 sumably covered only twice in a day by a single rod, 
 and what does that amount to ? Nothing at all ! 
 particularly as trout usually rise only during periods, 
 not through the whole day. 
 
 Ludlow, to my thinking, is the noblest country 
 town in England, for its blend of stately pose and 
 old-world charm. There are streets perhaps in some 
 other towns quainter, and as full or even fuller of 
 ancient dwellings, though Ludlow has still some sixty 
 or seventy half-timbered houses which mere stripping 
 would expose in all their pristine beauty. But it isn't 
 such detail alone that gives character to the south 
 Shropshire town, but a combination rather of every- 
 thing that makes for distinction, pose, antiquity, 
 beauty of surroundings and historic atmosphere. 
 The lines of the place, too, are finely laid. The streets 
 are wide and slope upwards from a narrow river valley, 
 charming in itself, with quick waters and embowering 
 woods, to the noblest parish church on the Border, 
 
 154
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 and one of the greatest and most imposing mediaeval 
 castles in England. There is everywhere the pleasant, 
 unsmirched atmosphere of a clean market-town, and 
 the picturesque intermingling of foliage with buildings 
 which suggests space and elbow-room. East of the 
 high-pitched town, dominated by its hoary and 
 massive castle, the sharp peaks of the Clee hills spring 
 up close at hand to a height of seventeen hundred 
 feet. While behind it on the west, directly from the 
 river, there rise to a thousand feet or more those 
 beautifully wooded ranges already alluded to, where 
 the wild fallow-deer roam unseen in luxuriant undu- 
 lations of wood and glade. From the foot of the 
 town and castle hill, spreading northward more or 
 less, are the valleys of the Teme, the Onny, and the 
 Corve, with Wenlock Edge, Caradoc, and the high 
 Church Stretton range bounding the horizon. 
 
 It is only fitting that Ludlow should look its part, 
 since it was the official capital of Wales and the Marches 
 through the whole Tudor and Stuart periods, and its 
 castle as the then seat of government is a good deal 
 more than the mere mighty relic of ancient border 
 strife. Nor is there, I think, a place in all England 
 where within a radius of twenty odd miles so much 
 that is aesthetically beautiful in the way of village 
 and manor-house architecture, combined with noble 
 ecclesiastical and feudal relics of a former day, is set 
 off by natural scenery of a kind that infinitely helps 
 to impress such things upon the imagination. No 
 angler with a particle of taste need be at a loss here 
 even in a dry spell. 
 
 The Onny is a pretty little trout stream with 
 
 155
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 grayling in its lower portions, and joins the Teme 
 at Bromfield, already mentioned as some three miles 
 above Ludlow. It rises in Radnorshire, and follows 
 the little branch railroad from Bishop's Castle to 
 Craven Arms Junction down a winding, picturesque, 
 and narrow valley. At Craven Arms there is a com- 
 fortable hotel on the river bank with some fishing 
 privileges for trout and grayling. But the upper 
 Onny, and what is generally known as the Plowden 
 water, being the property of that ancient Roman 
 Catholic family, the Plowdens of Plowden, whose 
 beautiful Tudor manor-house stands above the stream, 
 has been held ever since I first knew it, some thirty 
 years ago, by a small club. This, however, is a more 
 or less local body with certain hospitable clauses, 
 which have been kindly exercised in my favour on 
 various occasions. The Onny is a bewitching little 
 stream, particularly above Craven Arms and the grayling 
 stretches, though, like the Teme and all its tributaries, 
 it is afflicted with the intrusive chub. The chub has 
 not a particle of restraint in his composition, nor the 
 faintest sense of propriety. He is an out-and-out 
 vulgarian, a rank ' climber.' Unlike other coarse fish 
 who push into trout, grayling, and salmon waters, he 
 thrusts himself into every corner of them. Regardless 
 of his plebeian qualities, his gross body, unpalatable 
 flesh, and lubberly antics, when he has seized your fly 
 and spoiled a pool, he usurps the hovers of the rightful 
 denizens of the stream. He doesn't stick to the heavy 
 waters and muddy bottoms, but will assert himself as 
 often as not in the very best fly water. Nay, from 
 the Wye particularly, where he is even more of a curse,
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 he will ascend the mountain streams of Wales and 
 thrust his ugly head up in clear rocky waters where 
 his presence is neither more nor less than an outrage. 
 He is an interesting and valuable personality sucking 
 in flies beneath a willow on the Thames or Ouse ; 
 but up in this country no one wants him a bit : he is 
 an abomination. 
 
 The Onny is not rated in the same class as a trout 
 stream with the Teme or Lugg, nice little river 
 though it be, and withal pleasant to fish. The trout, 
 moreover, run small in the Plowden water, mainly 
 about four to the pound. I only remember once 
 catching them really on the rise, and that was my 
 very first day on the water, an April one, considerably 
 over twenty years ago. It would certainly not be 
 worth recalling, but for a rather curious incident 
 connected with it. I was staying with an old friend 
 in the neighbourhood, and I use the prefix advisedly, 
 seeing that he dates back to the juvenile pike adventure 
 of the first chapter in this very county of Salop. Two 
 tickets for the Plowden water had been given us, so 
 my friend's son, then aged about twenty, and I drove 
 over one morning to make use of them. I always 
 noticed in those days that Shropshire men, north of 
 Ludlow at any rate, used very large flies for their 
 generally rather small streams and their certainly not 
 large trout. My young friend, when we fixed up our 
 rods on the banks of the Onny, proved a true Salopian, 
 and attached to his cast two or three flies that, though 
 of serviceable dressing, seemed to me quite monstrous 
 in size. He was an excellent fisherman though, 
 having been bred up one, with every advantage. I 
 
 157
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 expressed surprise, but did not of course venture more, 
 being then almost a stranger to the locality. For all 
 that, I myself mounted a small orange dun of the 
 Dee pattern, which insect during the previous fort- 
 night on that noble river I had found, as I have often 
 found since, extremely killing. Thereupon we parted 
 till lunch-time to fish separate parts of the stream, 
 and just as I was commencing operations the keeper 
 turned up. He confessed himself a fisherman, so I 
 broached the question of flies, and he inspected my 
 cast mounted with the small orange dun and some 
 other flies of the same calibre. * These are no good, 
 sir,' said he ; ' you will never do anything with them 
 here, they are far too small. Here are the flies we 
 use.' Whereupon he pulled out his book and exhibited 
 some samples like my young friend's, and far larger 
 than anything I had ever used or seen used for brook 
 trout. In spite of the fixed local tradition, for which, 
 as a rule, I have a profound respect, I rejected his 
 offer of some, though not without qualms, and stuck 
 to the small duns, which, as a matter of fact, were 
 of normal size as things are now accounted. We 
 parted, and I began to catch fish at once. When I 
 had finished my stretch of water about sandwich-time, 
 I had eighteen or twenty trout in my basket, so I 
 reeled up and returned to the agreed-upon midday 
 trysting-place, thinking what a fine lot we should 
 have between us by evening. On my way I encoun- 
 tered a strange angler, who began at once to curse 
 the heavens above and the waters beneath and every- 
 thing he could think of for the poor sport he was 
 having. I asked to see his flies, which proved to be,
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 as I expected, the local pattern of almost sea-trout 
 size. Better still, the keeper was with him, and this 
 our second interview was interesting ! So when I 
 met my young friend again I was less astonished than 
 I should otherwise have been to find that he, too, 
 was calling on all his gods to show cause why the 
 fish on such a propitious -looking day had only offered 
 up a single victim to his efforts. I felt emboldened 
 now to tell him I was perfectly certain what the trouble 
 was, and after lunch persuaded him and, indeed, the 
 thing being too obvious, he needed little inducement 
 to put up one of my orange duns, for I think I had 
 killed nearly all my fish on it. To shorten Part i. 
 of the story, for there is a sequel, the trout continued, 
 if with slightly modified eagerness, to take the orange 
 dun through the afternoon, during which we had 
 almost exactly the same number of fish to our respec- 
 tive credits, which was as it should be. 
 
 I have hinted above at a sequel. For a day or two 
 afterwards it was suggested that I should fish an 
 obscure but good little stream, which flows down 
 under Wenlock Edge to the Onny. There was no 
 road to it, so we had to walk across country, and my 
 host himself, the son being otherwise engaged, though 
 a mighty Nimrod, not at all a keen fisherman, kindly 
 offered to go with me. For the owner was, I think, 
 a pernickety customer, who would just concede an 
 occasional day to a neighbour, but would have thrown 
 bricks, unhesitatingly, at a neighbour's guest un- 
 accompanied. It was a very bushy, sequestered little 
 stream, unnamed on the map, but held quite nice 
 trout, and I should imagine was rarely fished. My 
 
 '59
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 host, deeply concerned all his life with everything 
 connected with the countryside, had never, I am sure 
 he will not mind me saying, taken fishing seriously. 
 And it was all the nicer of him to give up half of his 
 busy day and tramp with rod and basket over hills and 
 dales that I might indulge my fancy unmolested. Of 
 course, he put up a cast of the overgrown Shropshire 
 patterns, and as I felt he was only fishing to keep 
 me company, it didn't seem to matter. While I as 
 naturally put up my normally sized flies, with no doubt 
 an orange dun on this occasion as leader. 
 
 After an hour or two of hard but futile up-stream 
 fishing among alder-bushes for one solitary trout, I 
 gave it up and set out in quest of my companion in a 
 rather penitent frame of mind for bringing him all 
 this way to so little purpose. To my surprise, how- 
 ever, I found him enjoying himself amazingly. In- 
 deed, he was just landing a nice trout as I got up to 
 him, and had seven or eight shapely herring-sized 
 fish already in his basket. I don't mind admitting 
 after this lapse of years, though I often go to see him 
 still, and I doubt if he has ever fished since, that I felt 
 deeply humiliated. Where now was the orange dun ? 
 and why had I, an ardent and professed fisherman, 
 caught practically nothing ? Why, indeed ? for I 
 had laboured assiduously. But the cup even yet was 
 not quite full. ' It must be the flies,' he said ; and if 
 that, under the circumstances, was any consolation, 
 he was absolutely right, as was very soon proven. 
 For he himself had to be off home for an engage- 
 ment, but his conscience was now clear regarding the 
 owner, and it was now considered safe and proper for 
 160
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 me to remain as long as I chose. * Give me your rod,' 
 said I in my abasement, ' just as it is.' And I took it, 
 salmon-flies, as they seemed to me, and all, and he 
 departed. I began rising and catching fish at once, and 
 soon had half a dozen nice ones like those in my friend's 
 basket, when they went off the feed altogether ; and 
 in due course I wended my way homeward, thinking 
 furiously, but to no good purpose, I need hardly add. 
 Talking of these big trout-flies, then at any rate in 
 vogue among Salopians, every one familiar with the 
 line from Shrewsbury to Church Stretton and Here- 
 ford must know the Condover brook, named after 
 the village and its famous Elizabethan mansion, so 
 recently passed out of the Cholmondeley family. 
 For its higher waters sport pleasantly among the 
 meadows for several miles between the stations of 
 Dorrington and Condover, where it turns an eastward 
 course towards the Severn. It is quite a noted little 
 trout stream, though from a train window even a 
 practised bush fisherman might be apt to wonder how 
 he could circumvent the alders which bristle so thick 
 along its narrow course. I have often been invited to 
 make the experiment by a friend in Shrewsbury who 
 had rights upon it and fished it regularly. But the 
 weather has always been prohibitive, for like the little 
 girl of the nursery rhyme the moods of the Condover 
 brook run to extremes, and when it is low it is very, 
 very low, and, in short, impossible. But my friend 
 used to show me the flies he used upon it, the very 
 flies, in fact, which ' must be used,' and that the trout 
 demanded should alone be offered. And these corre- 
 sponded precisely in size withthosethat ha d so staggered 
 i. 161
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 me elsewhere in Shropshire once, as related, to my 
 salvation, and once to my undoing. So in this state 
 of perplexity I will leave this region of babbling brooks 
 and return to the Herefordshire Lugg, where such 
 monstrously overgrown red hackles and blue duns 
 would, I am sure, be regarded with horror and amaze- 
 ment both by fishermen and fish. 
 
 It is curious what a liking Herefordshire grayling, at 
 any rate, seem to have for very low water. In my 
 experience, and the much more convincing one of 
 anglers who live upon the Lugg, the more hopeless 
 looking the conditions in this particular the brighter 
 the prospect of a good basket. Of many Septembers 
 in which I have fished this water, the only one which 
 proved for the entire week a comparative failure was 
 after the wet summer of 1912. Previously, each 
 occasion had seemed worse in appearance than the 
 last, yet the grayling, I may fairly say, took better 
 and better with each succeeding autumn, till their 
 partiality for a red tag and a mid-blue seemed to cul- 
 minate in the great drought of 1911, when the river 
 really did look absolutely hopeless to the ordinary eye. 
 And no wonder, for hardly a drop of rain had fallen, 
 or, to be precise, scarcely a drop of fresh water had 
 run into the river since the preceding April. In the 
 heart of Wales, west of the Wye, the fountains of the 
 hills had been loosed in August and the mountain 
 pastures were again fresh and green, and snowy 
 wreaths of water were once more glistening against 
 the long parched cliffs. But down in Herefordshire 
 the streams were still almost voiceless in the deadly 
 stupor of the drought of a century. In June we had 
 162
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 been mayfly fishing here, and even then praying for 
 rain. It was now mid-September, and practically not 
 a drop had fallen since. ' Come and have a try, but 
 you can imagine what the river is like,' wrote my host, 
 who had not wetted a line at home, I think, since we had 
 wrestled together for a week of a (locally) vexatious 
 mayfly season. I went for two days only on this 
 occasion in anything but sanguine mood. I had not 
 yet fathomed the true inwardness of the Lugg gray- 
 ling, nor indeed had my friend himself, I fancy, at that 
 time. For there is a big difference between ordinary 
 low water and the conditions of 1911. On my 
 arrival, however, I found a noble heap of freshly caught 
 grayling lying on the hall table, the day's sport of 
 two neighbours who were having tea in the drawing- 
 room the first experiment of the season, as it trans- 
 pired. It so fell out that I had to fish both my days 
 alone. On the first I had filled my basket by about 
 half-past three, and could not carry any more ; and 
 on the second, taking it very easily, I had nearly as 
 many by the ordinary reeling-up time. The river 
 was so low too, that half of the places available in 
 normal low water were unfishable, and at no time, 
 owing to high banks and plentiful timber, is it easy, 
 though always interesting, to fish. 
 
 Now comes the rather instructive sequel. The 
 water the next year at the same season after the wet 
 summer of 1912 was in most perfect order. The 
 brilliant early autumn had begun. Yet that week 
 was the only failure so far experienced. The first 
 day, when the river was voted just a thought perhaps 
 too full for ideal grayling conditions, I was out alone, 
 
 163
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 and did, to be sure, kill about six pounds. After that, 
 better and better though the days apparently became 
 and the finer the water, none of us could do anything. 
 ' Grand weather for grayling,' we echoed every morn- 
 ing at breakfast. ' Fine grayling weather, sir,' said 
 the coachman and the gardener. ' They '11 be a-goin' 
 to-day, sure to be,' said the keeper (who was never 
 known to make superfluous or optimistic remarks). 
 The road-mender, the old-age pensioner who brooded 
 much of the day (and small blame to him, for it is a 
 charming spot upon Lugg bridge) with less authority, 
 said the same thing. Thus, too, echoed the sporting 
 publican from Kingsland, who, of course, pulls his trap 
 up on it if any one is fishing. ( Fine grayling weather,' 
 said one and all. Of course they did ; the thing was 
 as obvious as the bright serenity of the weather itself, 
 as obvious as Kingsland church tower, with the far- 
 away line of the Black Mountains behind it. But the 
 grayling themselves didn't think so, though in our 
 meagre baskets we generally had two or three very 
 handsome trout, and naturally enough after such a 
 continued orgy of high feeding, even still in good 
 condition. 
 
 I remember, too, how a year or so previously two 
 of those trifling but curious incidents that occur to 
 most of us perhaps once in a lifetime, happened 
 simultaneously on this water. A swallow taking one's 
 fly is too usual a thing to be worthy of mention, but 
 on this particular occasion, just as my line had straight- 
 ened out before falling on the water, one dashed into 
 it, and by a movement so instantaneous as to be 
 imperceptible, was fluttering hopelessly entangled in 
 164
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 the line about two feet above the cast. It had twisted 
 the former so many times and so intricately about 
 its little wing joints and neck, that its release from 
 bondage proved quite a business, though its action had 
 been so rapid as scarcely to disturb the straight line 
 from the rod point to the tail fly. When I got into 
 the next field I found my companion for the day, and 
 our host who was with him, but not fishing himself, 
 full of another strange thing that had just happened. 
 In a corner pool, unduly small from the tribute just 
 here levied by a mill-stream, a pound trout had seized 
 a small grayling which had taken the angler's fly, and 
 stuck to it with such extraordinary tenacity that 
 several times it was brought almost out of water on to 
 the shelving beach. Unfortunately a little boy who 
 was carrying the landing-net had selected that moment 
 to embark on some adventure of his own, and was 
 nowhere to be seen. If the net had been there the 
 trout would have been landed to a certainty. As it 
 was, our host very nearly kicked it out on to the beach 
 with his foot, though it was not hooked in any way, 
 but merely had its jaws in the grayling, and either 
 could not, or more likely would not, relax them. 
 
 There is a charming bit of woodland vista just below 
 Lugg bridge, down which the river makes a bright and 
 sparkling journey over a stony bed between the foliage 
 to the quiet pools and glides beyond it. This is the 
 only place I ever remember seeing five kingfishers on 
 the wing at once, and that, too, on several occasions, 
 though the Lugg is a favourite haunt of this most 
 beautiful of British birds. It was the year of the great 
 drought and the Coronation, and we saw them every
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 day while mayfly fishing. The colouring and luxuri- 
 ance of the early summer of that memorable season 
 is as unforgettable as the parching weariness of its 
 later months. And I well remember how the sunlit 
 radiancy of this procession of scudding kingfishers, 
 following the old bird, showed up against the fresh, 
 lustrous foliage of their woody background, as again 
 and again they flashed backwards and forwards. In 
 the grayling season they were still there, the whole 
 brood of them stronger on the wing perhaps, and still 
 more gorgeous of plumage. But the freshness of that 
 June foliage mantling upon the bank and quivering in 
 many coloured radiancy on the quick transparent 
 water, had vanished, and somehow the kingfishers 
 didn't look quite the same. Perhaps there was less 
 opportunity for admiring Nature. There was cer- 
 tainly less occasion for falling back upon her consola- 
 tions, for the grayling kept us materially contented 
 and very busy, whereas the trout that year had sup- 
 plied us with long interludes for reflection as well as 
 many periods of exasperation. We amused ourselves 
 betimes, too, in watching through strong binoculars 
 the demeanour of the fish we could not catch. The 
 dry-fly purist, I have no doubt, spends much time at 
 this, and extracts from it many precious truths. I 
 found it most fascinating, not merely from the in- 
 timacy on which it placed one with the elusive object 
 of our quest, but for the beauty of the gliding water 
 thus magnified and illumined by the sun's rays. I got 
 no nearer catching the fish, however. On the contrary, 
 the amount of food, winged and wingless, which 
 passed by unnoticed, as revealed through a strong glass, 
 166
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 and withal the impossibility of even then identifying 
 the tiny morsel which every now and again it selected 
 from the mass of stuff that came down, was dis- 
 heartening. It was interesting, too, watching the fish 
 over which a small dry-fly was being cast by my com- 
 panion : the first slight movements of languid interest, 
 as the tempting-looking imitation fell or floated over 
 his nose, and then the contemptuous shrug of the 
 shoulders, and, finally, the utter callousness displayed 
 at all further attempts. 
 
 So many anglers have never even seen a grayling, 
 it may be worth stating that it belongs to the trout and 
 salmon family, its larger scales, smaller mouth and 
 teeth, and big dorsal fin being the chief distinguishing 
 characteristics. Its fighting powers when in con- 
 dition, particularly, I think, when about half a pound 
 in weight, are about equal to a trout of the same size. 
 In a mixed river amid lively waters it is not always 
 easy to tell at first which you have hooked. Usually 
 the dorsal fin coming above water, or the purplish look it 
 gives to the back, is the first sign, and if in the trouting 
 season causes, of course, a pang of disappointment. 
 It is surprising, however, in a river full of grayling, 
 how little one sees of them during that period. Their 
 domestic arrangements are the precise converse of the 
 trout, spawning as they do in the spring, and coming 
 into condition in September and October when the 
 water seems again peopled with them, and the trout 
 take a back seat, and to the eye almost cease to exist. 
 This makes a river where they really flourish together 
 without mutual disagreement, and both show sport 
 in their season, greatly to be desired. There is no 
 
 167
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 doubt, however, that when on the take they are much 
 easier to kill and much less shy than trout. On the 
 table they greatly resemble the latter. I should say 
 that a grayling was the equal of an average trout, 
 though not trout of the best class, such as those, for 
 instance, out of rocky mountain streams. But the 
 Lugg grayling are generally regarded by those who 
 have the best opportunities for comparison as equal 
 in October to the Lugg trout of June, which is also 
 white-fleshed. 
 
 After leaving Leominster, to pursue a course of some 
 twenty miles towards its junction with the Wye below 
 Hereford, through flat meadows for the most part, the 
 Lugg gradually, I think, deteriorates as a trout stream, 
 though the fish perhaps get heavier. But neither they 
 nor the grayling rise so freely, and I fancy the coarse 
 fish begin to get some hold. But whenever I cross 
 it at Lugwardine, or again, travelling south by road 
 from Hereford to Ross, stand on the bridge at 
 Mordiford just above its junction with the Wye, it 
 appears to me a different river from the buoyant 
 stream of Kingsland and Mortimer's Cross. And 
 looking back up the wide, flat meadows, I always feel 
 that it has seen its best days from every point of view, 
 and that it is full time it should merge its waters in the 
 most beautiful of all English and Welsh rivers. 
 
 In the cottage in the orchard by Lugg bridge where 
 the keeper now lives, there dwelt for many years a 
 well-known character, fisherman and fly-tier. Seques- 
 tered spot though it be, he sent his flies all over this 
 border country, and had clients, I believe, in other 
 parts of England. An accomplished angler himself, 
 168
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 he seems to have been in request as companion on 
 fishing excursions far beyond the bounds of his native 
 waters. His widow moved into a roomy ancient 
 house standing in a considerable garden in the neigh- 
 bouring village of Kingsland. The venerable dame 
 told me she got it at a low rent by reason of its extreme 
 antiquity. It contained some quite capacious hand- 
 some rooms with carved mantels, and being kept 
 beautifully clean, and withal suitably furnished, was 
 most attractive. I lay there one night, and it was 
 not till I went aloft to bed that I began to perceive 
 the mystery of the landlord's moderation. For the 
 ascent from the door to the head of the bed and the 
 dressing-table was so precipitous that, with only a 
 bottle of cider to my credit, it took careful climbing 
 on the oak floor to accomplish the feat, and when I 
 had to make the return trip in the morning I felt 
 greatly moved to sit down and toboggan it. I don't 
 know what the age of that house can be. Jasper 
 Tudor might well have occupied it his last night 
 on earth before the battle ! 
 
 It was Coronation Day that on this occasion, after 
 weeks of dry weather, broke cloudy and drizzly. I 
 was fishing that morning, and never felt in such an 
 awkward predicament in my life. The very notion of 
 rain at such a moment was unthinkable, yet under 
 any other conceivable conditions I should have been 
 on my knees praying that the threatening clouds 
 might break. Happily, I can honestly swear that I 
 repelled with disgust unworthy and insidious thoughts, 
 and rejoiced as heartily as the parson and the school- 
 master when the great flag on the church tower at 
 
 169
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 midday caught the rays of the returning sun, and the 
 dim clamour of loyal rustics was wafted even to the 
 river-side. 
 
 The trout peradventure were celebrating the occa- 
 sion under water in their own way, for a drizzly night 
 and morning had made them sullener than even on 
 the preceding day, so I had plenty of time for reflec- 
 tion, and my thoughts at such a moment naturally 
 turned to that tremendous conflict on these quiet 
 fields which brought about another coronation four 
 and a half centuries ago. Gone are the barons of these 
 Welsh marches who, more than any other feudal 
 chieftains of their day, made and unmade kings. 
 Gone are the Mortimers, the Lacys, the de Braoses, 
 and the Clares ; Wigmore and Richard's castle, Gode- 
 rich and Abergavenny, Grosmont and Skenfrith are 
 but shattered ruins. Ludlow alone, by virtue of its 
 later and viceregal significance, still frowns roofless 
 but immense over the once bloodstained land. 
 
 So it was no hardship to reel up and hurry back 
 to Ludlow, whence on this occasion I had come, and 
 do a portion of my duty at any rate in standing by the 
 big bonfire on the heights above the ancient town, 
 and beneath an umbrella for the only time of that 
 whole summer. Alas ! we had hoped to see the flare 
 from many a noble height from the Clee, from 
 Caradoc, from the Long Mynd and the Wrekin 
 but all was murk, though our own bonfire blazed to 
 heaven and mocked at the falling rain. Then, at 
 any rate, it was permissible for farmers and fishermen 
 to pray for its continuance. But, as everybody knows, 
 these prayers were unheard ; and, as I have said more 
 170
 
 THE WELSH BORDERLAND 
 
 than once, when, months afterwards, I returned to 
 the Lugg to be revenged, as it so happened, upon the 
 autumn grayling the ill-behaviour of the June trout, 
 not a drop had fallen in the interval. 
 
 I have always been not a little surprised that so few 
 outsiders ever penetrate the beautiful vale of Llanthony 
 watered by the clear rapid streams of the little river 
 Honddu. The small hostelry of the Queen's Head, 
 when not pre-empted by the members of the two 
 clubs who hold the lower half of the river, is available 
 for bed and board, and its landlord used to rent upon 
 his own account two or three miles of excellent fishing 
 over the mountain on the upper Monnow. But five 
 miles up this lovely and sequestered Honddu valley 
 stand the noble ruins of Llanthony Priory, presenting 
 as perfect a picture of mediaeval art set amid an 
 inspiring uplifted solitude as can be found in all 
 England. Moreover, portions of the old monkish 
 quarters have been kept habitable, and now this long 
 time have been doing unique duty as a very comfort- 
 able inn. The roomy living rooms and kitchen are those 
 inhabited by the monks of old. You squeeze upwards 
 by spiral stone stairways to your chamber in turret 
 or gable, whence you can watch the moonlight stream- 
 ing over the roofless cloistered aisles without, and hear 
 the owls hooting in the ivied arches. On three sides 
 the Black Mountains lift their heathy tops some 
 two thousand feet into the sky, and the Honddu sings 
 in its bosky rocky channel below. As a practical item 
 it may also be noted that the right of fishing over a 
 considerable stretch of the stream attaches to the 
 Priory, and that as a place of sojourn it is, or was, 
 
 171
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 materially comfortable as well as aesthetically satisfying. 
 But the man who would fish the Honddu, whether 
 on the club water by favour of a member, or on the 
 higher parts from the Priory Inn, must be at home 
 in timber, for much of it is thickly fringed with brush. 
 Hereford, Monmouth, and Brecon so interlace their 
 borders here, to say nothing of recent boundary 
 readjustments, it is not easy up in this lovely corner 
 of all three, even were it worth while, to take count 
 of such things. But at any rate it is safe to say 
 that within living memory there were natives of 
 the county of Hereford in this sequestered corner who 
 were speaking Welsh as their mother tongue. 
 
 172
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 VI 
 
 THE ELAN LAKES AND WILD 
 SOUTH WALES 
 
 I IT AM always glad to remember that I had at least 
 a glimpse of those two beautiful and sequestered 
 "*" vales of the Elan and the Claerwen before the 
 needs and enterprise of Birmingham submerged them. 
 But if the murky metropolis of the Midlands has 
 created a transformation scene, that scene is still one 
 of beauty and purity nay, even of seclusion, peace, 
 and romance. For the wild hills, the craggy mountain 
 steeps, that in former days dipped into narrow ribbon- 
 like vales of green meadow fringed with indigenous 
 oak, and dotted at intervals with a snug homestead or 
 a water-mill, now cast their shadows everywhere upon 
 the surface of broad and brimming waters. From 
 the great dam at the foot of all, a veritable Niagara 
 in high water, wedged between the imposing rugged 
 heights of Cwm Toyddwr, the connecting lakes push 
 back some three miles up the Claerwen valley to the 
 west, and more than twice that distance up the Elan 
 to the north. There are three other dams, for there 
 are four lakes, and the plash of those great lace-like 
 veils of falling water, over a hundred feet in height, 
 is virtually the only sound that breaks the silence of 
 
 173
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 the hills. For resident humanity, sparse enough up 
 here even in former days, is now of course scarcer 
 still. It is not wanted, for obvious reasons ; nor is 
 boat or craft of any kind allowed upon these waters, 
 whose extent is such that they could hardly be circum- 
 vented by a walk of much less than twenty miles. 
 What makes so conspicuously for their charm, too, is 
 the boldness of much of the scenery amid which they 
 have been stored, and the wildness of it all. The 
 mouth of the valley opens out through the mountains 
 that enclose the most beautiful portions of the upper 
 Wye. The lakes run back within the fringe of that 
 mountain wilderness which spreads through the heart 
 of South and Central Wales, and that practically no 
 man outside it knows, and wherein but very few indeed 
 abide. 
 
 1 South Wales ? Dear me,' says one's table neigh- 
 bour, * is it pretty ? Of course, I know North Wales, 
 but I thought South Wales was all coal mines.' Is it 
 pretty and coal mines ! Great heavens ! What have 
 the lands of Dyfed, of Ceredigion, of Brecheiniog done 
 that they should suffer such a blighted reputation, 
 for the opulent province of Morganwg whose smoking 
 mountains, once as fair as any, frown across the 
 Severn sea at Exmoor ? What, too, about Radnor and 
 Carmarthen, Pembroke and Cardigan ? 
 
 ' Sir or madam,' I always reply, and I fear some- 
 times with a little heat, ' the bulk of North Wales, 
 together with the English Lake Country, are of course 
 incomparable in this island south of the Scottish 
 Highlands. They stand alone. But next to these 
 I would have you know that Breconshire, coupled
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 inevitably with Radnor, so much are they interlocked, 
 ranks easily next.' 
 
 ' I thought Dev ' 
 
 ' Yes, of course you did, because its extremely 
 articulate and patriotic sons have been booming it 
 in admirable and picturesque prose and verse for fifty 
 years. And railroads, London journalists, and tourists 
 have responded to the boom. With a public that 
 for the most part knows nothing of its own country, 
 this has been easily developed into a sort of cult. It 
 is the only county of semi-mountain class outside the 
 Welsh marches, and south of Yorkshire or Derbyshire. 
 For Cornwall inside its seacoast need not be taken 
 count of in such company.' 
 
 Devonshire as a whole is a beautiful and lovable 
 county, but considerable slices of it, as we noticed in 
 a former chapter, are undeniably commonplace of 
 aspect, even to the verge of ugliness. Now Brecon- 
 shire cum Radnor does not, I really think, contain a 
 dull or a commonplace square mile. Its mountains 
 reach an altitude of nearly three thousand feet the 
 height, that is, of Cader Idris and Helvellyn. They 
 are often, too, of shapely make, and sometimes of 
 rugged summit and precipitous face. In all the 
 streams of Devon the Dart, the queen of them, not 
 excepted, there is assuredly not a Wye, and I think 
 scarcely an Usk. And these two noble salmon 
 rivers between them wash the red sandstone banks 
 or silurian crags of Brecon and Radnor for something 
 like eighty miles of their impetuous courses. In the 
 vales, too, lie gracious park-lands and noble timber, 
 and ancient manor-houses and hoary churches, and 
 
 175
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 the shattered relics of old border wars ; while almost 
 every hill and hollow has its story, sometimes half-told 
 by its mellifluous Cymric name. 
 
 But it would be no use writing a book merely about 
 Breconshire. Its name would convey nothing. Very 
 few people outside Wales know where it is. It has 
 never been boomed by popular novelists or poets. 
 They know nothing about it. This is very satis- 
 factory, and I hope it will long remain so. On the 
 iron coast of Pembroke, again, for some fifty miles 
 very much resembling the opposite sea-front of 
 Cornwall, no stranger to speak of beyond Tenby, just 
 at the near edge of it, or a few pilgrims to St. David's, 
 is ever seen. In Cornwall, on the other hand, amply 
 equipped for thousands of tourists, I believe it is 
 difficult in the season to get a bed ! while at least 
 once a year somebody writes a glorified guide-book 
 to the county. We are a queer people ! A voracious 
 novel-reader of cynical temperament calculated the 
 other day that forty per cent, of recent novels, directly 
 or indirectly touching country life, and written 
 mainly, of course, by people who live within the 
 London orbit, laid the scene, or the rural portions of 
 it, in Devonshire or Cornwall. And furthermore, amid 
 idyllic thatch-roofed villages, which are relatively 
 scarce in those parts, and embellished with apple- 
 faced maids, whereas the modern Devon peasant-girl 
 in the south, at any rate, is conspicuously inclined to 
 anaemia, which is not altogether surprising. Con- 
 ventionality and poverty of experience contribute, I 
 suppose, to this topographical banality. One would 
 think a sense of humour alone would turn the tap 
 176
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 on somewhere else. Why not place the ' ancestral 
 home ' in Rutland for a change ? A note of originality- 
 would be struck in the very first chapter, and ought 
 to score. The jaded novel reader must be getting 
 rather tired of Devon and Cornwall. 
 
 But beyond the more individual characteristics of 
 Brecon and Radnor, these counties share in their 
 border regions with Montgomery, Cardigan, and 
 Carmarthen the wildest and most untrodden moun- 
 tain wilderness that can be found south of the Scottish 
 Highlands. This exceptional seclusion is in part, no 
 doubt, due to the fact that the stock of grouse they 
 carry is so insignificant as to put these moors and 
 mountains outside the purview of the alien sportsman. 
 As you stand upon Plinlimmon, above the infant 
 springs of Wye and Severn, and look southward on 
 a clear day, you can see nothing as far as the eye can 
 reach but an interminable sea of mountain tops or 
 high, lonely moorland : in short, the most uncom- 
 promising solitude upon an extended scale known to 
 me anywhere within these islands. It is true that 
 in the Western Highlands you may look upon far 
 more expansive and more boldly uplifted wastes. 
 But then, written large all over them, their com- 
 mercial value seems to hit you in the eye. Here is 
 the Duke of Omnium's deer forest leased to a financier 
 of Semitic name and urban habit, or there again are 
 notice-boards erected by Mr. Van Schuyler of New 
 York, the tenant of a moor, notifying the traveller 
 through the wild that he must stick to the road. 
 Commercialism is thick in the atmosphere. You 
 know that every acre is listed on the books of sporting 
 M 177
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 agents in Piccadilly, or their equivalents, and that 
 the most luxurious men and women in the world are 
 virtually in possession, and will burst in here at 
 that particular moment which marks this item in the 
 year's social programme they are labouring through. A 
 discordant note, surely, and an exotic, inharmonious 
 element when you come to think of it in a country 
 like this ! And then there is what might be termed 
 the opposition crowd the men and women who have 
 not yet arrived at the shooting-box stage, and are 
 held in some contempt by those who have to wit, 
 the tourists ; and lastly, the sharks of innkeepers. 
 There is nothing of this in the fastnesses of South 
 Wales. August or January, it is all the same as 
 regards humanity, and then one remembers with some- 
 thing like a start that this untrodden country is barely 
 a six hours' railway journey from Lqndon ! 
 
 It is into the eastern edge of this that the Elan lakes 
 thrust their sinuous course. You may almost forget 
 their man-made origin, as when fishing from their 
 farther shore you feel there is nothing at all behind 
 you. Nothing but wastes of moor-grass and heather, 
 of lonely valleys and unseen waterfalls, and bleating 
 sheep and plover, curlews, buzzards, and ravens, a few 
 grouse, and even yet an odd pair of kites, till the fair 
 shire of Cardigan unfolds its green, rolling map of 
 little farms and white-washed homesteads, with its 
 woody brooks hastening by them to meet the Irish 
 Sea. 
 
 Every one of the four connected and irregular sheets 
 of water penetrating these hills are as full of trout as 
 is conceivably desirable. I have even heard one or 
 178
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 two say that they are too full. So when the angler 
 has filled his basket (but that is another story) he 
 need not worry about going home lest he should levy 
 too heavy a toll, but go on fishing, if he feels like it, 
 with an easy conscience and a light heart. I have 
 never myself been in that enviable position, for the 
 fates have so ordained that my visits have always fallen 
 at the * back ' end of the season, when baskets are in- 
 evitably much lighter, though sometimes of reasonable 
 weight. Nor are these imported fish, but merely the 
 well-developed descendants of the little fellows which 
 since time began had haunted the plashing streams 
 of the Elan and the Claerwen and their tributary 
 burns. Not till quite recently, in deference, I fancy, 
 to outside clamours, have any alien stock been put 
 in. When waters are quite full of the best kind of 
 native stock, and the only future anxiety is concerned 
 with the food supply, to put in more fish seems 
 absurd. New blood, too, has its dangers. The intro- 
 duction of more minnows would surely be more to the 
 purpose if manipulate you must ! The Elan lakes are 
 not midland or south country reservoirs, but are of 
 beautiful, limpid water, borne in with a rush by rocky 
 streams, which here and there leap with a gay bound 
 from some craggy, birch-tufted crag right into the 
 lake. For a mile or so up the lower lake of Caban 
 there is a sloping stone embankment, a trifling fore- 
 ground blemish, perhaps, at the first glimpse of it, 
 and the only one which many tourists on wheels carry 
 away with them. But practically everywhere else the 
 waters lap naturally against such bounds as nature 
 set them. Here upon sloping, half-drained pastures, 
 
 179
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 rank and tufty with sedge and rushes and patches of 
 bog and dwarf willows, there upon low bluffs of gorse 
 and heather. Occasionally wild, tangled woods drop 
 abruptly to rocky banks, along which you may labori- 
 ously creep if you are in the mood for hard work, with 
 an off-chance of a ducking, and for casting upon 
 waters scarcely ever touched. Often, too, the path 
 of the fisherman lies upon a low, firm bank of turf 
 and bracken. Indeed there is infinite variety, which 
 is natural enough within such wide limits. There are 
 many snug bays, too, and little coves formed by the 
 outlet of burns that once ran rejoicing out of narrow 
 glens into the two main streams. And at the head 
 of the coves there is often a cascade tumbling into the 
 lake between feathered crags, and stirring the water 
 for many yards below over a shelving, gravelly bottom, 
 and forming altogether a delightful picture. Such, no 
 angler needs telling, are spots to stimulate his ex- 
 pectations, and I have often found that mine have 
 not been stirred for nothing in these alluring corners ; 
 otherwise, though it is impossible to quite acquiesce 
 in such a faith, the most constant habitues hold that 
 with all the variety here displayed in so great an area, 
 one place is just about as good as another. 
 
 This is comforting as regards the various portions 
 of the various lakes, and I do believe that a stranger 
 starting to fish at the first point he struck would have 
 as good a chance, so far as the presence of trout were 
 concerned, as a man who had frequented the lakes 
 ever since they were formed, and knew every yard of 
 them. They differ, of course, from natural lakes in 
 having practically no shallow water. Two to three 
 1 80
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 yards from the shore would drown you almost any- 
 where. There is not the scope for sagacity and ex- 
 perience in the lie of fish that is afforded by bank 
 fishing or wading a natural lake. Yet one acquires 
 fancies for particular spots upon the Elan lakes, and is 
 happier, perhaps, for such delusions, if delusions they 
 be. There is assuredly some room for intuition in 
 the varied nature of the bank, the little patches of 
 weed, the submerged rock, the projecting bush of 
 alder or willow scrub, the out- jutting point of bank, 
 on the far side of which, and well out of sight, you 
 feel sure, there is a trout lying, as there very often is. 
 It is curious, too, how standardised in weight these 
 trout have become. In Y-shaped Caban-Coch, the 
 lower dam being the pedestal of the stem, they average 
 two-thirds of a pound. In the smaller lake of Dol-y- 
 mynach, at the extremity of the left arm, into which 
 the Claerwen flows, they run a trifle over a pound. 
 In the middle lake of Pen-y-gareg, beyond the right 
 arm, which is much longer than the left, they scale as 
 in Caban-Coch. In the top lake of Craig-Coch, a 
 mile and a half long, into the head of which the Elan 
 flows, the fish are a good deal smaller, and run about 
 three to the pound. 
 
 Much larger fish are frequently caught in all these 
 lakes, but on the whole this average is fairly uniform. 
 They are good-fighting fish, particularly the pounders 
 and over, in Dol-y-mynach (the meadow of the monk). 
 On being hooked these last generally make straight for 
 the middle of the lake at racing pace, and break many 
 an unwary angler who fails to humour them properly 
 at the first rush. Medium-sized, ordinary trout-flies 
 
 181
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 are used, and for the ' back-end,' besides the March 
 brown, effective here throughout the season, and a 
 claret and mallard, there is a wonderfully killing 
 local fly known as the C6ch-yn-las. Spinning is only 
 allowed in certain places, and rightly so. The out- 
 flowing river runs straight down a riotous course of 
 some three miles, from the high bottom dam, beneath 
 which, at the mountain foot, the company have built 
 a very pretty model village for its employes, to the 
 Wye. The road from Rhayader, which little town 
 sometimes gives its name to the lakes, and is, so to 
 speak, their metropolis, runs more or less up the valley 
 and then skirts the lakes up both forks to their head- 
 waters. A wild, rock-plated, mountain ridge, beauti- 
 fully dominating the Wye valley, drops sharply down 
 at its remoter side into the lakes along their whole 
 extent, and virtually cuts them off, save by mountain 
 foot trails, from the outer world. These semi-pre- 
 cipitous, western slopes, ablaze in its season with great 
 splashes of heather, nobly confront you as, with your 
 back to the illimitable wilderness, you fish the farther 
 shores of Caban, Pen-y-gareg, and Craig-C6ch. A 
 single road of sorts, however, crosses the northern ex- 
 tremity of this mountain wall. This is the old and 
 now more than half-deserted highway to Aberyst- 
 with. A mere farmer's road, you may climb it for a 
 laborious three miles from Rhayader up a most lovely 
 glen with a small lake in the meadows below, and 
 riven by the white flash of a continuously leaping 
 torrent. At the summit you emerge on to a bleak, 
 moorland watershed, whence in due course the stony 
 track drops abruptly for a mile or so to the lonely 
 182
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 hollow where the Elan comes brawling out of the 
 wilderness into the rocky gorge which forms the head 
 of Craig-Coch. 
 
 From this head of the pass you may look down on the 
 lake spreading far beneath you, wild and gloomy, in 
 dark weather, ruffling white-ribbed in the wind 
 against its moorish, peaty banks, while the untamed, 
 primeval hills roll away behind it to the far horizon 
 like a stormy sea. From this height, too, you can 
 look straight up the narrow, level valley of the Elan 
 cleaving its way through the billows of the hills, and for 
 a considerable distance mark its silvery coils amid the 
 bogs and mosses as it comes hurrying down from the 
 back-of-beyond to its now arrested course in these 
 tremendous waterworks. You can see also the big hump 
 of Plinlimmon not far away, and upon the northern 
 horizon the up-reared mass of Cader Idris piled 
 nobly against the sky. On a fine day this is an inspir- 
 ing roof-top. In a storm well, there is no refuge. 
 Through the August of 1912, the wettest and wildest 
 on record, a battery of artillery were camped here, 
 I believe they spent much of their nights and days 
 in chasing their tents across the mountains and gave 
 up attempting to dry their clothes quite early in the 
 campaign. This, too, was the road over which honey- 
 mooners and others posted or coached to Aberystwith 
 in pre-Victorian times, when Aberystwith was quite 
 the fashion. The untravelled Essex squire may well 
 have wondered where he was getting to, and the young 
 lady ' of sensibility ' on the look out for something to 
 faint at must have had infinite opportunities. 
 
 Wheels are scarcely worth bringing over this rough, 
 
 183
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 perpendicular road, though the irrepressible motor 
 occasionally, I believe, surmounts it. If you have a 
 mind for a real solitary day amid the wilds on Craig- 
 Coch, with the expectation of catching, if fortune 
 be yours, rather smaller fish, and rather more of them, 
 it is better to walk and have done with it. Save your 
 companion anglers, if you have any, you will see no 
 one, and hear nothing but the curlews' call and the 
 ravens' croak, while the buzzard, of which there are 
 great numbers in these wilds, will be generally swinging 
 somewhere in the air above. 
 
 For this great heaped-up wilderness of South Wales, 
 some five or six hundred square miles in extent, is about 
 the last refuge of the hunted of the air, and long may 
 it remain such a sanctuary. Nature, assisted possibly 
 by the sheep's tooth, has helped to make it so by 
 affording small temptation to game preserving and 
 keepering, while a local protection society, working 
 with the scattered sheep farmers, whose homesteads 
 at intervals dot the edge of the waste, keep an eye on 
 the nests, and on the indefatigable egg-stealer from 
 distant cities. As the spawning season approaches, 
 the fish from Craig-Coch swarm up the Elan, which 
 offers no obstacles, into the inmost heart of the hills. 
 Not only the lakes but a good many streams and natural 
 tarns are within or just without this great corporation 
 estate, and can be fished either free or by ticket. The 
 Elan is free to the natives of Rhayader, and after a 
 flood in late August or September they come over 
 the hills in tolerable numbers and take heavy toll 
 with worm and fly of these migrants from the lake. 
 This sounds rather badly. But like so many things 
 184
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 associated with trout, it is not so bad as it sounds, the 
 stock of fish in the lakes being so plentiful. And what 
 are four or five thousand, which is the average recorded 
 number taken per annum out of the whole basin ? 
 practically nothing ! And what again are the two or 
 three hundred captured, at any rate fairly, from the 
 Elan, out of the thousands which doubtless run up 
 and deposit their countless young ? 
 
 The pounders of Dol-y-mynach have no such easy 
 voyage up the rugged bed of the Claerwen, or anything 
 like such a length of spawning-grounds there. For 
 within a mile or less they encounter a natural water- 
 fall, a beautiful one it is too, that the most persistent 
 trout may not surmount. The Claerwen is auto- 
 matically in the corporation preserve, and that there 
 is some evil as well as much good in close preservation, 
 as I have always ventured to think, seems in this stream 
 to find some confirmation. The Claerwen is nowa- 
 days very little fished, for it contains mostly fingerlings, 
 though last summer I did see a trout of two and 
 three-quarter pounds on its way to be stuffed, that had 
 been killed on it above the falls with a fly, an accident 
 of course. But as regards degeneracy in size, an old 
 local angler, who fishes the lakes regularly, and has no 
 cause for bias, tells me that in former days before these 
 were made and the Claerwen was an open stream 
 moderately poached with nets by the sheep farmers 
 who live on it, there was excellent fishing there, and the 
 trout ran nearly four to the pound, with the plentiful 
 sprinkling of half-pounders that such an average in- 
 dicates. Now it is full of sprats, a sign, no doubt, 
 that there is not food enough to go round. In some 
 
 185
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 cases a plethora of fingerlings may mean a heavily 
 poached stream, in others an under-fished one. It 
 is as certain that the Claerwen is no longer poached as 
 that it regularly was so till ten years ago, when the lakes 
 were completed. 
 
 There are a few little homesteads up the Claerwen as 
 indeed there are up the wilder Elan, before it disappears 
 into the waste. They have their backs to the wilder- 
 ness, count their sheep by the thousand, and take no 
 count of acres. Anxious to be more handy to the 
 pounders of Dol-y-mynach two or three years ago, I 
 made arrangements with an old lady flock-owner, in- 
 habiting a quaint little farmhouse above the Claerwen, 
 to put me up for two or three days. A brace of fish, 
 up to a pound each, was the rather scanty reward of 
 the afternoon of my arrival, a result not tempered 
 by the breaking away of two more good fish. A stiff 
 rod and drawn gut are an ill-assorted combination ; 
 I would sooner dispense with the last, however, than 
 the first and take my chance. The blend is well 
 enough for the dry fly, with all the leisurely delibera- 
 tion of both angler and fish, but when a pounder, bred 
 in mountain water, dashes up from the depths after a 
 blank half-hour, and startles you well, yes out of a 
 day-dream, the brief contact is apt to be more than 
 could fairly be asked of a drawn gut point. In a flash 
 it is all over, and you sit down to vain anathemas and 
 to that most depressing and baneful of all riverside 
 operations, the replacing of a fly, or perhaps worse still, 
 of half a cast, that through your own bungling or care- 
 lessness has been carried into the depths by a good fish. 
 
 But the lakes on this occasion were low and clear. 
 1 86
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 It was 1911, the year of the great drought, and these 
 were the last three hours of it in that part of the 
 country. Before dark the heavens were descending 
 in solid sheets, and continued to plump like a water- 
 spout upon an earth as nearly parched as these be- 
 dewed Welsh hills can ever be. In the morning the 
 Claerwen roared in angry flood among its half-sub- 
 merged boulders, and swept rising volumes of porter- 
 coloured water to further churn the soft bottom of 
 Dol-y-mynach, and transform its tired summer-long 
 clarity into an excellent imitation of pea-soup. The 
 quite obvious thing to do on a week's fishing holiday, 
 when the water must be stuck to as a matter of prin- 
 ciple, would be to repair thither with a worm, in this 
 case to some quiet backwater of the Claerwen. I wasn't 
 out, however, for a week's holiday, but rambling at 
 large, and I do not care for worming in thick water 
 it really is a degrading business nor did I want any 
 fish, the only possible excuse for it, as I am not very 
 partial to trout, and it was an almost impossible place 
 to dispatch them from to friends who are. Indeed 
 there was only a post twice a week from the farm. 
 The latter, though small and simple of exterior, had 
 many points both interesting and picturesque. The 
 long, low kitchen, for instance, had the living rock for 
 a large portion of its floor. The small outbuildings 
 of native stone were so massive and weather-stained, 
 and so prolific in moss, ferns, and even ash saplings 
 upon the walls and roofs, though neat enough within, 
 that they almost appeared to be the work of nature 
 rather than of bygone Welshmen. A mountain rill 
 brought down on a trough spouted into the yard. 
 
 187
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 The old lady had a thousand sheep on the hills, which 
 were looked after by a son and a hired man. She 
 and her neat, nice-looking daughter worked with 
 apparently ceaseless and cheerful energy, and when 
 her labours were done she sat in the ingle-nook and 
 smoked the pipe of peace. Her husband had been a 
 man of character, and renowned for his almost trucu- 
 lent integrity. I have heard in Rhayader that when 
 slightly market-peart he used to ride down the street 
 with a halfpenny attached to the point of a stick, 
 daring any to say he owed them even so much. The 
 next neighbour to the westward was nine miles away 
 across the sheep ranges ! 
 
 As the next day was clear, but the waters still thick, 
 I thought I would ascend Drygarn. Now Drygarn is 
 the monarch of all this waste south of Plinlimmon, and 
 is some twenty-two hundred feet high, with a large 
 cairn on the top. I found my way there in a couple 
 of hours, and as we breakfasted betimes on the farm 
 I was on the mountain top by nine o'clock. But the 
 walking on these south Welsh moors is unique in 
 Britain, unless you know the shepherds' paths, which 
 are not always traceable, so hopelessly intermingled 
 is the soft going with the hard. Half these mountains 
 are boggy enough to let in a horse, though they will 
 carry a man, but the tussocky moor grass is always 
 knee-high, and occasionally waist-high. The view 
 from Drygarn, which throws up a hard, rocky crown, 
 was glorious on that glittering summer morning. 
 I could see the whole heaped-up, tawny wilderness 
 from Plinlimmon to the Epynt, and beyond the 
 Epynt and the hidden vale of Usk the sharp outlines 
 188
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 and shadowy masses of the Brecon Beacons leaped 
 high into the sky. I looked westward over the wilder- 
 ness, across the wild valleys down which with the eye 
 of memory I could see the upper waters of the Yrvon 
 and the Towy churning and boiling southward in 
 their deep rock-bound chasms. I could see with the 
 naked eye over the farthest edge of the solitary moors 
 to the green lowlands of Cardigan, and beyond them 
 in a blue haze the Irish Sea. For it was nine o'clock 
 on a fresh, bright, summer morning. To the eastward, 
 beyond the nearer mountains, in whose hollows the 
 Elan lakes were winding, stretched away the valley of 
 the Wye, easy enough, if you know it, to keep track 
 of by its sentinel hills from Rhayader to far Aberedw, 
 where it breaks its tempestuous way through the 
 Epynt range towards the English border. Radnor 
 forest, topped by Black Mixon, rolled its blue-rounded 
 summits against the far sky-line. 
 
 Looking over the nearer waste with my glasses I 
 soon made out, some three or four miles away, the red 
 scaur which I had been told marked the site of the 
 little tarn of Llyn Carw, hard to come at, rarely 
 sought, but famous in local gossip for its handsome 
 trout, and I took my bearings. Next morning the 
 lakes were still too thick, and having fished theClaerwen, 
 which was in fine order, but so full of hungry fingerlings 
 that an accidental quarter-pounder almost upset my 
 nerves, I started after lunch with a rod to hunt for 
 Llyn Carw, which my host had told me was three 
 miles away, but difficult to find. I found it both, and 
 most of the walking, as usual in these hills, very labor- 
 ious for the soft, boggy holding and the long, tussocky 
 
 189
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 grass. Llyn Carw may possibly cover two acres. 
 Nearly half of it, however, is hopelessly shallow, with 
 a fine gravel bottom, while the remainder resembles 
 a big bog-hole. It was a drear, dull, and cold Sep- 
 tember afternoon. Llyn Carw, moreover, is a gloomy 
 tarn, and a chill ripple puffed over its surface. One 
 really needs a companion on its banks. I felt almost 
 * creepy ' as I mounted my tackle, though it seemed 
 superfluous to cast a fly for sulky minnow-feeding 
 pounders under such conditions. To my great sur- 
 prise, however, I saw of a sudden the head and shoul- 
 ders of a large fish pop noiselessly up in a businesslike 
 fashion towards the middle of the tarn. By wading 
 in up to my knees, and letting out as much line as I 
 could throw, I found I could just reach the spot. 
 He took me at the very first offer, and ran straight 
 across the pool, and then well, perhaps the gut 
 of the claret and mallard was frayed ; perhaps the 
 knot had been a carelessly tied one, and pulled. It 
 was a hopeless-looking evening, conducive, I fear, 
 to carelessness in preliminaries, though that was no 
 excuse. Anyway, he broke me with a tug that a 
 quarter-pounder could have delivered, which was 
 grievous, as not another sign of life showed itself upon 
 the desolate tarn, though I flogged it all hard. Such 
 was my sole and sad experience of Llyn Carw. 
 
 Some thirty to forty fish in all are caught here in 
 most years, roughly averaging a pound. Strangers, 
 however, rarely make the toilsome pilgrimage. Nor, 
 again, do they get to the much larger natural tarns, 
 the twin lakes of Cerig-llwydion. These are four 
 miles up hill over the rough, pathless moors from the 
 190
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 farther shores of Craig-C6ch and the nearest road. 
 A few local anglers camp out up there every May, 
 and I have their records, which are good, but other- 
 wise I fancy these two lakes are never touched. In the 
 lower one the fish average just half a pound ; in the 
 upper so many to the pound as to be hardly worth 
 catching. Nor is there anything in the appearance of 
 these two contiguous lakes to suggest a reason for this 
 extraordinary contrast. So, too, if the parenthesis 
 will be pardoned, high up in the arms of the Rhinog 
 mountains in Merionethshire, just above the savage 
 pass of Ardudwy and amid some of the finest rock 
 scenery in Wales, there are two lakes almost as near 
 together the one a sort of crater formation cover- 
 ing perhaps twenty acres and very deep, the other 
 within sight of it, about two acres and comparatively 
 shallow. In the larger lake there is nothing at all but 
 fingerlings, with grotesquely big heads and scarcely 
 even fit for the table, which rise greedily. In the 
 smaller pool, barren and naked as its environment, any 
 fish you may catch will be a pound or over. Practi- 
 cally, however, no one but a very occasional local ever 
 wets a line on these waters, for it takes nearly two hours 
 of stiff climbing to reach them from the head of a 
 remote valley. I have done so once myself, and that 
 too, quite recently. Curiosity and the weirdness of 
 the surroundings was one motive, the other was the 
 company of a friend learned in lichens, varieties of 
 which, unknown, I believe, elsewhere in Britain, flourish 
 up here, if such a verb can be used in regard to what 
 looks to the lay eye but a dark stain upon the rock. 
 Ravens also flourish, and their hoarse, untiring cries 
 
 191
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 of protest at the rare intruder harmonise admirably 
 with the quite savage scene. The misshapen finger- 
 lings came out two at a time, but the little tarn of 
 the pounders, sheltered from almost every wind, lay 
 glassy and hopeless. This wild domain, by the way, 
 was the property of Cromwell's brother-in-law, the 
 regicide Colonel Jones of Maesygarnedd, whose * smok- 
 ing quarters,' fresh from Charles ii.'s vengeance, Pepys 
 encountered as he was going home to dinner. The 
 ancient little manor-house where he lived, ' the wildest 
 farmhouse in Wales,' as the guide-books call it, is just 
 below, that is to say, two hours below the lakes, and 
 is still occupied by his descendant. 
 
 But to return to the Elan valley, not a word of 
 tribute has yet been paid to what may fairly be called 
 in a more modern sense its genius loci. No properly 
 constituted angler, I hope, could throw his fly without a 
 thrill over the vanished roof-tree where Shelley spent 
 two long summers, the second of which was that of 
 his honeymoon with the ill-fated Harriet Westbrook. 
 To be precise, there were in this case two country 
 houses submerged, about a mile from each other, both 
 belonging to the owner of the romantic Nantgwillt 
 estate, included in the Birmingham purchase Nant- 
 gwillt itself, which stood in the fork of the Y, looking 
 right down to where the big lower dam now is, and 
 Cwm Elan a mile or so up its right arm. If standing 
 to-day their respective chimney-tops would, I believe, 
 be just under water. Though not remarkable struc- 
 tures in themselves the situation, surroundings, and 
 outlook of these abodes of an old Welsh stock were 
 exquisite. I can recall nothing of their kind, even in 
 192
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 Wales, more beautiful. Shelley came here after his 
 expulsion from Oxford, and the rupture of his engage- 
 ment with his cousin Harriet Grove, whose family 
 had some land here, and the consequent row with his 
 wholly unsympathetic father. It was from Cwm Elan 
 in 1811 he wrote consenting to elope with Harriet 
 Westbrook, and it was to Nantgwillt that he brought 
 her in 1812. And, as I have said, you may to-day, 
 uncanny though the thought of it, catch trout over 
 the very rooms which witnessed the transient loves of 
 the poet and his doomed wife, and all thereto pertain- 
 ing which, with the tragic sequel, have exercised so 
 many pens and fascinated thousands of readers. 
 
 Yet more, perhaps it was in these submerged walls 
 that the boyish poet wrote the very first stanzas of that 
 immortal treasury of song which have been preserved 
 to us. It was his first acquaintance, at any rate, with 
 the sublime in nature. His letters glow with the 
 divine glories of the spot, as well they may, and end 
 with curses on its distance from a post-office. His 
 first solitary summer here saw him in the depths of 
 despondency ; his second, newly wedded and in the 
 heights of bliss. As a blithe bridegroom at Nant- 
 gwillt he recalls his former melancholy at Cwm Elan 
 as a jilted lover, a disgraced son, and an expelled 
 undergraduate. 
 
 A scene which wildered fancy viewed 
 
 In the soul's coldest solitude, 
 
 With that same scene when peaceful love 
 
 Flings rapture's colour o'er the grove ; 
 
 When mountain, meadow, wood, and stream 
 
 With unalloying glory gleam, 
 
 N 193
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 And to the spirit's ear and eye 
 
 Are unison and harmony. 
 
 The moonlight was my dearer day ; 
 
 Then would I wander far away, 
 
 And lingering on the wild brook's shore 
 
 To hear its unremitting roar, 
 
 Would lose in the ideal flow 
 
 All sense of overwhelming woe. 
 
 There is a good hotel near the new Elan village 
 below the big dam, while the Black Lion at Rhayader 
 is an excellent and snug headquarters for fishermen, 
 to say nothing of many good private apartments. If 
 other holiday-makers besides fishermen knew what 
 like was the neighbourhood of Rhayader, what abound- 
 ing walks through scenes in all directions fit for the 
 gods, its limited capacities for entertainment would of 
 a truth avail little. Is South Wales pretty ? Again 
 what can be said for the banality of such an utterance, 
 as if dubious whether it might be as uplifting as Sussex 
 or Surrey, or other stock regions familiar to the Ken- 
 singtonian week-ender ! 
 
 Rhayader fell into the English speech nearly a cen- 
 tury ago, though the ancient tongue still holds a 
 steadily waning grip upon the highlands to the west 
 of it. Hence its lapse into English-Welsh from 
 Rhaiadr Gwy, the cataract of Wye, its true name, 
 and one obvious enough since the river takes a big leap 
 through a gorge, beneath a single arch and bridge on 
 the town street. This is a famous salmon leap, and 
 more traditionally associated with poaching conflicts, 
 I should imagine, than any other salmon-pass in Britain. 
 The Welsh peasantry, on the face of it, are the most 
 194
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 determined fish-poachers in the kingdom. But their 
 peculiar partiality for this form of law-breaking, and 
 their persistence in it, is not mere cussedness, for the 
 country folk at any rate are the reverse of turbulent in 
 other things, and not much of game-poachers in an 
 ordinary sense. But Rhayader falls is famous for its 
 past scenes of conflict and for the ineradicable con- 
 viction of their provokers that the salmon is somehow 
 public property. This undoubtedly reprehensible 
 tradition is rather different from the ordinary poaching 
 attitude elsewhere, where a few offenders, half-mer- 
 cenary, half-sporting law-breakers, have the rest of the 
 community against them. 
 
 For the Welsh traditions one must grope in the 
 mists of the past, and you cannot expect Mr. Smith 
 from Manchester, who has a rod, let us say, on the 
 Dovey, to do this. He only sees the most irrepressible 
 fish-poachers in the United Kingdom, and as such 
 damns them up hill and down dale with all the vigour 
 at his command. But you cannot make any native 
 Welshman, however respectable, regard a fish-poacher 
 as a criminal. He will deplore the practice as an- 
 tagonistic to private rights and the public interest, 
 his own sometimes included. But you might as well 
 try and make a Kentucky man regard the survivor of a 
 * little difficulty ' as a murderer as make a true Welsh- 
 man hold a fish-poacher as a serious malefactor. He 
 would tell you that if the law, which inherited tradition 
 wrongly or rightly considers unjust, winks at a certain 
 amount of salmon-poaching, the people, farmers as 
 well as the more regular poachers, will meet the law 
 halfway, as it were, and not take toll enough to 
 
 195
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 materially decrease the stock. If, on the other hand, 
 a great parade of repression, or a special show of force 
 is made, fresh watchers imported and so on, the 
 ordinary transgressors redouble their efforts wherever 
 they can from mere antagonism, and some who are 
 not chronic offenders are moved to take a hand from 
 the same motives. I am not defending such an 
 attitude, but merely stating an ordinary truth familiar 
 not to every one who fishes, or even who lives in Wales, 
 but to every one who understands the country. It 
 has nothing to do with Welsh radicalism, though the 
 improper sympathy of Welsh radical magistrates with 
 poachers naturally makes some people think so. It 
 existed long before there were any radicals at all to 
 speak of in the Principality. It is a kind of instinct 
 that the people have certain rights in the fish, traceable 
 probably to far-away days if not actually to the 
 tribal period of the Welsh princes. The feudalism 
 which was slowly grafted on this by Norman influences 
 or gradual Norman conquest was easier in these respects 
 than the cast-iron game laws which the Normans set 
 up and enforced after their rapid conquest of England. 
 Some echoes of this from old times undoubtedly 
 account for the fact that an otherwise law-abiding 
 people have never in their hearts accepted the law 
 in this one particular, if they do so with their lips. 
 For it must be remembered that the sanctity of rod 
 fishing in mountain districts is quite a modern thing. 
 In the abstract it is a rather interesting situation. 
 Many things, irrelevant here, have conduced to 
 eliminate the old, violent salmon-poaching at Rhayader. 
 Perhaps education has lessened the zeal for a bloody 
 196
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 fight. For the Wye, now so valuable, is rigorously 
 watched. In some parts of Wales trout-poaching by 
 net, line, and even dynamite is, or was, persistent, 
 particularly in the country of the slate quarries. But 
 the Rhayader poacher I don't think takes risks on trout. 
 The Elan lakes are from their nature proof against 
 profitable poaching on the sly, and are the creations 
 of private enterprise, not of the Almighty. Further- 
 more, the trout interests of all kinds are very strong 
 in Rhayader among the local folk, who are often keen 
 anglers, and there are several miles of free fishing on 
 the Wye, with some salmon catches on it. But the 
 really fine salmon-fishing for which the Wye, since 
 the nets were restricted, is now again becoming famous, 
 really commences a little below Rhayader, and it 
 doesn't concern us here. 
 
 By the same token the trout-fishing, which is pretty 
 good in places from here to the source of the river, 
 only extends, in any sense worth mentioning, for a few 
 miles below. This is not because the river changes 
 in character. It would be difficult to conceive a 
 more beautiful, buoyant, lovely looking water than the 
 Wye from here all the way to Glasbury. Forty years 
 ago fine baskets of trout could be killed anywhere. 
 But whether it is the depredations of the pike, which 
 have pushed up nearly to Rhayader, or the crowding 
 of the chub, which are terribly prevalent a little 
 below, no one seems to know. But in any case suc- 
 cessful fly fishing for trout has ceased to be an item 
 below Doldowlod or Newbridge, and I do not suppose 
 the increased number of salmon fry in the river much 
 helps matters. Nice baskets of three-to-the-pound 
 
 197
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 fish, however, are killed in the private waters immedi- 
 ately below Rhayader. 
 
 This twelve-mile stretch of the Wye from Rhayader 
 downwards is, I think, as beautiful as any of the 
 sections or sub-sections into which the queen of 
 English and Welsh rivers naturally falls, and I know 
 the river well from its source to its mouth. Just 
 below the little town the Elan comes racing in from 
 the west, and the big dam, three miles away, glitters 
 brightly over a foreground of green meadows, behind 
 which the bold and rugged masses of the Cwm Toyddur 
 hills form an imposing background as well as a barrier 
 to the country of the lakes behind them. The 
 salmon have not yet lost their habit of running up the 
 Elan to spawn in the gravelly streams of the now 
 submerged valley, and they must be sorely discon- 
 certed to find themselves confronted by a sheer 
 cataract one hundred and twenty feet high ! Swollen 
 by the Elan, which is fine fishing below the lakes, the 
 Wye now sweeps or rages downward through a long 
 series of most inspiring sylvan scenes, its waters 
 churned into a thousand moods by the rugged nature 
 of their bed. Above the mantling woods, that in 
 autumn sunshine wave such a glorious canopy upon the 
 river's now wide and fretting surface, lofty rock- 
 breasted hills, beautifully diversified with the rich 
 colouring of wilder Wales with grey cliff and emerald 
 sward, with russet fern and birchen glade lift their 
 summits skyward. The park lands of Doldowlod, 
 with their fringing woods, squeeze themselves pictur- 
 esquely along the river bank, while Doleven, upon the 
 same Radnor shore, towers above all to a height of 
 198
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 over a thousand feet. At Newbridge and Llysdinam 
 the broken hills on either side fall back, but the Wye 
 surges on with a vigour no whit abated by its recent 
 efforts in more contracted channels, till the Ithon, 
 from the far solitudes of Radnor forest, and big with 
 the burden of many tributary brooks, pours in a broad 
 volume that in flood-time fills the brown, peaty Wye 
 with the ruddy stain of a red-sandstone country. 
 But these after all are par excellence the haunts of the 
 salmon-fisher. Here, just above, are the pools of 
 Caerwnon, and away down beyond the railway bridge 
 which bears the trains bound for their stiff climb up 
 the Yrfon and over the Sugar Loaf and down the 
 wonderful pitch beyond, into the vale of Towy and 
 South-west Wales, are the famous salmon catches of 
 * Builth rocks.' The long gorge of Aberedw through 
 the Epynt range looms near, and to see the Wye 
 rage through it in a big flood is a memory to be treas- 
 ured. And far beyond, the Black mountains will be 
 cutting the sky-line, and thrusting back the now 
 quieting river to the eastwards and to the pleasant 
 pastures of Hereford. It was hereabouts at Builth 
 that the Wye inspired the first of the many poets 
 who have invoked it, and that was a long time ago, so 
 long ago as the early fourteenth century, and the 
 singer was Dafydd ap Gwylim, the greatest Welsh 
 poet of all time, though he may not be judged by an 
 English translation : 
 
 Sweet Wye, with thy waters as white as the snow, 
 Now dark as the thunder-cloud's banner of woe. 
 Oh why should we wander beyond thy wild stream, 
 From the land of the harp and the bard and his dream ! 
 
 I 99
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 The streams of the Saxons are languid and dead, 
 Like the mist on the mountain when summer is fled. 
 With thy wild, thronging billows, now softened, now shrill, 
 Like the laugh of fair children that sport on the hill, 
 Now all glowing with light and all snowy with foam, 
 Like the maids of the land of my heart and my home. 
 
 Going up stream there is yet nearly twenty miles of 
 the Wye between Rhayader and that lonely hollow 
 beneath Plinlimmon where lurks its birthplace. From 
 the mountain spur above, on a still day following a 
 storm, you can hear with something more than the 
 ear of faith the faint chords of a wonderful trio. It is 
 the infant waters of the Wye, the Severn, and the 
 Rheidol, plashing from their fountain springs. No 
 wonder it set the harps of the old bards twanging and 
 stirred George Borrow to much original eloquence. 
 Surely, for those to whom rivers are something more 
 than geographical expressions, there is not a spot in 
 all these islands quite so significantly suggestive. If 
 you have a heart that can feel, and a fancy that can be 
 moved by such things, they will be touched here. If 
 not, let it pass. For there is quite tolerable trouting 
 in the Wye when it gets big enough, which is pretty 
 soon, for the Tarenig, of equal volume and rising in the 
 high breast of Plinlimmon, joins it three miles below. 
 This is more than can be said, I fear, for the Severn, 
 for though equally prolific, the little sheep town of 
 Llanidloes holds the same fixed views on trout as the 
 men of Rhayader have always cherished towards the 
 salmon. 
 
 Salmon ascend the Severn in fair numbers to its 
 head-waters. But, as for some inexplicable reason
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 they will nowhere rise to a fly, and are only taken 
 in small numbers by spinning or the like, the river 
 doesn't count in this sense. So I presume it doesn't 
 much matter if the sheep farmers scoop out enough 
 in autumn to smoke for their own use as a change of 
 winter diet. It merely lies between them and the 
 licensed net owners who do business right up to 
 Welshpool, and, I suppose, strictly speaking, between 
 them and the law, which without any local rod interest 
 to back it up is, I should imagine, tolerably slack. In 
 any case the effect of the tribute levied is, I dare say, 
 trifling, and a good many people in the locality which 
 breeds the fish get what they consider a table delicacy ; 
 for there is no accounting for taste ! 
 
 The Llanidloes opinion on the trout question used 
 to be very much that of the men of Rhayader towards 
 the nobler salmon, but has vastly improved of late. 
 A few years ago they were incorrigible trout-netters. 
 Now the worst elements are dying out or suppressed, and 
 an angling association of a democratic nature has been 
 formed, with rights over thirty miles of the upper Severn 
 and its tributaries bright mountain streams, all of 
 them, threading valleys that are worth exploring even 
 without a rod. Llanidloes is pulling itself together 
 in this respect, and laying itself out to catch a portion 
 of the tourist stream that leaves it in the lurch and 
 races over the Pass of Talerddig to the Dovey valley and 
 the coast watering-places. If the summer passengers on 
 the Cambrian knew Llanidloes and its mountain back 
 country as well as I do, there would be a surprising 
 boom in the building trade of that Arcadian market 
 town, whither most of the fleeces of the Plinlimmon 
 
 ZOl
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 range find their way. With or without a rod Llamd- 
 loes may be commended with confidence to the 
 wanderer of taste and discretion. That glorious moun- 
 tain country which stretches, but little known and but 
 little traversed, from the Dovey to old Plinlimmon, lies 
 at his command, threaded with bright streams and 
 sprinkled with tarns, many of which are well worth 
 a visit. The Severn (the Hafren) and its twin sister, 
 the Clwedog, run simultaneously out of their moun- 
 tain gorges at Llanidloes, where, united as the Severn, 
 they sweep through the meadows in rippling, sinuous 
 course towards Moat Lane and Newtown. Only per- 
 sistent poaching in the past has prevented this portion 
 of the Severn from providing excellent trout-fishing. 
 The citizens have now sworn by all their gods that they 
 will exterminate the poisonous thing in the interests of 
 their own sport and that of their potential visitors. 
 
 But to return to the Wye, a mere step indeed from 
 here. Having lost the Elan at Rhayader and the 
 Marteg, which come rushing in two miles above from 
 the northerly vales of St. Harmon and Pant-y-dwr 
 (the hollow of the waters), the river shrinks to the 
 dimensions of a handy, easily covered trout stream of 
 a most alluring type. The narrow bosky glens, over- 
 hung by heights through which it churns in rocky 
 troughs to Rhayader, give gradual place to a smooth, 
 narrow vale of meadowy floor, from which the green, 
 moorish steeps on either side rise more temperately 
 and roll away into silence. The river, in much gentler 
 mood, curves from edge to edge, swishing in bright, 
 gravelly runs from one dark corner pool to another. 
 Homesteads trail along it, each with their little grove 
 202
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 of oak, ash, or sycamore, their meadows in the vale, their 
 unfenced sheep-walks in the wild above. The Aberyst- 
 with road, too, clings to the valley, even to its water- 
 shed fifteen miles away, where on a fine grade it climbs 
 the high, wild pass of Steddfa-Curig on Plinlimmon's 
 foot. A narrow, little-used, but well-laid and beautiful 
 road was this to travel on but a dozen years ago. Now, 
 however, the seaward-bound motorist has made it his 
 own, half-ruined its surface, and turned the once quiet 
 and rarely travelled byway up an entrancing valley 
 into a species of uproarious race-track throughout the 
 summer months. One may well wonder what glimmer- 
 ing of consciousness abides with these people of the 
 infinite charm of this uppermost valley of the Wye 
 that they are tearing through at twenty-five or thirty 
 miles an hour, for the even grade tempts them. Let 
 us forget them, however. It is not always July and 
 August, thank heaven ! And even August has not yet 
 discovered anything south of Plinlimmon, for which we 
 may render further thanks. 
 
 By the church of St. Curig, the patron saint of the 
 vale at the hamlet of Llangurig, ten miles up from 
 Rhayader, there is an excellent fishing-inn of old and 
 good repute, the Black Lion. The Wye runs within 
 a bow-shot of the door, and the privilege of fishing for 
 some miles up and down is attached to it. One of 
 those fine, old, Welsh landladies, and there are none 
 better, catered here for a generation of anglers, and 
 was a power not only in her own house but in the 
 valley. She is dead now, but the hostelry is still carried 
 on. Llangurig is a veritable little oasis in a fine, wild 
 country, though but five miles by a good road from 
 
 203
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Llanidloes, whose remaining poachers do not, I think, 
 regard the Wye as within their legitimate sphere. 
 Both to the north and south the moors spring sharply 
 up from the vale and spread away interminably. I 
 have more than once made brief halts for a day or so 
 at the Black Lion when exploring the country, and 
 have had a vow of something much more lasting 
 registered this many a long year. Alas, the brief span 
 of an angler's life is strewn with cruel disappointments. 
 The vow was accomplished this very past season, but in 
 an absolutely hopeless drought, which reduced the river 
 to a positively lower condition than even in the un- 
 forgettable 1911. It is not here a torrential, rocky 
 river, with deep, swirling holes, which even in a drought 
 may tempt you to action, but a rippling, shingly stream, 
 beautiful to fish in normal times, but when shrivelled up 
 offering scarcely a spot where you could hopefully cast 
 a fly. I saw plenty of fish in the water, however, and 
 some very good ones too, and it did not need a fort- 
 night's sojourn on its banks and many chats with local 
 anglers to realise that it carried a good stock, and 
 to make one long to be there in May or even a wet 
 August. Fortunately there are attractions other than 
 fishing in this delightful spot, which stands, moreover, 
 a thousand feet above sea-level. An easier and more 
 open stream to fish than this upper ten miles of the 
 Wye I never saw. For the encouragement of youth in 
 the noble art of fly fishing I do not know a better. 
 
 Till quite recently strange superstitions clung 
 
 tenaciously to these head-waters of the Wye. It was 
 
 a cul-de-sac. The Aberystwith road ceased with the 
 
 collapse of coaching to be even the modest artery it 
 
 204
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 had hitherto been, and subsided into a mere local road 
 for the thin line of scattered homesteads on its trail, 
 east of the Steddfa pass. A dozen years ago it had 
 still here and there a gate across it ! Motors, however, 
 have changed all that, though they have spoiled the 
 road bed. Otherwise they have done nothing more 
 than raise dust and wake the echoes of the hills with 
 desecrating and excrutiatingly inharmonious sounds. 
 After all, you can't do much towards exploiting a 
 country in thirty-five minutes within the limits of a 
 twenty-foot road, and that is all the motor folk have to 
 do with this wild region. 
 
 A faith in conjurers, sorcerers, and charmers, all 
 different professions, please to note, is not even yet 
 quite extinct. Three or four years ago the last of a 
 race of Gwtserwr (possessors of the evil eye) was held 
 in genuine awe by some, at least, of the farmers, and 
 his performances were seriously recounted in the 
 vernacular by one of them to a Welsh friend and 
 myself over the cheerful glass and a bright fire in the 
 parlour of the Black Lion at Llangurig. Something 
 inspiring is now required to extract such confessions 
 from the Welsh peasant, who is a bit shame- 
 faced about his lingering faith in the supernatural. 
 The Canwyll corph (corpse candle) flickered realisti- 
 cally for only the last generation. The Cyhywraeth 
 a grisly female who, with uplifted bony arms and 
 the horrors of the grave upon her person, appeared 
 to the trembling rustic as the herald of impending 
 woe might be looked for at any time, and the howl 
 of the Cwn Annwn (the dogs of the sky), who hunt 
 departing souls across the midnight heavens, was still 
 
 205
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 heard by the faithful amid these hills as clearly as in 
 the plains of Cardiganshire, that most aloof and most 
 Welsh of all Welsh counties. Amid the hoot of the 
 motors you may still encounter the farmers on their 
 hardy ponies jogging in little companies to market, 
 and often, too, a farmer's wife ambling down to 
 Rhayader, sometimes in peasant dress, sometimes 
 quite stylishly attired, but always basket on arm, and 
 not a bit ashamed of it, though her husband may own 
 two thousand sheep upon the hills above. 
 
 The ancient tongue is dying hardly but surely on 
 the head-waters of the Wye. Rhayader and, indeed, 
 the whole of Radnorshire lost it completely from fifty 
 to a hundred years ago. Llangurig is just in Mont- 
 gomeryshire, and all around and above it the old and 
 the middle-aged still cling to the vernacular. But 
 * the children, alas,' said an old farmer to me, ' play 
 in Saesoneg,' and when the children begin to play in 
 English it is the beginning of the end. But this is a 
 corner with its back to a barren mountain and its face 
 to an English-speaking world, and the situation is 
 not quite typical of matters lingual. That there is no 
 generic name for this widespreading and clearly defined 
 mountain wilderness seems a scandalous oversight on 
 the part of the ancients, though no doubt a mere 
 mischance, infinitely regrettable, and a constant incon- 
 venience both in print and converse. Like a long 
 half-moon it completely shuts out the large seaboard 
 county of Cardigan from the interior. The * Cardy ' 
 simply cannot get out except at the two extremes of 
 his long shire, and is, for that and one or two other 
 reasons, a distinct type of Welshman all to himself. 
 206
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 These mountains vitally influenced racial distribution 
 in ancient Wales. They were a leading military factor 
 in the domestic Welsh wars and the Anglo-Welsh 
 wars and the earlier Irish invasions for hundreds of 
 years. Their summits, steeps, and valleys bear fre- 
 quent testimony by their names to the woes, the 
 triumphs, the anguish, and the slaughter of centuries 
 of strife. You could drop Dartmoor and Exmoor 
 together into their wild, uplifted waste. But they 
 have no collective designation. The average English- 
 man never heard of them, and you can't explain their 
 situation by county reference, as they cover bits of 
 five, and these five, moreover, counties not generally 
 well defined in the public mind. The before-men- 
 tioned scorcher to Aberystwith may sometimes be 
 aware that he is passing over the toe of Plinlimmon, for 
 Plinlimmon is a well identified mountain, but that is 
 the limit of his understanding. For he doesn't in the 
 least know whither the green and tawny steeps he is 
 brushing with his left shoulder trend, or what they 
 signify, and, as I said before, they have no name. In 
 the old fighting days they acquired one of necessity, 
 for Giraldus tells us the English called them the 
 Moruge, and the Welsh the mountains of Elenydd, 
 and there was a fearful lot of blood-letting within 
 them and around their skirts. However this may be, 
 about five hundred cars and motor cycles per diem 
 race through this valley in the summer holidays, but I 
 have never seen one slow down except of necessity, 
 nor detected the faintest sign of interest in the un- 
 common region they are screaming through. Within 
 sound of their profane and ceaseless discords you may 
 
 207
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 hide yourself in a mountain-land from which even the 
 guide-book flinches. 
 
 Deep in its heart, and forming early in its course some 
 small lakes, ' pegged,' i.e. staked, by a fishing club from 
 Cardiganshire, and I think successfully preserved, 
 rises what the delightful twelfth-century cleric and 
 writer above quoted justly calls the * noble river Teifi.' 
 Breaking from the hills it streams down into the low 
 country of Cardigan by the treasured remnants of the 
 once great abbey of YstrydfHur or Strata Florida, 
 where, far removed and, one might venture to think, 
 secure for all time from the world's throb, lies the dust 
 of so many of the ancient princes of South Wales. 
 
 Now the Teifi is a wonderful fine trout stream, 
 and withal no bad salmon river, running a course of 
 fifty miles or so, by Tregaron, Lampeter, and Newcastle- 
 Emlyn to the sea at Cardigan, and that remote, un- 
 known, but gloriously rugged coast which was the 
 scene of Allen Raine's Welsh novels, and the native 
 soil of the authoress, a country lawyer's daughter. 
 She could translate Welsh peasant life into the English 
 tongue better, at any rate, than any one else who has 
 ever attempted that almost impossible task, and had 
 the distinction, I believe, of being, as regards circula- 
 tion, the most popular fiction writer of her quite 
 recent day. 
 
 What helps to make the Teifi probably the best 
 trouting river in Wales is the great flat bog of Tregaron 
 in the lower country, some six miles in length, along the 
 edge of which it flows. This is the only instance of a 
 real Irish ' red bog ' in the low country of either 
 England or Wales. It is like a bit of the bog of Allan 
 208
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 transported across the channel, and here also, as on 
 the flat Irish bogs, grouse breed and are shot upon 
 it. It plays the part of a huge sponge, in holding up 
 the storm and flood water, so that a freshet on the 
 Teifi, instead of running off in twenty-four hours 
 with all its fish food as in other similar rivers nowadays, 
 subsides gradually and keeps the fish astir and the 
 angler active for a much longer period after the 
 fashion common to most streams in the days before 
 sub-soil drainage was much in vogue. This gradual 
 subsiding of flood water must obviously economise 
 the food supply, and conduce to a larger stock of fish. 
 At any rate the Teifi contains a very ample one. 
 Most of its middle and lower waters are well preserved ; 
 even in its upper and more or less open ones baskets of 
 twelve pounds are expected and achieved in spring 
 fishing with ordinary skill. I have had fair sport in it 
 myself at the back end, but it is at its best in April. 
 
 Now there is a single line of railroad running north 
 and south through Cardiganshire. It is, or rather was, 
 entitled the Manchester and Milford, or the M and M, 
 perhaps for the reason that it had not the remotest 
 connection with either of those two industrial centres, 
 but was mainly devoted to the conveyance back and 
 forth by an infrequent service of farmers and squires, 
 together with the agricultural produce that supported 
 them both for millionaires do not buy estates in 
 Cardiganshire. I use the past tense, for I believe the 
 Great Western have now acquired it. I have often 
 travelled by this line in former days, and in the mush- 
 room season it was commonly said that the train would 
 always pull up if a well-sprinkled pasture field excited 
 o 209
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 the passengers to call a halt. The Teifi runs along 
 beside it, and there is a noted salmon pool just beneath 
 one of the small way-stations, the custodian of which 
 in my time was an enthusiastic angler, and had the free 
 run of it from the squire. And, I might add, that the 
 Teifi owners all the way down were the most hospitable 
 in this respect of any I have ever encountered. The 
 station-master was the sole official here, and if he was 
 in a salmon when the train arrived, which with the 
 water in good order sometimes happened, it was 
 awkward, or would have been if the passengers who 
 had grown up as it were with the railroad, and indeed, 
 as already hinted, encouraged its informalities, had 
 regarded the matter as unusual, or done anything but 
 turn out in a body to see the fish gaffed. 
 
 Just inside the edge of the high moors above Tre- 
 garon is a large tarn covering several acres, named Llyn 
 Berwyn. It contains a fair stock of good trout, but 
 of such reticent habit that they are expected to take 
 the fly about one day only in the month. Then I 
 believe the labour of getting there earns its due reward 
 and more. One day late in July, a young Cardigan- 
 shire farmer of my acquaintance offered to drive me up 
 there, as he had a brace of young pointers he wanted 
 to handle a bit before the approaching grouse-shooting 
 opened. The chances were consequently thirty to 
 one against me, counting Sundays, but I took the odds 
 unhesitatingly. So we toiled up the five miles of 
 rough road from Tregaron, almost the only track that 
 actually crosses these * mountains of Elenydd ' into 
 Brecon and Radnor. Our vehicle was a dog-cart and 
 our steed, happily for us, a faithful family friend 
 210
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 nearly as old as its driver. When we got on to the 
 moors, the lake lay glistening some half mile from the 
 road, amid the normal boggy verdure that I have said 
 clothes all these mountains but their steeps and rockier 
 summits with a ragged mantle, which at the best makes 
 laborious going and at the worst is treacherous. What 
 my friend did not know about its qualities, however, 
 was not worth knowing. Still it had been an excep- 
 tionally dry summer, and relying upon that fact in a 
 rash moment he made up his mind to risk it, and make 
 for the lake instead of hitching his horse to the trap 
 by the open road-side. It was a fatal resolve. We 
 had not gone a hundred yards when the horse, who 
 obviously had his doubts, suddenly broke the crust and 
 went straight down without any warning, till there 
 was not much more than his back and head above 
 ground. Luckily, having I believe twenty-five years 
 of experience behind him, he behaved like an angel. 
 Any ordinary beast would have struggled till he went 
 out of sight. As it was, after we had with great diffi- 
 culty got the shafts of the cart, which had also mired 
 badly, off his back, he eventually and most skilfully 
 dragged himself out, and covered with brown bog 
 slime looked his master reproachfully in the face. It 
 was obviously not the right day of the month for my 
 undertaking. There was a beautiful breeze, and Llyn 
 Berwyn is one of the nicest lakes I ever fished in. It 
 is shallow, with a firm, gently sloping sandy bottom. 
 You could wade anywhere for quite a long way out and 
 with confidence. But I only had one rise, and that 
 from a good fish as indeed they all are here, I under- 
 stand just after lunch, and I was so startled that if he 
 
 211
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 had fastened, I feel sure the gut would have snapped 
 as he turned. 
 
 Close to the source of the Teifi rises another noble 
 river, the Towy, not so good for trout or salmon as the 
 other, but renowned lower down for its sewin. Plung- 
 ing noisily through the troughs of the wild, dark brown 
 in storm and clear amber in dry weather, burrowing 
 continually in deep rock-walled trenches it has carved 
 for itself in the course of ages, it foams along to meet 
 the Doithea beneath the crags and woodlands of 
 Ystradffyn on the verge of civilisation. Up above 
 this in the moorland wilds it is full of small trout. 
 Small as they are I have often made them an excuse 
 for crossing over from Llanwrtyd wells in the valley 
 of the Yrfon, and abandoning the social and other 
 attractions of the old Dolcoed hotel merely to spend 
 but a brief day among the wild sheep-walks of Nant- 
 Stallwyn. It is a long job, being a full ten miles, and 
 the last part of it virtually unnegotiable for any wheels 
 but those of a hill farmer who has a nag especially 
 entered to the business. But when you had achieved 
 it you could kill as many small trout as you pleased. 
 And on the way one passed Abergwessin and its pic- 
 turesque inn, where the angler may stop and enjoy 
 quite excellent trouting in the torrential head-waters 
 of the Yrfon, amid scenes that for beauty are renowned 
 throughout South Wales. The memories of a July 
 day among these exquisite cascades and a basket of 
 most sizeable fish therefrom extracted often comes 
 back to me. 
 
 Lower down the Towy, just before it leaves the 
 wilds, there dwelt on its banks a lady of remarkable 
 
 212
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 character. She was a spinster even then advanced 
 in years, the daughter of a departed sheep farmer, and 
 inheritor and mistress of all his flocks. She ruled her 
 many shepherds with the firmest of hands, and no 
 dealer I believe in Llandovery or any other market was 
 ever known to get the better of her. The graces of life 
 had no great part in her scheme of it. She had no use 
 for frills of any sort. Warm as she was in this world's 
 goods, she apparently wasted nothing in superfluities 
 either within or without doors. Her demeanour sug- 
 gested the Cheviots or the Lammermuirs rather than 
 the demonstrative courtesy of the South Welsh hill- 
 folk. She was tremendously proud, I think, in a grim, 
 silent way of her unique reputation. Welsh was her 
 natural tongue, as it is of every one in the heart and 
 west of these mountains, and I don't think she had 
 very much English. Her front yard was always 
 seething with collies of the most truculent and menac- 
 ing kind, and on my first call I felt thankful to be on 
 the back of a horse. I have been there for tea on 
 one occasion, a liberty I should never have ventured 
 but with a local companion who had the honour of 
 her acquaintance an honour, I must say, she acknow- 
 ledged with such economy of words that if I hadn't 
 known they were old neighbours, as things count here, 
 and on good terms, I should have opined that there 
 was some hereditary feud smouldering. We had tea 
 on the kitchen table while she busied herself about 
 things unconnected with us and that most bachelor 
 ladies with five thousand sheep would have deputed 
 to an understudy. But perhaps it was these very 
 qualities that made her great and even feared among 
 
 213
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 profit-seeking middlemen all down the vale of 
 Towy. 
 
 Locked up in the chambers of the London County 
 Council are the engineer's plans of a mighty scheme 
 for tunnelling the mountain watershed, and carrying 
 the waters of the Towy to mingle with those of the 
 Yrfon, and turn the beautiful lower valley of the Wye 
 tributary into a vast lake for the supply of London. 
 I have seen these plans made many years ago, for a 
 landowner nearly concerned was a friend of mine, 
 and showed me a draft of them. There was no secret 
 about the survey or the scheme. It still remains 
 one of the future alternatives for London. The 
 scenery of the Towy valley for the whole long way 
 from the high moors to Llandovery, and the charm 
 of the clear tempestuous river itself in its green, 
 woody, and mountain-bordered vale, abide always 
 in the memory of those of us who have known it. 
 Swollen at Twm-Shon-Catti by the Doithea, it is 
 quite a lusty river that a few miles lower down frets 
 amid almost ceaseless avenues of verdure through the 
 widespreading parks and pastures of Neuadd-fawr. 
 ' Heavens ! what a river,' would cry any angler who 
 caught a glimpse of it from any point. I speak under 
 correction as to the immediate present. But the un- 
 restrained fish raider has made a burning example here 
 of what even a sparse Welsh community can do when 
 it sets its mind to it in the way of cleaning out a river 
 that has never been protected, both of its stock of trout 
 and its annual run of sewin. 
 
 Below Llandovery the Towy utterly changes both in 
 habit and circumstances. All down its green historic 
 214
 
 ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 
 
 vale to its tidal waters above Carmarthen we have a 
 broad stream swishing amid wide breadths of shingle, 
 or rolling deep and sullen between meadowy banks ; 
 a well-preserved trout and sewin river all the way, 
 picking up en route the winsome stream of the Cothi, 
 till the push of the tide begins to be felt, and the 
 salmon-netters with their coracles take sole possession 
 of the waters. 
 
 215
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 VII 
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 SOME of the best rivers in Devonshire have been 
 greatly damaged of recent years by the 
 increase of salmon, which is a vast pity. For 
 trout give more continuous sport to a great many more 
 people, and if they do not furnish the fevered quarter 
 and half hours provided by the king of fishes, there is 
 more varied interest as well as more science in the 
 pursuit of them. That beautiful stream the Torridge, 
 now, I believe, an excellent salmon river, is a case in 
 point. Its neighbour the Taw has fallen away de- 
 plorably and is hardly worth fishing, so I am told, 
 below Eggesford. Of the Exe at least as bad things 
 are said. One wonders whether they will make, as I 
 venture to think, the same mistake with the Tamar, 
 and destroy probably the best as well as the largest 
 trouting river in the county. I have fished a great 
 many of the Devon streams both in boyhood, youth, 
 and middle-age, and have a nodding acquaintance 
 with, I think, almost all of them, which, I admit, is 
 making a rather bold claim. For scenic distinction 
 I take my hat off to the Dart as the queen of Devon 
 rivers, a sufficiently proud position. But do not let 
 216
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 Devonians of their own complacency, which in this 
 particular is immense, run away with the notion that 
 their streams are as beautiful as those of Wales, because 
 they are not by a long way, though they in their turn 
 incomparably excel in beauty those of any other 
 English rivers south of Derbyshire. And the first of 
 these invidious comparisons is made, at any rate, 
 honestly and impartially, Heaven knows, for I was 
 * bred a fisherman,' as the Ancients have it, in the 
 western county, and that means well, a good many 
 people know what it does mean, while the others 
 wouldn't understand, and elaboration would be futile. 
 When on rare occasions I tread the banks of a Devon- 
 shire stream to-day, with those subtle odours and 
 accessories which belong to them alone, I can very 
 nearly cheat myself into the belief that life lies before 
 me, instead of mainly behind. 
 
 As a mere pious opinion, with the exception per- 
 haps of the much preserved Tamar, and subject to 
 the correction of any widely experienced native, I 
 would give preference, as a trout stream pure and 
 simple, to a river scarcely known by name outside the 
 county. Something of its obscurity is possibly due 
 to the very fact of its name, which, for reasons obvious 
 to the most elementary etymologist, is shared by so 
 many notable rivers in the three kingdoms. I have 
 never yet met any outsider who was even aware that 
 there was an Avon in Devonshire. But there is and 
 a very bewitching Avon too, the very antithesis of 
 those placid, silent, and rather turgid haunts of pike 
 and roach that fame has chiefly illumined. Of the 
 rivers that flow out of Dartmoor the Tavy may boast 
 
 217
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 of her peal, the Dart of her scenic pre-eminence and 
 her fair share of sea-going fish, but the Avon in her 
 lower half may fairly, I think, take precedence of either 
 for the quality of her trout ; and that is what chiefly 
 concerns us in these pages. My own angling experi- 
 ences of the Dart are of such ancient date as to be 
 worth nothing in the matter of comparison. But an 
 old local friend who has fished both rivers almost 
 from his cradle has showed me his fishing journals 
 extending over many years by way of rubbing in the 
 contrast which, in these pages, at any rate, is con- 
 spicuous. The Dart in its upper reaches has long 
 miles of moorland waters which provide entertainment 
 for many visitors in the way of small fish, as fish are 
 judged even by the Devonshire standard, which is 
 another business. But in its wider and lower reaches 
 below Holne, in my friend's records, which have much 
 significance, it does not come near the Avon. Nor 
 are the Earne and the Teign, which also run south out 
 of Dartmoor, nor yet again the Okement, which runs 
 north, quite in the same class. 
 
 But then the Avon is very short, the portion of it, 
 that is to say, to which these eulogies are applicable. 
 It rises, to be sure, far within the moor behind South 
 Brent, and in its pilgrimage out of the wild has a 
 right tempestuous journey, deep channelled in woody 
 gorges, and leaping betimes in high white cataracts 
 that cannot even be seen without effort for the tangled 
 foliage that meets above them. Running pictur- 
 esquely down past the rectory and church of Brent, 
 diving under stone bridges, and skirting the village, 
 the little river tumbles through open meadows for a 
 218
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 mile, and for yet another frets again in a contracted 
 and bosky trough. Then all at once, within the space 
 of half a mile, it becomes to my thinking one of the 
 best bits of water in Devonshire. On the moor the 
 Avon is prolific of fingerlings, and practically nothing 
 else. In the tangled hollows below the fish are a 
 little better, but hardly worth the arduous struggles 
 necessary to their ensnaring. In the meadows below 
 Brent, the sportsmen of the latter being free of this 
 much of the water, flog it pretty hard, while through 
 the gorge below, the force of the current at least we 
 always thought so was against it as a holt for fish. 
 
 It is at Avonwick, just below this, that the river 
 comes into its own as a trouting stream, and thence it 
 is but a dozen or so miles to the little estuary where 
 it joins the sea beyond Loddiswell. Nearly all of its 
 wayward, sparkling journey thither lies through as 
 snug a valley as there is in Devon. There are many 
 valleys in the county more beautiful, to be sure, but 
 this one is absolutely and completely typical. Even 
 the single track railroad which follows it to Kings- 
 bridge has done little aesthetic damage. When I first 
 knew the valley in my college days, and indeed for long 
 afterwards, there was nothing of this. If bound for the 
 Kingsbridge country you joined the coach or your 
 friend's trap at Kingsbridge Road station, now re- 
 christened Ugborough, after the tor at whose foot it 
 lies. 
 
 Brent, on the main line of the Great Western, is the 
 starting-point of the Avon valley branch line. It lies 
 between Plymouth and Totnes, and summer refugees 
 from both those pleasant enervating places repair to 
 
 219
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 its limited accommodation as to a hill-station for the 
 moorland air. For among the indigenous folk of 
 South Devon, Brent, it should be said, ranks as a highly 
 bracing sanatorium. I would not give a fig myself 
 for the air of southern Dartmoor. The memory of 
 four summer months spent there in the late nineties 
 is always, despite climatic drawbacks, a delightful one. 
 But time has more than half obscured the awful and 
 persistent sense of lethargy, to use a quite inadequate 
 term, that possessed me all day long and in all weathers 
 in that, to me, debilitating atmosphere. I had 
 scarcely known till then what it meant to be tired in 
 any unpleasant sense from mere physical effort, and to 
 fish the Avon thoroughly every scrap of vitality you 
 possess is required, particularly if the stream is fairly 
 full. Nothing but the sternest sense of duty, or rather 
 an absolute refusal to confess myself a weakling, sup- 
 ported me through the long days of labouring up that 
 rugged river bed beneath the trees. The nights up at 
 Brent brought no relief, and I used to get up in the 
 morning feeling as if I had never been to bed. I got 
 quite alarmed after a time and felt convinced that old 
 age, like a thief in the night, had struck me prematurely, 
 or that I was on the verge of some mysterious nervous 
 collapse, so unnatural did all this seem to an open-air 
 life on the slopes of Dartmoor ! A necessary run up 
 to London provided the opportunity, and I surrep- 
 titiously sought the opinion of Sir Omicron Pie on 
 my sad case. I have often laughed over that inter- 
 view, and it is worth recalling : 
 
 ' Well, I can't find anything the matter with you,' 
 said the great man, * but where have you been staying ? ' 
 220
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 I told him I was at Brent, and it was regarded as a 
 bracing place. ' Brent ! ' he almost shouted, when I 
 told him, ' Brent ! Why, as you aren't a native, 
 I 'm only surprised you are as well as you are. Now 
 I will tell you something. It 's very strange that you 
 should have come to me. For I went down with 
 my wife last year for a month's holiday to that very 
 place, and I give you my word, upon the third day I 
 could hardly walk upstairs, and we left upon the fourth.' 
 I felt much better when I came out, of course, and as 
 the fishing was about over the protracted lassitude 
 lost most of its significance, and dropped even out of 
 memory shooting partridges in Suffolk that September, 
 though it was the hottest within living memory. 
 
 History repeats itself. My mild alarms at this 
 time recalled a rather similar experience to my father's 
 memory. When a young fellow of his college he 
 conceived a fancy for seeing Cornwall, but after three 
 days, at Penzance I think, he lost the use of both his 
 legs ! Frightened out of his life he got up to London 
 somehow, and very naturally in the character, as he 
 supposed, of a threatened paralytic presented himself 
 immediately at some great physician's door. The 
 omniscient one was entirely reassuring, but told him 
 that the curious effect was not uncommon among 
 East Anglians and others who adventured in summer 
 time in what is now called by railway companies the 
 Cornish Riviera. My father died at eighty ! 
 
 I have since fished the Avon in early spring when all 
 England is, I think, pretty safe from debilitating in- 
 fluences. But I would not give one day of May or 
 June, when the water is low, for three in spring when 
 
 221
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 it is usually in what is known as good condition when 
 the streams, that is to say, are heavy to beat up against 
 continually, and the fish rise briskly perhaps for a couple 
 of hours, and then go down for good, and the surface 
 of the water becomes, as they say in Scotland, dour. 
 Moreover, in spring the good fish, of which there are 
 or were a great many in the Avon, half to three-quarter- 
 pounders, have not come out into the shallows nor 
 taken seriously to surface food, as they do later. I 
 think the river in this particular is rather different 
 from most Devonian streams, though exactly like so 
 many of them in physical characteristics. 
 
 Leaving the villages of Huish, Diptford, Woodleigh, 
 and Loddiswell to face the south-west storms on 
 windy heights above it, the Avon cultivates a strict 
 seclusion. For Devonian villages are not usually 
 dreams of thatch and wattle nestling around orchards 
 in a valley, as commonly depicted by the gushing 
 scribe since the county became a sort of literary fashion 
 with outsiders. They mainly affect bare hill-tops, 
 and are exceedingly prone to slate and whitewash, just 
 avoiding positive ugliness, to do them justice, but 
 making no claim whatever to the aesthetic qualities 
 with which modern convention in London and the 
 suburbs adorns them as if it were their positive speci- 
 ality. In such antiquities of all descriptions every 
 archaeologist knows the western county comes rather 
 low on the list. l Oh, isn't this like Devonshire ? ' 
 babbled a lady and a novelist too, as we sped past 
 Chislehurst, of all places, the other day. I felt pain- 
 fully tempted to paraphrase old Bishop Philpott's dry 
 rejoinder to the gushing lady, who asked him if 
 
 222
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 Babbacome Bay, above which they were standing, 
 didn't remind him of Switzerland. l Yes, ma'am, 
 very much ; only here there are no streams, and in 
 Devonshire there are no stockbrokers,' and this in truth 
 would have been quite inadequate to the blazing 
 topographical idiocy of my fellow-traveller's outburst. 
 
 Urging its bright, impetuous streams through most 
 of its seaward pilgrimage beneath a rarely interrupted 
 canopy of foliage, this obscurest of all English Avons 
 purls upon gravelly beds or lingers in deep rocky pools, 
 overshadowed by fern-tufted crags and the spreading 
 foliage of wild woods that clothe the hill-sides and 
 hold the river in their sylvan grip. There are green 
 meadowy strips too, plenty of them, on one bank or 
 the other, sometimes on both. But even then thick 
 foliage often bristles along both banks and holds the 
 would-be bank angler at arm's length. Old stone 
 bridges, too, festooned with trailing ivy, give here and 
 there a more perfect finish to some vista of water 
 that dances through flickering bands of sun and 
 shadow beneath the swaying boughs. 
 
 All, or nearly all, this water is in the hands of an 
 association whose moderately apprised tickets make 
 any one free of this Avon fishery who feels equal to 
 grappling with it, an effort well worth the while. 
 But it is no use poking about dry-shod on the bank 
 here if you mean business, though there are brief inter- 
 ludes where you might take your ease in this rather 
 unprofitable fashion. You must get right down into 
 the water and stay there, and push your way between 
 and often beneath the trees, and face a current that 
 is generally strong and rocks that are always glacial. 
 
 223
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 The Avon is no brook, nor again is it a broad river, 
 but of precisely the right dimensions in my opinion 
 for a first-rate trouting stream. I prefer it, as I have 
 said, in May and through half of June, and do not 
 mind dry weather, sunshine, and thinner water in 
 the least. Nor, I am sure, do the Avon trout. They 
 are then, in my experience, almost always ready to 
 rise, and the good ones too, if you can circumvent 
 them. 
 
 Looking down from the high bank at such periods 
 when the voice of the stream is fluting in its highest 
 key, and the stickles are running low, and the top 
 waves of the pools have subsided into mere tremulous 
 eddies, it looks, I admit, pretty hopeless. You can 
 see the fish travelling affrighted up the gravelly runs 
 into the deeper waters, among them that old pounder 
 marked down of yore, followed by a score of halves, 
 thirds, and quarters. You will not, however, be on 
 the bank when you are fishing, but down in the water 
 creeping warily up beside its alder fringes, and getting 
 here and there some fine vantage-points behind an 
 out-thrusting bush. No scurry of fish will be thus 
 provoked, thin and clear though the stream be, if you 
 are careful. A short line is not usually much good. 
 This is a convention much too freely associated in 
 print with up-stream fishing and a short rod. Well 
 enough in high water or in early spring ; but a longish 
 line must be thrown somehow between or under the 
 trees, and it comes easy enough with habit and practice. 
 ' Fine and far off ' is just as true of this woodland 
 fishing as of a chalk stream, but with a great difference, 
 for in the latter you have probably a twenty-acre 
 224
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 water meadow behind you, and you must present the 
 dry fly in becoming attitude, properly cocked, and 
 all the rest of it. 
 
 It does not so much matter how you present the 
 wet fly. You have got to get it there through diffi- 
 culties, above and around. And you must also know 
 where to make the effort, and when it is worth while to 
 run risks, commensurate with your skill, of hanging 
 up your flies. These things are outside description, 
 nor can the ' smittle ' spots upon a river's surface be 
 chronicled, for experience alone, which becomes a 
 second instinct, can read such lessons. Ingenuous 
 fools have written of wet-fly fishing as an operation 
 conducted on ' chuck-and-chance-it ' principles. Pos- 
 sibly they refer to fishing a lake from a boat. Let us 
 hope so ! Nor is the phrase wholly amiss as applied 
 to ' salmon-fishing ' for trout down a big river. But 
 in connection with up-stream fishing, and above all, 
 in such a river as this is, it is a deplorable exposure of 
 innocence. Let the man who can throw a decent 
 fly, and has nevertheless such callow conceptions 
 of wet-fly fishing, try his hand against some habitual 
 exponent of it ! How shifting, too, according to 
 weather and conditions, are the sort of places where 
 the trout are feeding. It may sometimes take an hour 
 or so to discover that some strange whim, as it would 
 incorrectly seem to us in our ignorance, has seized 
 upon the whole river, and that every fish is, as it were, 
 out of place ! 
 
 The strangest case of this within my own experience 
 occurred on the Welsh Dee ; not on the rugged 
 reaches we traversed in a former chapter, but in the 
 p 225
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 swishing, rippling streams among the meadows near 
 Corwen, easily fished and easily waded waters, and for 
 that reason less profitable to spend time over. It 
 was one day late in April, and the river was in lovely 
 condition. But I had laboured nevertheless all morn- 
 ing without even touching a fish, and it was about 
 mid-afternoon when I found myself at the bottom of 
 the long, straight half-mile of wide, shallow water 
 below Corwen bridge, into which one would usually 
 wade and fish across and down. I suppose I must 
 have seen a fish move, otherwise I should most 
 assuredly never have faced up-stream and put my fly 
 on to such an utterly impossible-looking spot of water. 
 For on the shallowest side of the broad shallow the 
 water, being then a little above normal height, was 
 rippling three or four inches deep along the foot of a 
 grassy, briary bank that stood back a bit in ordinary 
 times from the river's pebbly edge. At any rate, 
 close to the grass, in water hardly deep enough to 
 cover his back fin, I secured a goodly half-pound trout. 
 While engaged in disposing of it, I beheld another fish 
 bestir himself a little higher up in the same uncanny 
 sort of place, uncanny, that is to say, for such a big 
 river, and poke his head up close to the grassy foot of 
 the bank. The water did not cover my brogues, but 
 putting out a longish line, this one took greedily at 
 the first offer, and proved the equal of the last. To 
 shorten my story, I fished up the foot of that hedge, 
 dry as a board in normal water, and throwing my fly 
 as close as possible to the grass, the rippling water 
 being nowhere more than four or five inches deep, I 
 killed seven half-pounders, one after the other an 
 226
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 achievement in successive weight that neither before 
 nor since have I ever accomplished in the sacred Dee. 
 And then I broke the middle joint of my rod short off, 
 tugging too fiercely at a rambling briar in which my 
 fly had fastened, and had nothing for it but to go 
 home ! There was another hundred or more yards of 
 that hedge-foot yet to be fished, and I have no doubt 
 another seven or eight fish of the same class waiting 
 to be caught. Two or three habitual anglers, who 
 knew every pebble in the river, came in that evening 
 with sore hearts and empty baskets, marvelling how 
 even Dee trout, queer as they are, could have main- 
 tained such an uncompromising sulk throughout the 
 whole of such a perfect fishing day. But for a mere 
 accident I, too, should of course have been numbered 
 among the unfortunates ; for no angler would ever 
 have dreamed of considering for a moment such an 
 impossible place for the choicer trout of a big river 
 running down in beautiful fly order, to be lying and 
 feeding in. For myself, I never had the opportunity 
 of finding the water just sprawling over the gravel 
 to the edge of that bank again. And I doubt if any 
 one since has had the good luck to be fortuitously 
 attracted to it as I was under the same conditions. 
 It was cruel, however, to be thus checked in mid 
 career ; for one breaks a middle joint once, perhaps, 
 in five years, and then probably by sitting down upon 
 it in a moment of aberration ! 
 
 To retrace our straying footsteps to the banks of 
 the Avon, I venture to recall a humorous incident 
 which occurred there in the long ago when I first 
 began to know them well. Now it so happened that 
 
 227
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 an immigrant from Yorkshire, I think a retired trades- 
 man, had bought a few acres of land and built himself 
 a house of rather singular aspect by the river's side. 
 A strange Yorkshireman in the sequestered heart of 
 Devon is, I need not say, almost as much a foreigner 
 as a Frenchman from the rustic point of view, an alien 
 to be held at arm's length and pelted with the brick- 
 bats of rural criticism. It is equally certain, too, 
 that the criticisms would be returned with compound 
 interest by a scornful and canny northerner thus 
 situated. Mutual relations were at any rate a trifle 
 strained. So when the landowners threw their re- 
 spective waters into the fishing association at its in- 
 ception, the Yorkshireman stubbornly refused to do 
 anything of the kind, and consequently, when you 
 got to his little demesne you had to skip a couple of 
 hundred yards of most excellent water or run the risk 
 of facing his quite justifiable indignation. On the 
 occasion in question a young curate from a distance, 
 innocent of this obstacle to the otherwise unchecked 
 career his ticket ensured him, had applied himself with 
 ardour to the three or four excellent pools on the 
 Yorkshireman's ground, and was fortunate enough in 
 one of them to hook and kill a fish of over a pound 
 weight. And not only that, but in his innocence and 
 lightness of heart for the sockdolager in his basket, he 
 sat down close to the owner's house, and having there 
 consumed his lunch, lit his pipe to enjoy his triumph 
 in a beatific state of mind we can all of us sympathise 
 with. It was not till then that the ogre espied the 
 audacious intruder, and hurrying to the scene asked 
 him if he knew what he was doing. The curate, not 
 228
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 then in a mood perhaps to distinguish between the 
 friendly and the hostile note in what he considered a 
 futile question, replied that he was enjoying himself 
 very much and had just killed a splendid fish over a 
 pound in weight. * You don't tell me that,' said the 
 Yorkshireman, bridling his choler, which, I fear from 
 frequent provocation, was not usually held in check at 
 these encounters. t We don't get many fish of that 
 size here ; let 's have a look at him.' So the pounder 
 was handed over for inspection by the happy, artless 
 curate to the guileful northerner, who at once ap- 
 propriated it, and having explained the situation 
 to the now dumbfounded angler, fired him off the 
 premises. The stalwart and uncompromising York- 
 shireman is now no more. His naturalised descend- 
 ants are at peace with the world and the association, 
 and are doubtless possessed of a beautiful Devonshire 
 accent. The last time I fished the Avon I trod the 
 once sacred enclosure in the full sense of moral right 
 and legal security. 
 
 I used to fancy Woodleigh wood, or 't/dleigh 'wde 
 (with the Devon u of course), as the old natives had it, 
 as much as any stretch in this delightful river. It 
 clothes the high hill-sides with a fine tangle of varied 
 foliage and spreads its protecting fringes over the pools 
 and stickles for a long mile or so above Loddiswell. 
 But down in the river, if you do not mind timber, 
 there is here a prolonged treat of good things as you 
 push up the current beneath the overhanging boughs 
 of oak and hazel, of alder and mountain ash. Barbed 
 wire, to be sure, has added new terrors for the fisher- 
 man as it has for the fox-hunter. Once upon a time 
 
 229
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 you could drag yourself up the densely fringed steep 
 bank of the Avon when you felt in the mood for a rest 
 or were confronted with deep water. You could cram 
 your rod, basket, and landing-net somehow through the 
 thick frieze of tree roots, saplings, and briars, and 
 achieve the upper air and a grassy resting-place. The 
 last time, however, I battled with these rough rocks 
 and swift currents, the swifter on that occasion for 
 April rains, all old avenues of escape were destroyed, 
 the natural chevaux de /rise being everywhere en- 
 twined with barbed wire ; and when all further 
 progress up the river was barred by some deep pool, 
 you were virtually imprisoned in a cul-de-sac. There 
 was nothing for it but to wade wearily down again 
 over the waters you had just fished, and clamber out 
 into the upper air at the point from which you de- 
 scended into it. 
 
 This waste of time and energy is particularly annoy- 
 ing in spring fishing, if the trout happen to be on the 
 rise. For, unless the season be very forward, a great 
 objection to spring trouting in my opinion in this class 
 of river is that the rise, though sometimes furious and 
 uncritical, is usually limited to an hour or two, leaving 
 those before and afterwards a rather weary blank of 
 futile casting upon dour waters. Every fisherman, 
 of course, knows this, and furthermore that you can 
 never be certain when that brief but blithesome 
 interlude will take place, to say nothing of the possi- 
 bility of its never turning up at all, though this last, 
 of course, is all in the angler's business. It is tolerably 
 certain that it will occur between eleven and four, and 
 in rivers like the Avon one is constantly haunted by 
 230
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 the fear that the fish will come on in awkward or in- 
 different bits of water, sandwiched between the pet 
 places you have already fished in vain, and those again 
 higher up where you fain would be. It is not safe 
 when the moment seems to have arrived either to push 
 on or to drop back, for you might possibly find another 
 rod in possession. Moreover, it is not easy to drag 
 oneself from any water when fish come suddenly on 
 the rise and face a journey through tangled woods or 
 over untrimmed Devon fences, in waders and brogues, 
 when you know all the time that the trout are splash- 
 ing merrily at the March browns or blue duns. It is 
 better to stick to it and receive this gift of the gods 
 wherever it finds you on the stream. So it comes to 
 pass that very often two anglers of equal capacity will 
 turn out very different baskets on an April evening. 
 
 Queer things, however, happen in every month. Not 
 very long ago, after nearly a week of battling with the 
 rather full April streams of the Avon in most inclement 
 weather and with very poor luck, my last day had 
 arrived. It was far the worst to all outward seeming, 
 even of this bad week. As I descended to the river be- 
 low Loddiswell station, a biting north-easter cut rasp- 
 ingly down even that sheltered valley. To make the 
 situation from an angling standpoint more supremely 
 ridiculous, a violent thunderstorm without rain broke 
 upon the scene while in mournful mood I was putting 
 up my rod. Fork-lightning played in the leaden sky 
 above the bare hill-top where the village of Loddiswell 
 shivered in the icy blast, and repeated crashes of thunder 
 rolled down the valley towards Kingsbridge and the 
 sea. This, in truth, seemed a gratuitous piling up of 
 
 231
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 the agony on an unfortunate angler, with no alter- 
 native for hours but the waiting-room of a diminutive 
 station. If the humblest inn or fireside had been 
 accessible I should have lost a quite enjoyable day's 
 fishing to an absolute certainty. 
 
 As it was, I descended into the icy waters where they 
 come out into the meadows from Woodleigh wood, 
 and at the very first cast to my amazement was into 
 a good fish. I took three out of that pool in quick 
 succession while the thunder was still rumbling, and 
 the lightning playing, and the north-east wind lashing 
 the bursting willows on the bank, and threatening 
 snowflakes every moment. They were the better 
 class of Avon fish, and weighed a pound between them. 
 I went on picking up fish all the morning, for in the 
 heart of the woods the cold wind seemed to sink to 
 rest, and a rise of blue dun set the trout astir in 
 flagrant violation of every rule which is supposed to 
 guide them. But better, to my thinking, than zephyrs 
 and April showers are those days in the thinner waters 
 of later May and early June when fish may be picked 
 up on and off all day, and on the whole better ones 
 too, if harder to catch. The playing of a strong 
 June fish, too, in these leafy avenues, amid rocks, 
 boughs, and rapid currents, is a different business 
 from the same encounter in an open stream. There 
 are about twenty more things to think about, and no 
 time to think of them, as the fish dashes and jumps 
 from one danger spot to another, and the point of 
 the rod has to be dipped like lightning under trailing 
 boughs, and the line shortened as quickly by a grab 
 at it below the bottom ring. Instructions to a young
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 angler how to play a fish would be mighty little good 
 here ! There is no time to reel in during these fast 
 and furious early stages as the trout runs down towards 
 you or darts like lightning for a submerged bush. 
 And with a longish line out these critical moments 
 are inevitable, while as for holding the point of your 
 rod up, you have got to hold it at just such an angle 
 as the all-embracing foliage for the moment admits of. 
 A half-pound fish will give you no end of a time in 
 such situations for about thirty seconds. After that 
 another minute, perhaps, may see him in the net. 
 Though if perchance you are a fixture, as often happens 
 where the depth of an uneven slippery bottom varies 
 from one to three or more feet, you may have had to 
 let him run down stream a long way, and be forced 
 to reel him on fine gut, by slow stages up a rapid 
 current, which is a slow and ticklish business. A 
 three-quarter-pounder, which is always possible in 
 the Avon, will give you anywhere in its waters, and 
 above all in these very prevalent awkward places, 
 some really stirring moments. You should not be 
 wholly ungrateful if you get him safely in at all, and 
 the encounter, if successful, will possibly occupy five 
 minutes, which will seem like a quarter of an hour. 
 I am talking, of course, of real honest half- and three- 
 quarter-pounders, not those lesser fry which anglers, 
 particularly those accustomed to waters where trout 
 run large sometimes, airily allude to as such. A half- 
 pounder in the Kennet or the Test is by comparison 
 a poor, immature weakling, who in his own waters, 
 unvexed by trailing boughs and rocks, and torrents 
 and sunken bushes, may be handled with something
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 like contempt. But in the western streams he is a 
 well-developed lusty veteran, the tyrant and the bully 
 of the few square yards of water over which he rules. 
 As I have already intimated, in the Devonshire Avon 
 the herring-sized fish, going about three to the 
 pound, are far more numerous than in most Devonshire 
 streams. This evidence of good feeding for the look 
 of the river hardly suggests this standard used to be 
 attributed, whether truly or not, to the presence of 
 the fresh- water shrimp. 
 
 It is needless to say that the tail fly in up-stream, 
 clear-water fishing kills two or three fish for one taken 
 on the dropper, or droppers if a couple are used not 
 altogether advisable, I think. It alone reaches many 
 of the far-away fish, and gets into brushy nooks, par- 
 ticularly where the water is shallow, and a slight but 
 significant enough wave is the glad sign of a fastening 
 fish. The trout at this season and in such places, if 
 they come at all, nearly always mean business, and 
 are generally of the better type. Where a screen of 
 alder brush dips into a gravelly run, with little recesses 
 here and there, into which, standing well below, you 
 can curl your tail fly sideways, are perhaps the spots 
 which on these bright early summer days upon the 
 Avon come back to me as the most prolific of all upon 
 the varied surface of this beautiful stream. And as 
 tail fly upon the Avon at this season there is nothing 
 like, certainly nothing better than, a good old-fashioned 
 Devonshire red palmer not a coch-y-bonddu, but 
 a rather full red hackle with a plain body, and with 
 for choice a few turns of gold twist round it. Four 
 varieties of the red palmer, as used by the oldest and 
 234
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 best fisherman I knew upon the Avon, have occupied 
 a pocket of my fly-book for the last twenty years, on 
 ' in memoriam ' account alone. His generation never 
 dreamed of fishing without one. It is certainly a 
 wonderful fly there in early summer, the fish taking 
 it under water as freely as on the surface. 
 
 The decline in the number of fish, probably in a 
 majority of rapid rivers, is, I think, an accepted fact, 
 and is certainly a perennial source of discussion among 
 anglers, and that, too, in rivers where neither poach- 
 ing nor over-fishing can have had anything to do with 
 the trouble ; for in such cases there is nothing to discuss 
 or theorise about. The Avon is a case in point. I 
 am pretty sure there are as many fish as there were 
 twenty years ago, and in fact there are quite enough 
 for any reasonable person. It was, roughly speaking, 
 in the twenty to thirty years before that period that 
 the change was effected by some mysterious agency, 
 here, as in other streams known to me in many parts 
 of the west and north. In a long spring and summer 
 for other brief visits are not worth considering 
 I spent upon the Avon, I never killed more than five- 
 and-twenty sizeable fish in a day. And I am quite 
 certain that much larger baskets were not then made 
 by any one, nor indeed would an occasional exception 
 alter the case. But in the sixties thrice that number 
 were frequently taken. There was some correspond- 
 ence in the Field many years ago as to the baskets 
 made here in these brave old days by local worthies, 
 country parsons and suchlike how they filled their 
 creels and then their pockets, till even these last over- 
 flowed, obviously not from any mysterious super- 
 
 235
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 excellence, for many an expert, more efficiently armed 
 and with finer tackle, has fished the river since these 
 days. I have good reason, however, for knowing that 
 these tales are absolutely true. The contrast between 
 the then and now, or rather between the then and 
 twenty years ago, must be looked for in this case as in 
 many others to some natural cause. Nothing con- 
 cerned with fishing, legal or illegal, has brought it 
 about ; that, at any rate, is pretty certain. The theory 
 of improved drainage which carries off flood water 
 and its store of feed in a day instead of several days 
 seems to me the most worthy of consideration ; a 
 theory which may be applied to scores of rivers like 
 the Avon with plausibility, for there really is no other. 
 The Barle of my boyish Exmoor days, for instance, is 
 another case in point. There is nothing like the 
 stock there was then. The casual, unobservant person 
 goes on repeating in all these cases that there are more 
 fishermen than of old. This sounds reasonable, but 
 it is not always true, and even were it so, amounts to 
 nothing when the fecundity of trout and the frac- 
 tional toll taken with a rod and easily estimated in 
 protected rivers, is totted up. 
 
 A curious coincidence occurred during the last visit 
 I paid to the Avon, and if the hero concerned catches 
 sight of these lines, I hope he will forgive me. Now 
 on the Welsh border there was, and possibly still is, a 
 certain cleric who enjoyed a tremendous and justly 
 earned reputation as an angler. Though a native, 
 his cure of souls happened to lie in a county in which, 
 from my knowledge of it, I should say there is not a 
 trout but such as have been recently introduced into 
 236
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 reservoirs and the like. But his operations were still, 
 and naturally enough, carried on upon his native 
 streams. I know some of these last pretty well myself, 
 and also many of the local fishermen who are justly 
 accounted great men upon them, and with one voice 
 they used to declare that there was no approaching 
 this terrific parson in the matter of a basket. I have 
 often heard them, both gentle and simple, discuss the 
 problem of why and how it was that he never failed 
 to make them all feel second-raters when he descended 
 into their midst. But such was undoubtedly the case, 
 and there are other magicians of this kind in various 
 parts of England, men who for some mysterious reason 
 stand out above the best. It was even said that some 
 owners hesitated to give this one a day's fishing, which 
 merely exhibited their ignorance of the natural history 
 of trout. His patterns of flies were eagerly sought after, 
 and named after his name. But this was no good. 
 The users of them had half-baskets while the parson 
 filled his. He has even been watched by envious 
 professors to see if he has any special patent dodge, 
 but there was obviously nothing of the kind. His 
 execution was apparently precisely the same as that 
 of any other good local fisherman. 
 
 But this brings me back to the gist of the story and 
 the fact that when fishing the Avon some three or 
 four years ago an old local friend officially connected 
 with the river remarked, among other items of gossip, 
 ' We have got a demon fisherman on the river now, 
 a regular otter. He has killed bigger baskets than any 
 one within my memory.' [This last went back fifteen 
 or twenty years.] ' His name,' quoth I. ' Captain 
 
 237
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 ,' replied my friend. ' Good Heavens ! ' said I, 
 
 for the name was a rare one, ' a brother of the famous 
 parson, I 'd lay a hundred to one.' And so he proved. 
 Here indeed was a study in heredity ! I positively 
 dreaded to meet him on the river. It was that un- 
 satisfactory week before alluded to, which ended up so 
 genially in the north-east wind and the thunderstorm ; 
 for abjure rivalry as you may, and as I always try to in 
 fishing, it is never pleasant to encounter success with 
 failure. Moreover, I met the keeper in due course, 
 and he instantly unbosomed himself on the subject, 
 namely that of the newcomer, the like of whom had 
 never been seen in his time on the river. His baskets 
 ran up in the neighbourhood of fifty fish, which was 
 certainly an unprecedented figure in modern times, 
 and there were plenty of experts here as on the Welsh 
 border. 
 
 Now this is really curious and should give fishermen 
 something to think about, though on the lay reader 
 its significance must inevitably be lost. It is indeed 
 a matter of scientific interest that two brothers should 
 be thus miraculously endowed. There is no dry fly 
 subtlety in their case, no casting of phenomenally long 
 lines with a fly laid beautifully cocked at the end of 
 them, no persistent studies of nymphs and images and 
 cunning contrivance of imitations. In fact, I doubt 
 if any dry-fly fishermen stand out with such singular 
 consistency above their brother experts ! It is in this 
 case simply a question of thrashing up-stream with 
 practically the same flies as other men who have also 
 been at it all their lives. 
 
 These occasional superfishermen, if the phrase be per- 
 238
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 missible, are to be fouixd on lakes, too, which is still more 
 curious ; for lake fishing from a boat, the least attrac- 
 tive to my mind under most conditions of all forms of 
 trouting, one would think, reduced all practised fisher- 
 men who indulge in it to more or less even baskets. 
 But I have encountered at least three lake-fishers in my 
 life who are admitted to be supermen in this respect, 
 and invariably bring home the largest basket in what- 
 ever company and on whatever water they may find 
 themselves. One of them was a Welsh squire, the 
 other an English parson, and the third a commercial 
 gentleman. The latter represented England against 
 Scotland in the competitions that are or used to be 
 held on Lochleven. He was quite frank himself re- 
 garding his phenomenal gift, and admitted his in- 
 ability to account for it. Lake fishing over a drift of all 
 methods of trouting one would fancy left nothing by 
 which the most gifted angler could consistently lift 
 himself above his brother experts. The last-men- 
 tioned one had a theory that some kind of fourth 
 sense had been vouchsafed him which enabled him in 
 some mysterious way to divine and anticipate the 
 movements of unseen fish. 
 
 The Avon isn't everybody's river not by any 
 means ! There has been, I think, some thinning out 
 done of late years, but I have often seen strange anglers, 
 officers or the like from Plymouth, wandering down 
 the woody banks below Garabridge or Avonwick, 
 asking in despair where the river was get-at-able. 
 These were mostly no doubt what the Devon folk used 
 to call ' up-countrymen,' handy enough some of them 
 perhaps on moorland, or water meadows, or on lakes, but 
 
 239
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 daunted at the first flush by the uncompromisingly 
 sylvan character of this river, on to whose banks the 
 little train had dumped them. A military friend of 
 mine who used sometimes to fish for sewin with me 
 in the bush-free waters of West Wales, and heard me 
 speak betimes of the Devonshire Avon with that strong 
 regard I feel for it, hailed upon this very account the 
 call of duty which planted him at Plymouth for a 
 season. He was one of those anglers, of whom I fancy 
 there are a good few, who, I am convinced, enjoy the 
 prospect of fishing and its after-memories more than 
 its actual realities ; and these mental and conversational 
 pleasures associated with the gentle art are of course 
 perfectly genuine. In hunting or shooting such an 
 attitude comes instantly under the suspicion of pose. 
 But humbug is happily impossible in trouting, and 
 these people, I am quite convinced, honestly enjoy 
 those anticipated excursions which will very likely 
 never be made and the recollection of others actually 
 achieved but clouded at the moment with disappoint- 
 ments now forgotten. All the aesthetic and outdoor 
 charm of the craft appeals to their imagination, but 
 when it comes to the actual point the glamour fades a 
 little, or perhaps they are a bit lazy, while they are sure 
 to be rather indifferent performers. 
 
 However, my friend went to Plymouth full of rosy 
 anticipation of many spring and summer days upon 
 my much esteemed river, which is only about an hour 
 by rail from the famous west country seaport and 
 garrison town. He did get there once, of course, but 
 only once, and he wrote to me that he most assuredly 
 would never repeat the experiment. He could not 
 240
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 understand my predilection for the river or indeed 
 how anybody caught any fish there. The trees were 
 too thick, the banks were too high, and the wading 
 too rough. It must be said he was rather middle- 
 aged in habit of body as well as in years, and a very 
 middling fisherman. But he was one of those enthu- 
 siasts who fish a great deal in dreams, and thoroughly 
 enjoy the prospect of days and hours that are so rarely 
 fulfilled. And after all why should they not ? I re- 
 member, too, on a certain day in early June when the 
 fish were taking nicely, encountering a young marine 
 sitting gloomily munching his sandwiches on the bank 
 of the Avon at one of its open interludes. He com- 
 plained bitterly of the secretive nature of the stream, 
 and that he had been sitting all the morning by the big 
 open pool beside him waiting to see a fish rise. As the 
 fish were then feeding in the stickles and runs his vigil 
 had of course been bootless. He proved, poor fellow, 
 to be an embryo dry-fly fisherman, nurtured up in 
 Hertfordshire or some such country, and a victim of 
 dry-fly literature in what may be called its arrogant 
 days. He honestly thought that * chuck-and-chance-it ' 
 fishing, as he called it, had disappeared among sports- 
 men everywhere, and that waiting for a rise and throw- 
 ing a dry fly over it was the only legitimate method of 
 catching a trout. And the Avon seemed to him a 
 deplorably awkward river for such noble endeavours, as 
 indeed it was. Of course he was young and hadn't 
 been properly * bred a fisherman.' So presuming on 
 the discrepancy of our years, which for that matter I 
 could gladly have dispensed with, I endeavoured to 
 get him into a more knowledgeable frame of mind, 
 Q 241
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 by explaining that he was in another world from 
 Hertfordshire, and must brush all these fallacies from 
 his mind if he wished to be a happy angler and enjoy 
 the four years of Plymouth, to which he told me he was 
 destined. I felt I might venture, when we had smoked 
 a pipe together, to offer him an illustration of how all 
 of us, good, bad, and indifferent, fished a woody, west 
 country stream. He came along with me on the bank 
 above for half an hour, and though the spectacle could 
 not have been of much practical service to him he 
 was quite grateful, and declared that his eyes were 
 opened to a condition of things he had never dreamed 
 of and that he would re-commence his angling career, 
 which I do not think had been a very full one, 
 from another standpoint. I dare say before he was 
 ordered off to Chatham or Portsmouth he became 
 quite an adept, for he was very keen. 
 
 I don't know whether the Avon is more beautiful 
 in April or in June. Its lush verdure in the latter 
 month is delightful, and I like better to fish it then 
 for reasons more than sufficiently stated. But in the 
 spring, in the woods of Devon, above all along the 
 margin of the streams, what a spangled carpet nature 
 spreads upon the cool mossy ground, before the 
 foliage of the trees and saplings has yet been shaken 
 out and the eye become accustomed to the warmth 
 and colouring of summer verdure. What a blaze is 
 here of primrose, violet, and celandine, of campion, 
 anemone, and marigold beneath the still bare branches 
 of the oak and ash which play so prominent a part in 
 Devonian woods. One misses, to be sure, the opulent 
 sycamore, that precocious harbinger of summer, by 
 242
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 
 
 the streams of Wales and Cumberland. And if the 
 larch, first of all trees to illuminate the brown woods, 
 is in fair and welcome evidence here, one may be 
 thankful for the comparative scarcity of the sombre 
 pine in all its varieties. The rectangular fir plantation 
 with its monotonous colouring and stiffness of out- 
 line, so baneful to my thinking in many northern 
 valleys, is happily not an obtrusive feature in south- 
 west England. 
 
 Both salmon and peal (Devonian for sea trout) run 
 up the Avon in limited quantities, but very few of the 
 former are taken, while the latter do not, as in the 
 Tavy, rise freely either by day or night. Let us hope, 
 even if such a thing be possible, no attempt will be 
 made to spoil one of the best trout streams in the 
 county by turning it into a second-class salmon river ; 
 for there is little doubt that a horde of young salmon 
 fry makes demands upon the food of a river that 
 is most detrimental to its stock of trout. The Barle, 
 the Bray, and the torrential and beautiful Lynn seem 
 still to retain a fair portion of their old fecundity. The 
 Tavy, which the peal love and rise freely in, though 
 the salmon reject it for the larger Tamar, is also a 
 fair trouting stream despite the copper mines in its 
 upper waters. So are the Lydd and the Lew, which 
 flow out of Dartmoor to join the Tamar with the 
 Plym, the Meavy, and the Walkham, all beautiful 
 little rivers which find their several ways into Ply- 
 mouth Sound. 
 
 Away from the two great moors and their skirts, the 
 beauty of inland Devon lies almost wholly in its deep, 
 winding valleys. Save perhaps in the south-east, the 
 
 243
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Honiton portion of the county and a few others, look 
 almost where you will, from any inland hill-top, you 
 will see little but a succession of bare, humpy hills 
 criss-crossed with rectangular lines of bank fences, 
 and everywhere patched with square tillage fields. 
 A distant background of moor redeems in a measure 
 these long, rolling, chequered ridges, neither wild nor 
 wooded, that nothing but a hardy superstition could 
 absolve from the reproach of monotony if not of 
 actual ugliness. Dreary outlooks are these beyond 
 dispute, yet not dreary enough to touch the imagina- 
 tion with a redeeming sense of mystery. A survey 
 of the same kind in Hereford or Monmouth, let us say 
 for example, because the colouring there also is De- 
 vonian, is rich, broken, and beautiful. But one cannot 
 truly say that such outlooks over the average inland 
 Devon landscape is anything of the kind, and the many 
 exceptions are not to the point, for the valleys are 
 hidden, and it is down in the valleys that most of the 
 beauty of non-moorland inland Devon assuredly lies, 
 and of this beauty the trout fisherman most un- 
 doubtedly sees the most and the best. 
 
 244
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 VIII 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 AONG the many hardy delusions of the kind 
 which contribute to an imperfect knowledge 
 of their own country by a majority of Britons, 
 is that which pictures Lakeland as always crowded 
 with tourists. Let any one who imagines such vain 
 things drop down upon Ullswater or Buttermere 
 between Easter and mid-July, or to be quite safe let 
 us say in May or June, which, by the way, are the nicest 
 months for such an enterprise. I venture to think he 
 would be astonished at the almost perfect solitude that 
 then reigns over the land. I have never been in the 
 Lake country within reasonable time in August, and 
 never at all at Easter. But the Easter invasion is 
 limited to a short week as regards the populace and 
 the well-to-do business folk, while for about three 
 more a moderate company of persons mainly con- 
 cerned with higher education scatter themselves about 
 the country. Whitsuntide is too short to count. A 
 brief rush for three or four days, and then all again is 
 peace except, alas ! for one blighting innovation of 
 yesterday. For one need not be anything approach- 
 ing a bigot in this particular to express the simple truth 
 that motors have been an unmitigated curse to Lake- 
 
 245
 
 land. Surely this small, compact, almost matchless 
 region might have been held inviolate. There is not 
 one single argument that would be urged by any 
 sane person for their resounding, dust-raising, dis- 
 turbing presence here at least, while the objections 
 are so obvious, so many, and so overpowering as to 
 seem scarcely worth labouring. They have been for- 
 bidden the Trossachs. There is infinitely more cause 
 here, since the comfort of a far greater number of 
 people is concerned. Surely the whole of the rest of 
 Great Britain is a wide enough field for these scorchers. 
 Why the tortuous roads of this little paradise, along 
 which the less robust loved to walk, or drive, or cycle 
 in sane leisurely fashion should have been turned into 
 a pandemonium for (as indulged in here) the senseless 
 craze of a comparative handful of well-to-do people, 
 I cannot imagine. Fancy going through the Lake 
 country at twenty miles an hour, and that is the 
 minimum. It would have been so easy to draw a 
 cordon around Lakeland, except of course against 
 bona fide residents within it. Whose and what 
 interests would have been interfered with compared 
 to those which they have driven from the roads, and 
 what can be said of those discordant strident shrieks 
 which bellow through the vales to the very mountain 
 tops from morning till night, except that we are an 
 amazing people ? I say nothing of the dust-clouds 
 which on some roads as, for instance, that beautiful 
 one along Ullswater may be seen falling in almost 
 constant showers upon the pellucid waters. These 
 thoughtless souls have assuredly done much to destroy 
 many delightful features of the quiet season in the 
 246
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 Lake country. What they must be in August the 
 Lord only knows ! There are undoubtedly two sides 
 to this question in ordinary districts ; but that there 
 is only one to it here seems to me the simple truth. 
 The narrow roads have lost all their old charm, and 
 even their very safety. The echoes of the valleys, till 
 lately awakened by nothing but harmonious sounds, 
 are now tortured from morning till night with hideous 
 clamours, from which there is scarcely any respite. 
 Beyond the range of these hooters the mountains are, 
 to be sure, as glorious and lovely as ever. If wander- 
 ing alone in May or June you chanced to break your 
 leg, say on the Pillar mountain over Ennerdale, or on 
 Kidsty Pike above Patterdale, or a score of other 
 places, it might possibly be better that you had 
 broken your neck, so uncertain would be the prospects 
 of mortal help. 
 
 Almost no one goes to Lakeland to catch trout 
 so few, indeed, amid the host of tourists as to be 
 numerically not worthy of mention. As a matter of 
 fact, however, in the best fishing months there are few 
 strangers of any kind actually staying in the country. 
 I have been here myself frequently in the last fifteen 
 years during the months of May and June, not in the 
 main for such purpose, but nevertheless a great many 
 enjoyable days, sometimes fairly profitable and some- 
 times otherwise, are among the memorabilia of these 
 always delightful sojourns. The head of Ullswater, 
 for other reasons as well as for those more to the pur- 
 pose here, I may say at once is my favourite anchor- 
 age. There is no more delectable spot in the whole 
 lake region than Patterdale, none better for mountain 
 
 247
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 walking, none further from railroads, none, but for 
 the motor curse, more unspoiled. Nor are any of 
 the other lakes to my thinking quite so satisfying as 
 Ullswater. It is, moreover, full of trout but of this 
 with its reservations anon and, unlike the other 
 large lakes, there are no other fish but trout in its 
 cold, limpid waters. Lastly, there is more fishing 
 of sorts in tarns and streams within a walk of the lake- 
 head than in the neighbourhood of any other Lakeland 
 centre. There is yet one more reason why this long 
 time I have always made straight for a certain hostelry 
 on the shores of Ullswater whenever I have had two 
 or three weeks to spare for this country. It is not 
 merely because there is meat, drink, and comfort of 
 the best all within a modest angler's compass, but 
 because my landlord is a very prince among landlords, 
 and even yet more that he embodies in his own person 
 and character the very essence and spirit of all that 
 entwines this country tighter and tighter round the 
 hearts of those who frequent it ; above all, for those 
 who go there in the quiet season, those glorious 
 days and nights of May and June. I hope I know, 
 and, knowing, duly revere my Wordsworth. But my 
 landlord is a better Lakelander all the same than 
 Wordsworth, if the suggestion is not too impious. 
 He is not, to be sure, a great poet, but he is a poet all 
 the same, like a great many other people, without 
 knowing it. He knows every hill, every bit of scree, 
 every glen, every ghyll, tarn, and brook, and the name 
 of every spot of earth that has a name between 
 Shap and Borrowdale, and could go almost blindfold 
 to every one of them. He knows, I think, every 
 248
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 mortal man, woman, and child within that twenty and 
 odd mile breadth, and all about them. He knows 
 more about hounds and foxes than almost any one in 
 the country but the great Joe Bouman, his immediate 
 neighbour and intimate, who has only just laid down 
 the horn of the Ullswater pack after thirty strenuous 
 years. He knows all about sheep and shepherds and 
 collie dogs in short, there is not a single feature of 
 life in this wild romantic country that my landlord 
 does not know well, and, I may confidently add, does 
 not love. He can tell local stories in the racy Cum- 
 brian or Westmoreland dialect almost inexhaustibly, 
 and the unsophisticated townsman who thinks that 
 crowds are necessary as humour-producing factors 
 makes the biggest kind of mistake. It is remote places 
 that breed originality and independence of character 
 which, with a naturally racy people, make matter for 
 the good raconteur who knows them well. And these 
 Celto-Scandinavian Highlanders of the Lake country 
 have always a waggish tongue and the keenest sense 
 of the funny side of things, offering no little contrast 
 in this particular to their Saxon neighbours of North- 
 umbria across the Pennines. 
 
 My landlord finds time for everything. He carves 
 at the side-tables while his many nice daughters do 
 all the waiting. Indeed, the hotel is quite a family 
 affair. In a holiday week, such as Whitsuntide, when 
 the house is full with thirty odd guests, it is a great 
 sight to see mine host on the porch dispatching the 
 various parties for the day, one after the other, deliver- 
 ing the luncheon packages, bandying jokes with old 
 habitues, and giving minute directions as to paths 
 
 249
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 and tracks to new-comers bound for distant scenes. 
 One man is minus a stick ; the landlord produces one 
 in a moment. A lady, nay two or three, think they 
 would like a wallet to carry their etceteras in ; these 
 are produced ready washed and clean on the spot. An 
 absent-minded soul has left his waterproof at home ; 
 even for that a substitute is sure to be forthcoming. 
 As mine host turns indoors, having got most of his 
 guests safely away till tea-time, though there is always a 
 hot lunch for the stay-at-homes, he unfolds a crumpled 
 telegram just received and announces in a quite 
 cheery tone that seventy knights of Pythias or eighty 
 Oddfellows from Preston expect dinner at one o'clock. 
 And at that hour, if you are about, you will find him 
 in a hall built for the purpose, with his daughters in 
 the thick of the steaming fray and in his shirt sleeves, 
 slashing away at rounds of beef and legs of mutton, 
 just as if he had merely to send round to the butcher's 
 for them instead of being fifteen miles from anywhere 
 handing plates, giving directions, and armed with 
 a ready retort for the most waggish knight among 
 them. When the hotel guests collect again at after- 
 noon tea-time, there is no sign that our landlord or 
 his family have even seen a knight of Pythias or an 
 Oddfellow, much less been in the very vortex of eighty 
 uproarious and hungry ones. Everything goes like 
 clock-work. Howsoever late at night we may keep 
 our host up in the smoking-room telling stories of 
 foxes, hounds, and dalesmen, I am pretty sure to see 
 him from my bedroom window in the morning work- 
 ing with skill and knowledge among his flower-beds, 
 .or even cutting the lawn dewy as it always is with the 
 250
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 spray from the beck that roars beside it into the lake 
 beyond. And in quiet times, when there are only 
 half a dozen guests in this or even in the large hotels, 
 my landlord is ready for anything. He will row you 
 on the lake while you woo the rather elusive trout of 
 Ullswater, or tramp to a distant tarn and paddle you 
 there if there is a boat on it, or take a long day's walk 
 over Kidsty and the High Street to Mardale, lunch 
 at the Black Bull and back to dinner, and what better 
 could one desire than a companion to whom the whole 
 country from the smallest wild-flower to the rudest 
 dalesman is an open book ! 
 
 I sometimes think I should like to write a tract en- 
 titled * Advice to country hotel-keepers.' They could 
 make so much more of themselves with so very little 
 trouble. But perhaps the genus are born not made. 
 My landlord was born to shine, though so far from 
 being bred to the calling, he didn't take to it till 
 middle age, though he had in some respects a still 
 better preparation. But to imagine that a homily 
 could convert the average Boniface to his like is a vain 
 thought, for there are none like him for this kind of 
 place no, not one within my knowledge, and I have 
 had a tolerable experience. The only fly in the oint- 
 ment beneath his roof is the temptation to over-eat 
 oneself. 
 
 The trout of Ullswater are something of a mystery 
 even to their intimates. The whole lake with its 
 winding length of nearly nine miles is full of them. 
 Nor are there any coarse fish, but some baby perch. 
 The trout are smaller than those of Windermere and 
 Derwentwater, and only average about three to the 
 
 251
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 pound. Ullswater has more the qualities of a huge 
 mountain tarn. There are few or no reeds in it, and 
 there is no mud. It is rock-bound and rock-bottomed, 
 and crystal-clear. And yet with all this, for some 
 reason that no one has really fathomed, its trout are 
 rather indifferent risers, that is to say, at civilised 
 hours, for they are very free risers through the summer 
 nights when, from ten on till five or so in the morning, 
 they come close into the shores to feed. It is all 
 open water, and no such stretch of open trouting water 
 in all England is so little fished. That I am quite 
 sure of. Considering its immense size you may fairly 
 say it is scarcely touched. Yet in May, sometimes a 
 little before that, a couple of good rods may on a good 
 day kill thirty to forty sizeable fish. One of the few 
 May days I ever fished it seriously was with a friend 
 now dead, a very keen angler who frequented the lake 
 a good deal. We had about twenty-five, and I was 
 lucky enough to get one over a pound off the mouth 
 of the Aira beck, a rather unusual occurrence. During 
 one June again I paddled about a good deal by myself 
 in and out of the bays on the upper half of the lake, 
 and always picked up a few fish in a desultory way. 
 Three in succession, I remember, one late afternoon 
 weighed two pounds between them, which was the 
 best bit of luck as regards weight in a brief time I ever 
 had there. It is rather interesting though having a 
 whole big lake to yourself, and this is what it practically 
 amounts to. One learns by degrees the places where 
 a fish may be expected, though it isn't from paucity 
 of numbers that one's expectations and gleanings are 
 so modest, nor can one credit an over supply of bottom 
 252
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 food with these caprices. There is, in short, something 
 altogether peculiar about the lake. Some of those 
 best qualified to speak declare that a large proportion 
 of the Ulls water trout are solely ' night risers,' not 
 evening and sunset risers, but through the dark hours 
 of midnight and early dawn. This is not a high form 
 of sport, fishing at short range entirely by feel and 
 seeing nothing. I have known well for years the only 
 regular fly fishers on the upper half of Ullswater. 
 They are hard-working men as well as keen sportsmen, 
 and can be more than counted on the fingers of one 
 hand ; for I do not reckon the few odd rustics who 
 come down after working hours and sit with a bait at 
 a beck mouth for an hour or two with generally small 
 results. I have constantly seen the baskets of these 
 two or three experts who fly fish through the night, and 
 they often weigh from eight to ten pounds. And the 
 Ullswater trout, though not large, are clean and hand- 
 some and strong fighters, as they should be out of 
 such waters. The lake in the upper part is extremely 
 deep. The trout lie mainly in the shallow shelving 
 bays or in rocky coves where crags tufted with blae- 
 berries and feathered with pine or birch drop sheer 
 into deep waters. These last, with the exception of 
 the famous promontory of Styborough, are mainly, 
 however, on the eastern shore, from which the rugged 
 slopes of Place Fell rise wild and steep for a couple 
 of thousand feet. On the other, the Helvellyn side, 
 the foot-hill pastures of Glencoin and Gowbarrow 
 sweep along the lake shore in graceful curves, with 
 projecting bars of silvery sand or broken rocky ledges, 
 or mossy rims where daffodils and blue-bells in their 
 
 253
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 respective seasons blaze beneath the trunks of great 
 forest trees. Here, drifting along from bay to bay as 
 near as may be to the line where the visible bottom 
 shelves into deeper water, the angler in the month 
 of May, as I have said, taking things more seriously, 
 will shape his course with fair prospects of success. 
 How delightful all this is, too, when summer is just 
 dawning with its sweet odours and balmy zephyrs, 
 breathing in gentle ripples along the surface of the 
 lake, while the cuckoo calls from the shore. 
 
 I do not think not forgetting its recognised rival, 
 the prospect from Derwentwater looking up to Borrow- 
 dale that there is anything in Lakeland quite equal 
 to the head of Ullswater as viewed, let us say, from 
 off Glencoin : the fringing foliage, the far-climbing 
 bracken steeps, the rock-breasted summit of Place Fell 
 filling the sky upon the one side, and upon the other 
 those gracious intervals of wood and meadowland 
 behind which upsprings the great Helvellyn group. 
 The consummation of the picture, however, is the mass 
 of piled-up mountains beyond the head of the lake 
 which fills in its background that fine procession of 
 peaks and broken summits which sweeps round from 
 Fairfield to the High Street over whose lowest gap you 
 can mark the white trail of the road that climbs the 
 famous Kirkstone pass. How absolutely peaceful, and 
 only yesterday, alas ! how conscious of its real seclusion 
 from a noisy world used this queen of English lakes 
 to seem in those May and June days : the call of the 
 cuckoo, the faint click of a horse upon the shore road, 
 the clamour of many sheep gathered from the hills 
 for some dipping or shearing ceremony, the chorus 
 
 254
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 of bird song from the woods, the distant roar of Aira 
 force that 
 
 With torrent hoarse 
 Breaks from its woody glen. 
 
 Alas ! what would Wordsworth say to the dreadful 
 discords that with strident uproar shatter these gentle 
 harmonies of spring, and make the mountains groan 
 in prolonged agony ? But enough of this. ' We have 
 come to stay? l We have come to stay? bellows the 
 defiant scorcher, a sort of triumphant paean, as if it 
 were a positive merit to make a race-track of the 
 shores of Ullswater and a pandemonium of its en- 
 circling mountains. But what the deuce do Words- 
 worth or the eloquent peace of Ullswater matter ? 
 Mighty little to any one, I should think, at twenty- 
 five miles an hour. And all this could have been 
 so easily averted from this tiny and precious fragment 
 of England. 
 
 In later June it is perhaps as pleasant and more 
 profitable to paddle in and out along the eastern shore 
 and throw your fly within a yard or two of the steep 
 face of the crags, where they drop sharply into deep 
 water, or behind submerged rocks that here and there 
 lie about their feet ; for the grubs will probably be 
 then falling from the stunted oak or rowan trees 
 overhead that find a hard living in the clefts of the 
 rock. Discarding the three flies of May the Broughton 
 point, Greenwell, and black hackle with silver twist 
 and with a red spinner, or a small woodcock and 
 orange, for a drop, and some hackle-fly, palmer, or 
 grouse for a leader, I have sometimes fished the latter 
 by letting it strike the cliff gently near the water-line, 
 
 2 55
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 and thence drop quietly on to the surface. For it is 
 surprising how close a feeding fish will sometimes hug 
 the sheer cliff, and this mode of offering him the fly 
 has often proved a seductive one. 
 
 There is a small lead mine a mile or so up the Glen- 
 ridding beck, mercifully the only eyesore of the kind 
 in the whole district. It is of very old standing, 
 and employs some fifty men. These miners, how- 
 ever, are not as other miners the men of Glamor- 
 gan, Lanark, and Midlothian, for instance, whose 
 truculent and predatory raids are the terror of all 
 decent fishermen. They are dalesmen mainly, real 
 countrymen, often bred and born on the lake shore, 
 pleasant and civil-spoken friendly fellows, and thorough 
 sportsmen. A handful of them are fly fishers, though 
 others worm the becks in high water or stand over a 
 baited hook on the lake shore at evening after the 
 manner previously alluded to ; but both sorts are 
 keen fishermen. 
 
 The Glenridding beck pours and has poured into 
 the lakehead for two or three generations quite a 
 lusty torrent of water, always of a thick milky colour 
 from the lead hush. Deadly to the trout, one would 
 be inclined to say ? but not a bit of it ! On the 
 contrary, its mouth is a favourite feeding-place of 
 fish, and the gravelly stretch about it that has been 
 formed in the course of years is the favourite haunt 
 of the stationary bait-fisher. Nor does the beck 
 discolour the lake one atom. A hundred yards out 
 almost every trace of taint has gone, the colouring 
 matter no doubt sunk to the bottom. And this 
 gravelly shore, where the beck comes in, is a fitting 
 256
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 spot to say a passing word on the bustard not that 
 extinct denizen of Salisbury Plain and elsewhere, 
 which will, no doubt, at once occur to the reader, 
 but another variety, to ignore which would be to 
 leave the angling literature of Ullswater but half 
 told. This same bustard is of a truth a fearsome 
 thing. I have carried a specimen in my fly-book 
 for years merely to exhibit to all and sundry as a 
 contraption that fish rather hard to catch with fine 
 tackle and well-made flies in the daylight will take 
 readily under the moon and stars. The dimensions 
 are those of a fair-sized salmon fly, but the make-up, 
 I am quite sure, would frighten even a Labrador or 
 Icelandic salmon out of its life, though ridiculously 
 simple and primitive to wit, a thick body of yellow 
 worsted and a turkey wing. With this monstrosity, 
 hurled from a long, stiff rod, the few local professors 
 catch Ullswater trout freely in the dark hours. I 
 ought, of course, to have fished a bustard myself, or 
 at least to have spent a night on the lake, or rather, on 
 its shores, for a boat is then superfluous. I am not 
 unenterprising, but I admit with shame that I have 
 only once succeeded in bracing myself to turn out at 
 ten o'clock with a prospect of returning at five ; and 
 on that occasion, having been all my life, ever since 
 my memorable fifteenth year, an unlucky fishermen 
 as regards the sport of adverse circumstances, a quite 
 unexpected night-frost fell upon us, which is fatal. I 
 cannot therefore attempt an explanation of the bustard 
 mystery. That these quarter- and half-pounders take 
 it freely at night is, however, a simple fact. I will 
 only say that I leave it at that. If the reader could 
 R 257
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 see a bustard, he would understand why there was 
 nothing more to be said. 
 
 I shall never forget, however, that June midnight 
 of my sole endeavour, moonless as it was, for the glory 
 of its starlight effects upon the glassy lake. We were 
 only on our way by boat to the proposed fishing- 
 ground, a sandy bay some four miles off towards 
 Howtown, when our hopes were dashed. But as 
 we drifted despondently under my favourite crags 
 of the daytime, I thought I would try under them, 
 and as a matter of fact I did there get a brace of fish. 
 But the reflection of those rich-coloured cliffs shed 
 upon the water by the light of the stars alone was so 
 brilliant, so iridescent, so realistic that the surface 
 of the water which lay against them ceased, as such, 
 to exist. As I cast my flies at the base of the crags, 
 there was not the faintest indication where the glow- 
 ing reality ended and its reflected vision began. I 
 have never seen the like, doubtless because I have 
 seldom fished on starlight nights in such romantic 
 spots. 
 
 Some mention, too, must be made of the ' great 
 grey trout ' of Ullswater. There is some tradition of 
 them from old monkish times, but no very big trout, 
 so far as I know, are ever caught nowadays. Neither 
 my expert local friends nor my landlord have ever seen 
 one, and it is needless to say more. But oddly enough, 
 as a mere visitor, I have had that privilege, and at very 
 close quarters too, which may be accounted perhaps 
 as a set off against my otherwise malignant star. And 
 the odd thing was that I was standing at the time in 
 a public and frequented place in short, just where the 
 258
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 high road takes a brief leave of the lake and is blasted 
 through the neck of Styborough crag. The fish was 
 feeding and nosing about in the clear shallow water 
 close to the shore, and being lifted well above him 
 I was able to watch him for two or three minutes at 
 my leisure, to see the spots on him and to assure my- 
 self that he was at least five pounds. 
 
 All I have said about Ullswater trout relates mainly 
 to the upper half of the lake, though as a matter of 
 fact it is applicable to the rest of it that portion, 
 namely, from Howtown to Pooley bridge, where the 
 Eamont flows out. A few odd fishermen do come to 
 Howtown in April and May, and there are two or three 
 well-known anglers in the country about Penrith who 
 come up for an occasional day. As a matter of fact I 
 cannot recall ever having seen another boat out fishing 
 with visitors in it beyond that of myself or my 
 party. Yet here is a lake nine miles long, and beyond 
 any doubt full of trout, that can be fished for nothing 
 but the very moderate hire of a boat ! One constantly 
 reads and hears complaints regarding the difficulty 
 of getting fair fishing reasonably accessible. People 
 living in London and the non-trouting counties are 
 continually uttering these plaints, and no doubt for 
 the detached individual with no ties in the troutful 
 regions and possessed of the average topographical 
 vagueness regarding his native land, it does appear 
 something of a problem. Moreover, ' the man who 
 knows ' is traditionally reticent on the subject for 
 obvious reasons. I make no claim to complete im- 
 munity from that merely human weakness myself. 
 But rather exceptional circumstances not immediately 
 
 259
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 concerned with fishing, combined with the fact of 
 being also an angler, have given me rather unusual 
 opportunities for spying out the land. Being one of 
 those, moreover not many I take it who believe that 
 fair fishing has practically no ill effect on a trout 
 stream, I do not think I have been on the whole 
 very selfish, though one often feels morally pledged 
 to one's fishing friends who think otherwise, and still 
 more to those who give one facilities. 
 
 Really good trouting no doubt is not easily attain- 
 able by the southerner or midlander of the type alluded 
 to. It is to some extent a matter of purse, and perhaps 
 even a well-furnished one does not always procure it ; 
 for the matter is further involved by the fact that, rich 
 or poor, the great mass of what may be called immured 
 or land-locked trout-fishers are practically limited to 
 the holiday seasons either by serious occupations or 
 by the distractions of a gregarious age. And again, 
 it is risky to send a friend anywhere at Easter, or let 
 us say in April. Winter in the hill countries is apt 
 to outstay its welcome, and such is the logic of many 
 otherwise sane people that you may be secretly held 
 responsible for the weather as well as openly for the 
 measure of sport obtained. For myself, I am always 
 possessed of an instinctive and genuine desire to put 
 not merely my friends, which goes without saying, but 
 even general acquaintances in the way, so far as I can, 
 of trout and all pertaining to them. But, on the other 
 hand, the risk of estranging a friend or even a valued 
 acquaintance for life must be taken into consideration. 
 It is not a bad idea to put your recommendation in 
 writing, to disclaim formally any responsibility for 
 260
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 the weather, to discount in detail the mishaps that 
 may arise, and then to keep a copy. Seriously though, 
 who would dare to send any one after brown trout in 
 August, unless perhaps to the Highlands or the west of 
 Ireland, and knowing neither I am spared the temp- 
 tation. I know plenty of places, however, short of 
 those remoter Celtic fringes, whither I would go myself 
 quite hopefully, uniting of course with my anticipa- 
 tions a prayer for rain (a brutal procedure), answered 
 only too frequently for the poor public. But the 
 English lakes is not, to my mind, from any point of 
 view, an August country. Yet there is abundance of 
 what may be called second-class fishing, easily available 
 throughout the country, though I deplore the applica- 
 tion of such commercially suggestive methods of 
 appraisement. These things depend on the angler's 
 point of view : whether for one thing he is by tem- 
 perament incapable of looking for anything but the 
 weight of a basket ! I do not think there are many 
 trout fishermen built that way, but there are a few, 
 and upon the whole I am sorry for them. A man sees 
 just so much as he is qualified to see and no more, 
 a great writer has said, in discussing the diverse nature 
 of the appeals made to diverse individuals by a country- 
 side and all therein implied. A certain school of 
 south country fishermen used to thunder against the 
 bare notion of the call of the wild or any of the ex- 
 traneous joys that to so many of us are simply an 
 inseparable part and parcel of angling. We were 
 accounted mere irresponsible wanderers and prowlers, 
 enjoying ourselves perhaps in our strange way but 
 not fishermen at all. A true disciple, I have seen it 
 
 261
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 argued, in effect should be without susceptibility to 
 any of nature's accessories. He should be quite in- 
 different to * atmosphere,' and assuredly have no 
 poetry in his soul. He should have no thought, no 
 eyes for anything beyond the exact science of the job 
 he was out for, and the surface of the river. He should, 
 in short, be able thoroughly to convince himself that 
 he is as happy fishing all day between a gasometer and 
 a paper mill as among the Cheviots or the Welsh 
 mountains. Nay, more so, for here no possible out- 
 side distractions can disturb the dry purity of his 
 aim. His musings must on no account stray beyond 
 the trout he is after, or the insect life which is the 
 medium of its ensnaring. Only the visible trout is 
 lawful prey, and in the inevitable intervals when no 
 rise is on his thoughts must be steadily concentrated 
 on the mysteries of sub-imagos, Ephemeridse, Trichop- 
 tera, Perlidae, Sialidae, Notonectidae, and the rest of 
 the paralysing glossary in which the purist seems posi- 
 tively to revel. Some of them are common enough 
 things, but infinitely glorified by these tremendous 
 names before which the ordinary angler, crushed and 
 mystified, hides his head in self-abasement and hurries 
 away to breathe again the freer air of the mountain 
 and the wild. Here in time he may recover his self- 
 esteem and get back to the plain fact that there are 
 thousands upon thousands of lifelong trout-fishers and 
 hundreds of the most accomplished ones to whom 
 these things are so much Sanskrit, and doubtless always 
 will be until trout and time shall be no more. He 
 consoles himself also with the reflection that the 
 little kingdom held in bondage by this portentous 
 262
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 glossary, and this exclusiveness of diction and method, 
 is geographically but a tiny fragment of the angling 
 map of Britain, its water mileage insignificant, and its 
 subjects numerically but an unappreciable fraction of 
 the great fraternity. One might feel perhaps rather 
 sorry for the rank and file, mainly Londoners, of that 
 little kingdom for the long words they must learn, 
 or at least feel they ought to learn, and for the general 
 air of solemnity which must cloud their graduating 
 years ; though, as a late famous angler who repre- 
 sented the craft on the Times once wrote, ' What 
 these things have to do with plain fishing no mortal 
 man can tell.' 
 
 It is amusing to read occasional papers on trouting 
 in the non-sporting press by writers who are uncon- 
 sciously in the bondage of the school, and the con- 
 descending and delicious naivete of their allusions to 
 wet-fly fishing and their quaint sense of the pro- 
 portion of things. But how should they know ? 
 They are no doubt hard working and often clever 
 young men more power to them ! being for that very 
 reason kept close to the journalistic mill and have not 
 the dimmest notion how the angling world wags in 
 Northumberland or Brecon, in Yorkshire or Devon. 
 Oddly enough, the best dry-fly fisherman I ever knew 
 one of the best, it was always held in Wiltshire and 
 whose occasional inroads in quite youth upon the very 
 driest and purest portion of the Itchen astonished its 
 champions, knew nothing of the glossary. I ought 
 to know, as he is a very old friend of mine, in addition 
 to which I have frequently fished his own water with 
 him to my very great edification. My recollection is 
 
 263
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 that his entomology was as simple and concentrated 
 as it proved effective. And as I always took care to 
 use the same flies as he did, this impression is no doubt 
 a sound one. 
 
 But to return to UUswater ; if there were only the 
 lake to fish in the rod would occupy a much less 
 prominent place in my memories of past visits, and 
 in my dreams of, I trust, more to come. Many good- 
 sized becks run into the lake, invaluable as spawning- 
 grounds for the latter, but poor in themselves in 
 regard both to the number and size of their fish ; 
 the lovely little river Goldrill which descends from 
 the Kirkstone pass through Brotherswater, and 
 thence in glittering coils down the green trough of 
 Patterdale, taking the first place in volume. Then 
 there are the Grisedale and Aira becks, the latter the 
 best of all in its higher waters above the famous falls. 
 Then there are the considerable becks which, rising 
 in the High Street, run down through the various 
 dales of Martindale deer forest to Howtown Bay. 
 These are greatly used as spawning-grounds by the lake 
 trout, who run up them by thousands in the autumn. 
 For themselves they carried and probably still carry 
 the usual stock of eight-to-the-pounders. The best 
 native fisherman at Howtown tells me he has not killed 
 a trout of a pound weight in any of them in forty-five 
 years ! Nor from the nature of them and their lack 
 of food could anything else be expected. But in the 
 summer-time the mountain tarns are, to me at any 
 rate, infinitely more attractive. Cceteris paribus, I 
 would sooner fish a stream than a lake any day. But 
 I would much sooner fish a lake two thousand feet 
 
 264
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 up in the mountains for half-pounders than a beck, 
 even if there is good water, for six-or-eight-to-the- 
 pounders at less than half the altitude. Indeed, with 
 a congenial companion, if possible, there are few things 
 to me more thoroughly enjoyable than a June day on 
 a mountain tarn. But you must not take it too 
 seriously from a merely fishing point of view, for tarns 
 are queer things, though always interesting. Some 
 writers have a habit of alluding to them airily and 
 with a touch of contempt, as if they were mere places 
 for schoolboys to fill baskets in. There may be such 
 tarns in the Highlands of Scotland or in the west 
 of Ireland, but except an occasional one that nature 
 has overstocked with hungry fingerlings, such is not 
 my experience in other parts of the country, though 
 I do not claim a particularly wide one in this respect. 
 All those I know, whether they are a mile or two 
 hundred yards in length, are extraordinarily capri- 
 cious, and any one who fills his basket, by fair daylight 
 fishing at any rate, may write it down as one of his 
 red-letter days. There is one tarn, to be sure, or 
 rather a lake, for it is nearly three miles long, though 
 very narrow, in this neighbourhood where you would 
 generally, I think, under reasonable conditions, fill 
 a basket with quarter-pounders, and that is Hawes- 
 water, an outlying preserve on the Lowther Castle 
 property. But this is not because it is preserved, 
 but because the fish are by nature remarkably free 
 risers. It is notoriously overstocked, and the fish are 
 too small, but not despicably so, and, moreover, 
 run curiously even-sized. Even that deep-water, 
 bottom-feeding, non-rising delicacy, the char, which 
 
 265
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 inhabits Haweswater, among other lakes, must catch 
 something of the frolicsome temperament of its 
 cousins ; for on my only day there, when I did fill 
 my basket, I hooked one, and was disappointed at 
 not landing it. I remember well, as it leaped out of 
 the water with its red and gold colouring, an instan- 
 taneous flash of memory carried me back over the long 
 years to the trout streams of the AUeghanies. This 
 is merely worthy of remark on account of an ancient 
 controversy whether the American brook-trout is or 
 is not a species of char. I had never before seen one 
 except in that potted condition familiar to all Lake- 
 landers, and did not know at the time that Hawes- 
 water contained any, and American trouting was 
 assuredly miles from my thoughts at the moment. 
 Why Haweswater should be the complete antithesis 
 in this matter of free rising of its great neighbour 
 Ullswater in almost the next valley, who shall say ? 
 Why, again, the fish should rise less freely in the smaller 
 higher lakes that lie between them is another problem. 
 Of these last I never fail to devote two or three 
 days to Angle tarn and Hayeswater. They are curi- 
 ously different in all respects save that of a common 
 solitude, though but a mile apart. Angle tarn lies 
 in a shallow shelf, high up near the top of rolling fells. 
 It is a broken, angular square, covering some twenty 
 acres, peat coloured and not very deep. Its sides are 
 low cliffs or boggy flats, and its trout, running nearly 
 three to the pound, though dark coloured and a trifle 
 soft on the table, fight like tigers. The near sur- 
 roundings of the actual cup in which the lake lies do 
 not, as here bluntly set down, sound inspiring. But 
 266
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 then its position is very much so, lying as it were in a 
 shelf looking right over Patterdale and the great 
 Helvellyn range. For, as you stand upon the farther 
 edge of the lake, you see rising above its low, craggy 
 shores, the intervening distance being obliterated, 
 the shadowy peaks of Catchedicam, of Helvellyn, of 
 Fairfield, and other heights, soaring nobly into the 
 sky, looking not their modest three thousand feet or 
 so, but after the manner of all our British mountains 
 in our much abused, but for scenic purposes match- 
 less climate, at least twice that altitude. I know no 
 mountain tarn anywhere that provides of itself so 
 strange a stage behind which is hung like a curtain 
 against the sky this imposing background of mountain 
 peaks. There is, in short, nothing to be seen beyond 
 the brown, ruffled waters of the little lake for if they 
 are not ruffled the ostensible object of your day is as 
 nought but the summits of the Helvellyn range. 
 The composition of the picture is rare and extra- 
 ordinarily effective. This is assuredly a nook wherein 
 to spend a happy day with its interludes of repose and 
 activity, for it is quite certain, however propitious the 
 weather, that the fish will encourage you to periods of 
 contemplation, provided of course you are possessed 
 of due discernments and are not a neophyte in the first 
 burst of undiscerning youth. Nor are these restful 
 periods with a congenial spirit to share them the 
 worst part of the day. 
 
 This is not one of your grisly and gruesome tarns, 
 though I love these others too, in wild weather, when 
 they are at their worst that is, at their best. Hayes- 
 water can be all that to great perfection. But Angle 
 
 267
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 tarn is open and sunny, with all its solitude. The 
 plaintive tweeting tit-lark and the restless sandpiper, 
 fussy for the safety of its hidden young, are always 
 with you. Perhaps a brood of shy ring-ousels about 
 the rocky crown of some higher knoll with raucous 
 note proclaim their presence, or even a stray grouse 
 may be flushed on your first approach. The favourite 
 mountain route from Patterdale to Mardale over the 
 High Street passes Angle tarn, to be sure. But if 
 you were to spend every day of a week up here, 
 even in a holiday time, you would understand how 
 comparatively few people nowadays care for mountain 
 walking. 
 
 It is nearly a two-hours' walk up to Angle tarn, 
 and the first part of it sidles up Boredale hause looking 
 straight down upon Patterdale with Ullswater glimmer- 
 ing below, and the silver thread of the Goldrill twisting 
 for miles up its narrow meadowy carpet to where 
 Brotherswater gleams beneath the dark foot of the 
 Kirkstone pass. What a panorama is here as you 
 tramp up to your fishing ground, leisurely, and perhaps 
 a little purHngly, being of necessity not long after 
 breakfast, and halting betimes, for which in truth there 
 is no need to make excuse. Who that has ever looked 
 down on Patterdale, bathed in the sunshine of a fresh 
 June morning, would demand one ? Don't talk to 
 me of the Rocky Mountains ! I know them and have 
 stayed among them, and pace SS. companies, emigration 
 agents, governor-generals, special correspondents, and 
 all the rest of it, I wouldn't give a day in Patterdale 
 for a week at Banff. Indeed, these great Canadian 
 mountains are at their best from the slow travelling 
 
 268
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 train, as the procession is constantly changing. They 
 do not grow on you as a fixture at close quarters. 
 When you have admired and had your fill of the savage 
 rock-work above the high timber line for two or three 
 days, you will probably have had enough. Practically 
 everything else, hill, valley, mountain-side, is smothered 
 in a monotonous mantle of sombre evergreen hung 
 upon miles and miles of stiff, straight poles. To me 
 this type of woodland, above all in so aggressive and 
 all-pervading a form, is simply repellent. 
 
 Just look carefully, dear reader, at any of those 
 magnificent, large scale photographs of the Rockies, 
 which are exhibited in the windows of steamship com- 
 panies and elsewhere in every city. Examine them 
 closely and you will see what I mean. Beyond the 
 waters to which their frame of pinewood give a 
 singular monotony, there are only two ingredients, 
 bare rock and evergreen foliage, unless after a fall 
 of snow. There is not a shadow of human interest, 
 past or present, attaching to this great waste of rock 
 and pine, and you soon tire of it, unless, maybe, you 
 are after game or unsophisticated trout. For this 
 very reason the photographs of these scenes are extra- 
 ordinarily realistic even to those who know them well. 
 There is nothing subtle and comparatively little colour 
 in the hard originals to conceal. To visitors from the 
 prairies or Eastern Canada who have never seen any 
 other mountains and live themselves in a new country, 
 and do not know what you and I, dear reader, denizens 
 of an ancient land, mean by ' atmosphere,' these scenes 
 are of course very wonderful and satisfying no doubt 
 in every respect. But the language of eulogy, in 
 
 269
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 which they are customarily dealt with, recognises no 
 qualifications and none of those limitations which are 
 so painfully obvious. If you have inspected a large 
 photograph of Banff, for instance, or of Field, you will 
 not be surprised at anything when you get there. It 
 will be exactly what you expected. Every fissure in 
 every topmost crag you see in the photograph you will 
 see all day long in the original with equal clarity, 
 unless it is bad weather. The miles of sombre ever- 
 green require no effort of imagination, and there 
 they are, unchanging, monotonous, all day long and 
 through every month, spring, summer, autumn, and 
 winter, when the crags above take on their coat of 
 snow. And in the clear lakes below you see them in 
 photographic reflection all over again, the crags, the 
 evergreens and the straight poles, so faithfully and 
 so intimately that guide-books, railroad pamphlets, 
 immigration lecturers, and other crude authorities go 
 into transports at the spectacle, and not only that 
 but perhaps really believe there can be nothing so 
 beautiful in the whole world. 
 
 But conceive a photograph of Patterdale giving an 
 American, let us say, any idea of what it is really like. 
 The ever-shifting lights upon the mountains, the 
 radiancy of the many-tinted mantle that covers them, 
 exposing just so much of cliff and crag as to give these 
 value and ensure the dignity of the picture. The 
 emerald turf, the tawny moor grass, the orange-hued 
 bilberry, sheeny bracken, golden gorse, and in its 
 season the purple flare of heather, with a score of other 
 pigments, laid so delicately over a mountain-side 
 that not a curve of its graceful folds, not a crag, nor 
 270
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 the white flash of a ghyll is obscured. Thank heaven 
 that our British moors and mountains are bared to the 
 sky and to the chasing clouds, and free to roam with- 
 out a hood of leaves, or worse still, of pine branches 
 over your head ! Afforested mountains are like a 
 beautiful statue over which a robe has been flung, 
 obscuring or distorting every curve. How absurd 
 it would be to say, * But look at the lovely dark green 
 of the garment,' or, in the case of a hard wood forest, 
 which I grant is infinitely preferable to the other, 
 ' mark the varied colour of the foliage for half the 
 year.' But, after all, it is only in Britain and our 
 moist island climate that bare mountains can be so 
 perfect in their semi-nudity, or again can loom so 
 grandly for their modest altitude, that survey measure- 
 ments become things of nought. 
 
 Angle tarn is of a peaty quality, and the trout rather 
 dark to match. I remember a terrible morning with 
 them some years ago when the water in a lovely 
 ripple was literally a-boil with rising fish, and not a fly 
 in our books would they look at. Darkish-coloured 
 small flies are in favour on all these tarns. It is well, 
 too, to use drawn gut in fine weather, unless you 
 prefer, as I do, the finer brands of the new substitute 
 for gut. Angle tarn on a stormy day, however, can 
 be as boisterous as any of them for its size. I well 
 remember a whole day of severe buffeting from wind 
 and rain, and how thankful we were to crawl into a 
 natural cave at the west end of the lake to eat our 
 luncheon. We were rewarded, however, for our 
 endurance by quite a fair basket. It may also be 
 added that there is always a chance of seeing the wild 
 
 271
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 red deer about the lake ; for it lies within the bounds 
 of Martindale forest, which stretches from Ullswater 
 over the whole High Street range, and far in the 
 direction of Shap. It is the only region in England, 
 save Exmoor, carrying the indigenous red deer, though 
 here they are shot, not hunted. They are rather 
 shy, but one sees them quite often in crossing to 
 Mardale, and they make a noble picture when grouped 
 on a high mountain-top in listening attitude with 
 heads erect against the sky-line. 
 
 Hayeswater, a mile to the south of Angle tarn, is a 
 great contrast to the other. It fills a long deep cleft 
 for nearly a mile between steep and lofty mountains : 
 the great green cone of Gray crag shutting it in upon 
 the south, the rugged screes of the High Street tower- 
 ing high above the upper and northern side. It is 
 a deep, pellucid, and rather awesome sheet of water, 
 undeniably intimidating in wild weather ; otherwise, 
 being so much enclosed, there is always a painful un- 
 certainty about a breeze, whereas Angle tarn is gener- 
 ally pretty sure of one. Its trout, too, for natural 
 reasons are of a superior quality and appearance. 
 Quite recently its waters have been laid under tribute 
 by Penrith. The narrow neck of the outlet, whence 
 it pours out to rush leaping down the beautiful gorge 
 of Hartsop beck, has been raised a few feet by a 
 short stretch of stone embankment. This is all there 
 is to tell the tale that the lake supplies several thousand 
 souls fifteen miles away with its limpid waters. But 
 then this trifling little bit of stonework, by lifting the 
 water a few feet, has thrown the lake back over some 
 fifty or more acres of what before was dry bog at its 
 272
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 head, and this has made all the difference, and is worth 
 noting by any one interested in the natural history 
 of trout ; for it has nearly doubled the size of the 
 fish, and that, too, in a very short time. Before the 
 water was raised in 1909 a basket of Hayeswater trout 
 ran less than three to the pound, thick, short, game 
 little fish though they were. They now average 
 consistently two to the pound, and fully maintain their 
 high quality, an increase due undoubtedly to the large 
 acreage of submerged land at the head. If they rose 
 rather less capriciously, a finer lake and a more beautiful 
 one to fish I know nowhere. I had a day upon it in 
 1912 with a well-known Coquet angler in early July. 
 I had occasionally fished Hayeswater in former years, 
 and was a bit sceptical regarding the reported increase 
 in the size of its fish. A west wind on this occasion 
 blew nicely up through the gateway of the cul-de-sac 
 in which the lake lies, and on our early adjournment 
 to the sandwiches and the flasks, with an appetite 
 whetted by the preliminary two hours' walk, we had 
 twelve fish between us, six a-piece, weighing six pounds, 
 as shapely, bright, and thick fish as I ever saw, and 
 practically all the same size, killed on a claret and 
 mallard and a dark March brown. We enjoyed our 
 pipes as only fishermen do in the quiet of the hills 
 and beneath the modest smiles of fortune (for a tarn). 
 The breeze was holding nicely, and what a basket 
 would be ours by five o'clock. To cut short the 
 piteous tale, neither of us had even a rise, though 
 we worked hard for three hours. But this, of course, 
 need not be held as a final judgment on Hayeswater. 
 I must admit, however, that my occasional days there 
 
 8 273
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in former years, when the fish were smaller, bore some- 
 thing of a family likeness to this one. One may won- 
 der, too, whether, when the food supply of the newly 
 submerged land is exhausted, the trout will decline to 
 their original size ! 
 
 My local friends, the experts before alluded to, who 
 have fished these high lakes on and off all their lives, 
 corroborate this capriciousness of the fish, but they 
 have all a few great days to tell of, wonderful days, 
 and I am sure to tell of truly. It must be so. I have 
 never in my comparatively few ventures here been 
 fortunate enough to catch these tarn trout in such 
 consistent mood, and this is very tantalising when 
 you know how numerous they are. It is quite certain 
 that no ordinary fair fishing could ever make the 
 faintest impression upon any of these large tarns, 
 even if their inaccessibility did not make over-fishing 
 out of the question ; and it cannot be stated too in- 
 sistently that holiday visitors to Lakeland practically 
 never fish, nor even bring a rod with them. 1 If active, 
 their week or fortnight in a place is fully taken up with 
 various excursions. If otherwise, the tarns are far 
 outside their scheme of enjoyment. Even Ullswater, 
 though calling for no activity, is, as we have seen, 
 scarcely ever seriously fished by visitors from a distance, 
 and the becks, as also related, can only nourish quite 
 undersized fish, so scant is the food supply. The fish- 
 ing public of the Ullswater district is represented by 
 
 1 To save any possible disappointments, however, it may be well to 
 state that Lord Lonsdale, who partly as owner and partly as recent lessee 
 holds the country east of the lake, has since 1912 absolutely closed Angle 
 tarn, Hayeswater, Brotherswater, and the becks running into the east side 
 of Ullswater. No permission is granted to either natives or strangers. 
 274
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 a small handful of local fishermen, mostly working men, 
 but excellent sportsmen all, and such others from Kendal 
 or Penrith as can make opportunity to get to the hills 
 now and again for a day. 
 
 Hayeswater can be as grisly in a storm as any 
 mountain lake I know. One morning a few years ago 
 I walked up there by myself, with a strong rain-laden 
 wind from the SE. When I arrived, it had increased 
 to a gale, which striking, I presume, the back of Kidsty 
 Pike and the High Street, reared up like an angry horse ; 
 and with renewed strength tore over the screes and 
 down the narrow funnel between the heights, and 
 was lashing the waters of the lake into a seething 
 mass of white breakers. It was with great difficulty I 
 mounted my tackle at all, and when I had achieved so 
 much I could scarcely stand to use it. But the south 
 shore of Hayeswater is a long succession of rounded 
 humps clad with short grass, which fall almost sheer 
 into the lake, and between them are little hollows with 
 a scrap of flat shore each a few paces long. Within 
 these, though struggling over the low bluffs from one 
 to the other was arduous, I managed to maintain my- 
 self and get a line out somehow into the waves, slightly 
 tempered as they were by each small promontory, and 
 at nearly every cast I rose or hooked a fish. I think 
 I really should have had a big basket that day if I 
 could have stuck it out. But almost immediately 
 more serious rain began, I won't say to fall, but to drive 
 in solid sheets, and after about an hour I was so 
 battered that I gave in. Rain one may endure, wind 
 one can put up with, but when you get a rain-laden gale 
 driving every fresh cold drop, as it were, right through 
 
 275
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 your clothes on to your skin, it begins to awaken an 
 irresistible and unworthy yearning to turn tail to the 
 storm and make for home and a hot bath. Moreover, 
 what with the wind and the high waves, fine gut and 
 a stiffish rod, I had snicked off two or three flies in fish, 
 and only replaced them in the tumult with the utmost 
 difficulty. So when the cast at length gave way above 
 the top dropper, by some untoward combination of 
 an unseen turning fish and a tumbling foam-crested 
 billow, I could not muster sufficient resolution to lie on 
 my face under a wet bank and mount a fresh lot on a 
 thicker cast. I well remember the savage wildness of 
 that scene the low clouds racing in ceaseless battalions 
 along the face of the high screes and crags, and the 
 seething surface of the long, gloomy lake below. But 
 finer than all, however, the waters were being driven 
 up into the narrow neck at the lake foot, and there 
 seemed to concentrate their rage, shooting high into 
 the air in solid sheets, to be flung in clouds of spray for 
 an astonishing distance downward into the ravine of 
 the out-leaping beck, which in a long series of cascades 
 descends sharply into the vale far below. I had eight 
 or ten fish wrested from the tempest at any rate for as 
 big a buffeting and complete a ducking as I ever 
 endured. 
 
 On quieter days, however, it is a beautiful walk up 
 here from Patterdale, leaving the main road near the 
 foot of Brotherswater, and taking the turf track above 
 the beck from the romantic little hamlet of Low 
 Hartsop a cluster of two or three picturesque, 
 cheerful homesteads overhung with ash and sycamore, 
 and three or four smaller ones long fallen to ruin : their 
 276
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 crumbling walls deep in moss, and their broken roofs 
 a mass of ferns, flowers, and wild grasses. Here, too, 
 you may see the old spinning galleries thrust out of the 
 low, dark, upper story, where, to save candle-light, 
 in the thrifty days of yore the women sat at their 
 wheels spinning the wool of the Herdwick sheep, 
 which range unfenced over the great ' stints ' to Mar- 
 dale. And the walk up the Hartsop beck, with fine 
 glimpses up its tributary to Raven crag, a short hour at 
 a leisured gait to the lake, is delightful on a fine day. 
 There are few more winsome becks, too, than this 
 in all Lakeland, leaping down, as it does, in sheer 
 cataracts of no mean height, from pool to pool, 
 fringed lightly with birch and rowan, and full of small 
 plump trout, easy to delude, but more arduous in 
 the getting than their size might justify for the very 
 roughness of the brook's bosky and resounding course. 
 One distraction which can be seen and heard nowhere 
 else outside Lakeland may easily be encountered by the 
 angler on Hayeswater, even as late as June. And 
 that is three, four, or even half a dozen truant 
 hounds of the Ullswater pack running foxes upon their 
 own account. This famous pack is kept in kennels, and 
 hunted regularly till about the middle of May the 
 late lambing season and predatory humours of the 
 mountain foxes, when the lambs are small, giving 
 the pack through April and May the busiest time of 
 their season. After this the hounds are boarded out 
 among the neighbouring farms, and it is the simplest 
 thing in the world for them to follow their natural 
 instinct, slip away to the hills having privily, no doubt, 
 made arrangements with their nearest neighbour and 
 
 277
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 have a bit of sport upon their own account. Half 
 the people in the dale know most of the hounds by- 
 name, and it is more than likely that the shepherd- 
 farmer who stops to have a crack with you on the lake 
 shore will recognise each one of these truants who are 
 waking the echoes on the screes above. Brotherswater 
 that delightful gem of molten silver, which glitters 
 beneath the westering sun in any panoramic view of 
 Patterdale ; and on airless noons and mornings almost 
 invisible from its mirror-like reflections of the woods 
 and mountain which overhang it is a shallow lake of 
 meadowy margin, but fringed with foliage upon the 
 mountain-side, where the Goldrill streams away from 
 its foot adown the dale. It is full of small trout, and 
 free to the angler (though I am afraid this is now a 
 thing of the past), save for the hire of the boat. I have 
 not fished it myself for many years, and I should per- 
 haps qualify my estimate of its fish, if only for a basket 
 I saw brought in by a local friend quite recently, after a 
 whole night with fly or bustard, which contained among 
 a great number of smaller ones at least a dozen fish of 
 a third to half a pound in weight. 
 
 Now every one who has been up Helvellyn from 
 the Ullswater side, or even stood upon the summit, 
 must know Red tarn, since it fills the crater-like hollow 
 below the mountain's eastern precipice, and is walled 
 in on either side by the rugged, projecting flankers 
 of Striding and Swhirrel Edges. In short, it is a 
 conspicuous feature of this, the grandest side by far 
 of the mighty Helvellyn, in shape a half moon, and 
 not quite a mile in circumference. Being sheltered 
 on every side but the east, it is more than likely on 
 278
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 most summer days to be sleeping like a mirror, with 
 the precipitous sides of the mountain intimately- 
 reflected in its crystal waters. It is two thousand 
 three hundred and fifty-six feet above sea-level, and 
 nearly two thousand feet above Ullswater, while the 
 northern precipice of Helvellyn rises for almost 
 another eight hundred feet sheer out of its waters. 
 Nobody, save occasionally the present writer, ever 
 wets a line on Red tarn, though all the world is welcome 
 to. This might argue sheer perversity on my part. 
 It is really nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, 
 a most reasonable and pleasant accessory to a day on 
 Helvellyn. Nor is that quite all, for the lake, I admit, 
 fascinates and mystifies me. Not one of the little 
 knot of expert local anglers down in Patterdale, to 
 whom all the other waters are as one open book, 
 ever fish it, though one or two of them can remember 
 having done so perhaps once in their lives. 
 
 * What 's the matter with Red tarn, Tom ? ' 
 
 * There 's nowt the matter wi' t'lake as I knows 
 on,' says that hero of doughty deeds innumerable by 
 night and day. 
 
 t There 's trout in it.' 
 
 ' Oh aye, there 's trout in 't, to be sure, and some 
 fine yins, I expect.' 
 
 ' Did you ever fish it ? ' 
 
 1 Well, now, it may look strange-like, but I don't 
 know as I ever did.' 
 
 This is as far as I ever got regarding Red tarn with 
 my local acquaintances. 
 
 I should like to believe that superstition has a subtle 
 hand in this, and that the loss of poor young Gough 
 
 279
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in the year of Trafalgar, whose remains were found 
 by the lake-shore weeks afterwards, watched over by 
 his still living but emaciated little dog, had cast a 
 perennial shadow over the spot. Wordsworth's poem 
 on the tragedy may be remembered, and even the 
 poet, who hadn't a glimmering of the sportsman within 
 him, noted the rising trout. Hear him : 
 
 There sometimes doth a leaping fish 
 Send through the tarn a lonely cheer ; 
 The crags repeat the Raven's croak, 
 In Symphony austere j 
 Thither the rainbow comes the cloud 
 And mists that spread the flying shroud 
 And sunbeams ; and the sounding blast 
 That if it could would hurry past. 
 
 Alack for that discordant terminal line, but such was 
 Wordsworth's ' way.' 
 
 At any rate, I will allow the great poet to supply 
 one other reason why I like a day on Red tarn. Pro- 
 bably the secret of its neglect lies in the suspicion 
 that there are but few trout in it, which I think is a 
 fact, though rather a curious one. Fed by limpid 
 springs, and drained by the plashing beck that runs 
 down to Glenridding : with gently shelving, pebbly, or 
 rocky shores, and an abundance of both deep and 
 shallow water, it looks perfection. It is, moreover, 
 as easy and pleasant a lake to fish from the shore, when 
 there is a sufficient breeze, as could be found in all 
 Britain. The trout, what there are, run a steady 
 three to the pound, and, though sometimes dark, are 
 shapely of form and strong fighters. I say * what 
 there are,' because I believe the mystery, such as it is, 
 
 280
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 lies in paucity of numbers. One can understand a lake 
 holding no fish at all, like Grisedale tarn, of which a 
 word presently, or even containing a few large ones 
 only, or again, being full of stunted fish. But it 
 seems strange that so perfect a sheet of limpid water 
 should, generation after generation, support but a 
 small supply of rather even-sized, well-conditioned 
 three-to-the-pounders. I have seen them presumably 
 on the rise of a still evening, and the rings are un- 
 doubtedly very scattering and wide apart. I have 
 been always possessed of a great desire to kill a good 
 basket on Red tarn, if only for the scepticism with 
 which it is regarded in local fishing circles. My land- 
 lord is always hearty and hopeful as he despatches us 
 to the other lakes ; but indifference amounting almost 
 to disapproval lurks in his eye as I turn up Glen- 
 ridding beck on the Helvellyn trail. In fact I never 
 let on now that I am going to Red tarn, but merely 
 announce my intention of climbing Helvellyn by 
 Striding Edge, taking a small rod with me bound on 
 to my long climbing staff. So, without laying myself 
 open to the rather humiliating sympathy which greets 
 the return of the unsuccessful angler, I can stealthily, 
 as it were, continue my experiments and my efforts 
 to confute the champions of the Vale and their nega- 
 tively contemptuous attitude towards this most 
 beautiful little lake. Yet that is not precisely their 
 attitude either, which makes it all the more perplexing. 
 For each one of them qualifies his own abstention 
 with the oracular delivery : ' Ay, there 's bonnie fish 
 in yon lake, I expect.' But they never go there ! 
 I really do think Cough's wraith must have it in 
 
 281
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 possession, for the horrible suspicion that the faithful 
 little dog kept life in her for so many weeks by devour- 
 ing her master's flesh is inseparable from the tragedy. 
 Seriously, though, I have once or twice thought my 
 heart's desire was actually within my grasp. On one 
 occasion I had seven or eight fish before lunch, the 
 most I have ever killed in a day in this mysterious 
 lake. And then I flogged it all the afternoon without 
 another touch ! The last time I was up there I hooked 
 at the very first cast and basketed the handsomest fish 
 I have had out of the lake. Eternal hope sprang 
 once more in my breast, especially as two or three 
 years had passed since the last experiment. And then 
 came a long blank, when I handed my rod to a com- 
 panion, climbed up to the top of Helvellyn by Striding 
 Edge, was rewarded by a glorious view, and so down 
 by Swhirrel Edge on the other side of the lake. My 
 friend had got one more in the hour I was absent. 
 After that we tried alternately, but in vain, though 
 every condition was propitious ; and the tarn along 
 every foot of its shore does lend itself so perfectly 
 to effective and comfortable treatment with a fly-rod. 
 But after all, the two hours' walk from Ullswater 
 along the high ridge leading to Helvellyn, with that 
 glorious ever-present prospect of Grisedale below you, 
 if only to lunch at Red tarn, beneath the mighty 
 precipice of Helvellyn, would be accounted of itself 
 a day well spent by many to whom trouting is a vain 
 thing. And so it is, and if despairing of trout, and 
 seizing the propitious moment when the peak is free 
 of cloud, you can add its modest conquest and its 
 noble outlook to your little day, the fish may be 
 282
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 accounted but an incident in the outing. It is a 
 lonely, imposing, and inspiring spot. In June you 
 may pass a whole day here without seeing a ' soul, 
 though two of the regular routes up the mountain 
 pass within sight of it. Looking up at Striding Edge 
 from Red tarn, particularly if it is opening and shutting 
 its dark, rugged outline in a driving mist, it seems 
 really perilous and intimidating, though every one 
 knows there is nothing in it to any reasonably active 
 wight with a steady head. Indeed, Swhirrel Edge is 
 much harder work, and nearly as easy to tip over from. 
 Now every one who has ascended or descended 
 Helvellyn on the Grasmere side knows Grisedale tarn, 
 for the path leads along its shores. It is nearly round, 
 and more than a mile in circumference. That trout 
 of some sort inhabited it any knowledgeable angler 
 would assume as a matter of course. It looks made for 
 them, and the Grisedale beck, which contains the usual 
 share of small ones plunges out of it down the beautiful 
 glen whose name it bears. But there really are no 
 fish here. The dalesmen say so emphatically, though 
 such a matter is perhaps difficult to prove positively. 
 I selected not long ago a perfect day for the experi- 
 ment, and fished it steadily with a lovely breeze for 
 two or three hours without a sign of one. I have 
 heard some talk of trout here in former days, but why 
 not now ? There are no bad practices carried on in 
 this country. Besides, if there were, they could not 
 empty a deep mountain lake over a mile round, with 
 a trouting beck running out of it. These things are 
 very mysterious. It would be interesting to know 
 something more of them. Grisedale has apparently 
 
 283
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 much better feeding than Red tarn, for numbers of 
 small ' sikes ' from wide-stretching, boggy slopes run 
 into it ; while Red tarn is wholly fed by springs or 
 short, tiny rills from precipitous cliffs, so there may 
 well be an insufficient lack of bottom feed to support 
 many trout. But why are there none in the other ? 
 Can it be an utter lack of spawning ground, and why 
 is Angle tarn, physically a duplicate of this larger one, 
 as full of trout as it can hold ! Nor must I by any 
 means forget to mention that in Red tarn there are 
 some of those strange fish like a fresh-water herring, 
 precisely the same species, I think, as are found in 
 Bala, and known as Gwyniad in Wales and Skellies in 
 the Lake country. They are rarely seen and never 
 caught on a line, though sometimes in the nets, but 
 being very tender are frequently killed by the dashing 
 of the waves upon a rocky shore and thrown up dead. 
 I have seen them at Bala, and they have been picked 
 up at Red tarn. There used to be plenty of them in 
 Ullswater and other lakes, but I think they are now ex- 
 tinct. There were once quantities of char in Ullswater ; 
 now there is not one. As they mainly haunt deep 
 waters and rise but little to the fly, the angler as such 
 has no particular reason to regret their disappearance. 
 This is said to be due to the lead pollution of the Glen- 
 ridding beck, not from any effect which the latter had 
 upon that corner of the lake, which, as already men- 
 tioned, does not affect the trout, but because the said 
 beck was the old spawning-ground of the char. Trout, 
 when deprived of one spawning-ground seek another, 
 but it seems that char lack this initiative, or instinct. 
 Since writing the first portion of this chapter, 
 284
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 the unexpected has happened in the shape of another 
 fortnight on Ullswater not undertaken mainly in 
 the interests of trout, but for the latter portion of the 
 mountain fox-hunting season. As a rule, however, 
 the two work in beautifully together. But unfortun- 
 ately for the well-laid scheme, this last April was so 
 late and so cold, and the snow still lay so deep in the 
 high mountain hollows, that the lake trout had barely 
 got going. Nor had my local friends, who, with all 
 May before them, could regard the situation with 
 complacency; we, unfortunately, could not. At our 
 first attempt we got three, at our second nine, at our 
 third eleven ! Things were beginning to improve, 
 and as with the opening of May we steamed sorrowfully 
 down the lake to meet the coach at Pooley bridge, I 
 need not say it was the first good-looking day of the 
 season, a lovely ripple and a balmy air. There was only 
 
 one boat out, and that off Howtown. It was C ; 
 
 I waved him a farewell salute full of envy. I heard 
 incidentally he got twenty that day, and I feel quite 
 sure from what I know of his fancy that he killed them 
 on a black-hackle and a Broughton-point. 
 
 Most of us, I am inclined to suspect, who have a 
 fancy for mountain tarns are almost as much fascinated 
 by the eeriness of their portentous gloom in wild 
 weather as by the attractions of their gentler moods. 
 For myself, I do not think there is anything in all 
 nature within these islands so impressive as the former, 
 more especially if one is absolutely alone. And, after 
 all, it is only a few of us anglers that are ever in a 
 position to cultivate a protracted intimacy with these 
 innermost haunts of the spirit of solitude. I well 
 
 285
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 remember the effect of one of these creepy experiences 
 on a little Welsh boy, and how it operated to my 
 undoing. Now there is a grim little tarn in a lonely 
 spot beneath the precipice of one of the Arrans in the 
 neighbourhood of Bala lake. It is a four-mile walk 
 there over the hills, but worth the effort, not merely 
 for its striking situation but for the excellent trout, 
 running about three to the pound, which sometimes 
 rise well to the fly. On the occasion of this particular 
 visit to it, having been slightly injured by an accident, 
 I made interest with the village schoolmaster to supply 
 me (ultra vires^ of course) with an urchin, as bearer of 
 my waders, brogues, basket, etc. And incidentally 
 I had always to make a considerable detour that 
 summer for a black bull who, as the old Latin saying 
 goes, had ' hay on his horns ' and made the mountains 
 echo with his minatory roars. My urchin had, of 
 course, no English, and what was passing in his mind 
 I could only surmise. His spirits were evidently 
 maintained throughout the morning by my fairly 
 frequent calls for the landing-net. But later on the 
 clouds came down upon the tarn, racing low in filmy 
 shrouds against the black precipices and blotting out 
 the world. The fish ceased to rise, but persevering 
 in hopes of better times I presently forgot all about 
 the boy, having no use for the net. When eventually 
 I looked around for him the wretched * bachen ' was 
 nowhere to be seen, and I hunted the shores of that 
 now gloomy tarn filled with the most horrible fore- 
 bodings. The landing-net was there sure enough 
 lying on the bank. Could the brat be at the bottom 
 of the lake, for I hadn't seen him for an hour ? There 
 286
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 was nothing for it but to make for home, bearing 
 the burden that should have been his, though that 
 inconvenience was as nought compared to the load 
 I carried on my mind. I didn't even bother about 
 the bull, in the mist, a piece of foolhardiness as know- 
 ing Welsh bulls I should be utterly incapable of in 
 calmer moments. To shorten my tale the miserable 
 brat turned out to be at home safe and sound, and the 
 reaction from anxiety to wrath on my part was great. 
 We had it out, with the schoolmaster as interpreter, the 
 mother and the boy having no English. It transpired 
 that the urchin had become terrified at the lonely and 
 gruesome aspect of the place, and left so long to his 
 own reflection had incontinently fled. The school- 
 master begged me not to give him his shilling, but I 
 thought in this particular I perhaps understood the 
 situation better than the pedagogue, who provided 
 me on the next occasion with a stouter-hearted ghillie, 
 proof against hobgoblins and supernatural influences. 
 After all, this was the very spot, according to the poet, 
 where Timon inspired the youthful Arthur, a very 
 haunt of magic memories ; so who knows but that 
 this little Goidel, this insignificant representative of a 
 primitive speech and a primitive race may have seen 
 and heard things not revealed to a Saesenog. 
 
 There is very fair fishing for heavy trout in Winder- 
 mere, Derwentwater, and Bassenthwaite, and a good 
 rise of mayfly, called here the ' drake ' on all three. 
 With Windermere fishing I have no personal acquaint- 
 ance, but I see, as I write this, that a well-known 
 Manchester angler killed over a hundred trout there 
 last year of from one to four pounds a-piece with fly. 
 
 287
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 On Derwentwater there are, or were, a considerable 
 number of local fishermen, obviously men of leisure. 
 For every morning, from early May till the drake season, 
 you might see half a dozen boats come rowing down 
 from Keswick to the upper reaches of the lake between 
 the old lead mines and Lodore. Here they would fish 
 and re-fish over the drifts as the wind ordained. At 
 either end of every boat was planted an angler always 
 standing up and waving a fifteen-foot rod as if it were 
 twenty pound salmon and not pound trout that he 
 was after. Why they did not sit down comfortably 
 with a ten-foot rod I never could imagine ; for the 
 extra distance they might cast (and trout don't mind 
 a boat very much) was at least neutralised by the extra 
 display of their persons to the fish. Why these enor- 
 mous rods, this violent exertion, this tiresome balancing 
 on heel and toe in an often rocking boat I cannot 
 think. But the fishermen of Derwentwater main- 
 tained that you could not catch their trout any 
 other way. I did, however, and so of course would 
 anybody. At least I caught my share in the two or 
 three days of the mayfly season in which I occupied 
 one of a dozen or fifteen boats on the lake. For when 
 the drake comes up, anglers come out in much greater 
 force, and when the drake goes down, the trout, I 
 believe, remain at the bottom for the rest of the season. 
 But this was over a dozen years ago, and the per- 
 pendicular attitude and salmon-rod superstition may 
 have given way. May-fly seasons vary of course im- 
 mensely. When I was there it was a bad one, and we 
 didn't average more than two brace a day to a rod. 
 A pound is the unit weight on Derwentwater, but fish 
 288
 
 THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 
 
 often run much larger, and very good baskets are occa- 
 sionally made, and many blanks, it may also be added, 
 are endured. I am not passionately attached to boat 
 fishing, but if accessories can glorify it, it is surely here 
 on these matchless lakes. It is a pretty sight, too, 
 that of the mayflies pursuing their brief dance at all 
 heights over Derwentwater with the sea-gulls darting 
 at them in mid-air. The fly hatches considerably later 
 on Bassenthwaite, so that the Keswick angler has some- 
 thing like two seasons, and the trout there are about 
 the same size. I have fished Buttermere, too, and 
 Crummock, only divided, it may be remembered, from 
 one another by a few meadows. Lovely as they are 
 to sojourn by, they furnish nowadays for some reason 
 very indifferent trout-fishing, and the fish run com- 
 paratively small, Buttermere, which is, or was, neither 
 fished, netted, nor poached, being the worst of all ! 
 As in Windermere and Derwentwater, so in these 
 two smaller lakes the char is indigenous. As they 
 haunt the deep waters, they are fished for very deep 
 with special trolling tackle, in June, more, I imagine, 
 for the sake of the pot than the sport. Potted char 
 is as well known a local production of Keswick as is 
 the potted lamprey of Worcester. I believe, however, 
 Ennerdale is quite a good fishing lake for the smaller 
 variety of trout. There is, moreover, a small but 
 comfortable inn upon its banks with boats attached. 
 The lords of the manor have netting rights on nearly 
 all these waters. The nets are used a little, but so far 
 from the privilege being abused, there are some lakes 
 which would benefit if it were exercised more. 
 
 T 289
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 IX 
 IN AND AROUND NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 THE regrettable fact that I have never wetted 
 a line in Derbyshire or Yorkshire might well 
 seem a rather serious qualification of my 
 claim to have wandered rather widely by English and 
 Welsh waters. But to me, at any rate, there is some 
 substantial compensation, in the memory of a genial 
 month spent in the west Yorkshire dales. As this 
 was the merry month of May, it was with painfully 
 mixed feelings that I found myself, though not dis- 
 qualified from any other form of activity, temporarily 
 incapacitated from wielding a rod. It seems rather 
 at odds with the flavour of these pages to frankly 
 state that in the retrospect I am extremely glad it thus 
 fell out. I was not altogether of that opinion at the 
 time, though old enough and wise enough, I trust, 
 to recognise that there was a good deal of virtue in the 
 necessity. Moreover, I was engaged in the congenial 
 task of assisting Mr. Sutton Palmer, the best delineator 
 of mountain streams known to me, in celebrating these 
 glories of the Yorkshire dales upon the printed page. 
 I would not give a fig for the opinion of the Royal 
 Academy on the interpretation of a mountain river. 
 What do the vast majority of landscape painters know 
 290
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 about them ? And, indeed, how often does their 
 want of intimacy and sympathy hit you in the eye ! 
 Any one can paint the Thames, and the candid sense 
 of impotency which so frankly inserts a backwater of 
 that noble river in the heart of a quick-stream land- 
 scape seems almost commendable. But Mr. Sutton 
 Palmer can paint for the fisherman who knows about 
 these things, and has lived with them. One could 
 almost fish a pool over on his canvas, and know exactly 
 where to expect a rise. The woods and rocks and 
 moors through which his life-like rivers run are 
 those we see, and surely we ought to know. Per- 
 haps they are too realistic for the rules of Chelsea 
 studios ; but these shibboleths are nothing to us, and 
 have no significance for the lover of nature and those 
 intimate with rapid waters and their atmosphere. 
 And nature after all is a great deal more beautiful 
 and much more important than Art with the biggest 
 of A's. So when I look on Mr. Palmer's vistas of the 
 Ure and Swale, the Wharfe or Kibble, the pleasant 
 days on which I fished so much of them in fancy 
 without a rod comes very vividly back to me, and I 
 am grateful now for this, at the moment rather 
 tantalising deprivation. For it has endowed me with 
 a far more extended picture gallery of these beautiful 
 dales of the West Riding than I should possess had I 
 been able to concern myself with their trout. 
 
 Of Derbyshire streams I have neither fished, nor 
 seen any but from the train, though the very edge 
 of that county I associate oddly enough with two as 
 pleasant days' trouting as I ever enjoyed in England. 
 This was at Welbeck many years ago in the duke's 
 
 291
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 waters at Cresswell crags. These days were not 
 consecutive, but in two succeeding years, in May 
 and June respectively. They are only noteworthy 
 for the curious relationship in weight and number of 
 fish they bore to one another. On the first occasion 
 two of us killed just fifty trout weighing twenty 
 pounds. The next year the mayfly happened to be 
 on, and though being caught unprepared and un- 
 provided with patterns, the same friend and myself 
 killed with other flies in the same waters twenty-five 
 fish also weighing twenty pounds : exactly half the 
 number and precisely the same aggregate weight ! 
 And as on each evening we had a three-mile tramp 
 home to our quarters bearing our burden, though no 
 doubt cheerfully, I have further reasons for remem- 
 bering the incident. But did a tight basket strap 
 ever really tire an angler ? 
 
 This was just within Nottingham, a shire otherwise 
 associated vaguely in my mind with wonderful winches 
 holding hundreds of yards of line from which the 
 natives hurl substantial baits of mysterious kinds 
 with trained precision across leisurely expansive rivers. 
 But our days were in the Dukeries, not on the Trent, 
 a limestone region where trout seem to wax and 
 flourish in every bit of water that will cover their 
 back fin. As I have skirted Derbyshire thus briefly 
 and memorably to myself in late years, so in boyhood, 
 more frequently but with nothing approaching such 
 baskets, have I plied a rod upon the edge of Yorkshire 
 on the Wear and upper Tees in the now besmirched 
 palatinate of Durham. These two rivers rise in neigh- 
 bouring wilds and run out of the high Durham moors 
 292
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 in two parallel valleys. The upper Wear, though 
 even in those days disfigured here and there with 
 mining villages and slightly tinged with lead hush, 
 was a broad and beautiful river, rocky, rapid, and begirt 
 with sylvan scenery. Some school friends of mine 
 lived on its banks, and were wonderfully handy and 
 knowing fishermen from boyhood onwards. They 
 made their own rods, tied their own flies, and through 
 the summer months always used horsehair. The 
 Wear trout ran small, about four to the pound, with 
 always better possibilities. But they were extremely 
 shy, and in the summer months at any rate, during 
 which my frequent and lengthy visits were generally 
 paid, took a lot of catching. The small local school of 
 fishermen to which my friends belonged were purists 
 in their own way of a type which, though differently 
 fashioned, could have almost given odds to the dry- 
 fly purists of to-day. A rod procured at a tackle 
 maker's was here anathema, and an object of scorn, 
 that of any London maker of repute being held in 
 especial contempt. And I am bound to say you could 
 not have purchased anywhere in those days rods of 
 such featherweight, balance, and driving-power all 
 combined as were made by these lads and their neigh- 
 bours. They were on the stiff side, and built to 
 splice. Ferrules were regarded like anything else 
 that came from a manufacturer's as Cockney abomina- 
 tions. These Arcadians were, in fact, twenty years 
 ahead of their time ; that was about all. 
 
 I can recall even at this hour the feel of those 
 home-made rods. You could purchase any amount of 
 similar weapons to-day, and of course infinitely smarter 
 
 293
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in the make-up. But you couldn't buy one anything 
 like them then. I well remember the self-abasement 
 with which I used to compare my Exeter-built rods, 
 models of lightness as they were regarded in my own 
 small circle, with these others, these graceful but 
 powerful little featherweights. Whether they would 
 have stood a great strain I do not know, for they were 
 rarely called upon to do so. Bowden's masterpieces 
 were utterly condemned in these hypercritical circles 
 as clumsy, wobbly, and top-heavy, though admitted to 
 be an improvement on the ordinary ' Cockney ' rod, 
 by which I fear was meant the productions of Farlow 
 and other such great men. When possible I was 
 supplied with a * proper rod,' for which indeed I was 
 always truly grateful, and spared the sense of humiliation 
 inseparable from waving an unscientific article of 
 commerce over the sacred waters of the Wear. Here, 
 too, I was first introduced to the single hair, and if 
 there was a chestnut stallion domiciled in that part of 
 the country I am sure the demands upon his tail must 
 have reduced it to the most ignoble proportion. The 
 flies were, I need hardly say, tied at home, and I can 
 still remember the half-dozen popular varieties ; for 
 this type of purism dealt very little in scientific 
 entomology, though like that of Mr. Stewart its flies 
 did great things. 
 
 Local prejudices were intensely strong. They 
 were not confined to rods, tackle, and flies, but even 
 the landing-net there in vogue was the only possible 
 variety that it was decent to be seen about with. Any 
 other pattern wrote down its bearer as hopelessly out- 
 side the pale. This local sample had a stout shaft, 
 294
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 probably of ash, shod with a spike and a hook, and at 
 the other end the net was strung on a large fixed 
 hoop of wood. It was a tremendous net for quarter- 
 pounders and an odd half-pounder, as it towered above 
 the angler's head while he used it, like many others 
 elsewhere, as a prop and support, for the Wear was 
 a wading river. You couldn't wade the Wear with- 
 out this particular type of implement. You might 
 negotiate other rivers successfully perhaps, and rivers 
 too, exactly like the Wear, but you couldn't fish the 
 Durham stream properly without this tremendous 
 accessory. It would have been wholly unorthodox. 
 You might be all right with a short-handled net slung 
 conveniently at your back for a time if you were pre- 
 pared to outrage every local tradition. But you would 
 be drowned some day to a certainty. It might be for 
 years, but it wouldn't be for ever, that you would 
 escape this untimely fate. And this in spite of the 
 fact that waders were not yet in use up there and you 
 could swim like a duck. 
 
 The champion fisherman of that neighbourhood 
 who chiefly voiced this unwritten code, and even 
 published part of it, was the headmaster of an almost 
 derelict grammar school. He wrote a treatise on 
 trout-fishing, and a very good one too, illustrated by 
 himself with coloured plates of flies. He had scarcely, 
 I think, ever fished any other river but the Wear and 
 its tributaries, so that his utterances were unavoidably 
 flavoured with limitations, to say nothing of prejudices. 
 All rivers in the south of England, for instance, were 
 sluggish canals, and all the trout fat and lethargic, and 
 (if memory serves me) quite easy to catch, with the 
 
 295
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 uncanny flies of commerce purchased in Oxford Street 
 or the Strand. What the dry-fly purist would say if 
 he lit upon a stray edition of this now scarce work I 
 cannot imagine. The author reserved, I remember, 
 one of his most keenly pointed shafts of ridicule for all 
 other landing-nets save those of the type above de- 
 scribed. They were all * cabbage nets,' which stamped 
 their bearers as past hope. He was as fine an angler 
 though, this old gentleman, as he was incompetent in 
 his professional capacity, though he had only one hand, 
 a condition which possibly accounted for his fiery and 
 uncompromising attitude towards landing-nets. Per- 
 haps circumstances had been too much for him, but the 
 grammar school died of an atrophy like so many 
 others in small places that had outlived their utility. 
 So possibly the pedagogic energy and scholarship of 
 this master-fisherman had never been put to the test. 
 Perhaps he had never been extended ! 
 
 When I first knew the place the school bell used 
 still to ring the hours of work, and a stock local joke 
 warned the stranger lurking near to have a care lest 
 he should be borne down by the wild rush of one boy. 
 My friends had sat at his feet before they went to a 
 public school, at a more prosperous period when the 
 total number of boys, inclusive of themselves, ap- 
 proached double figures, and they had many funny 
 stories of the old man, for they were humorists as 
 well as fishermen. He was engaged on his angling 
 book at the period of their attendance, a task which 
 he used to pursue in school hours, delightfully obli- 
 vious to the progress or the discipline of his little class. 
 On one occasion during the time when he was more 
 296
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 immediately concerned with his illustrations, having 
 called the class to order, he proceeded to the black- 
 board to chalk up an arithmetical problem the solution 
 of which might peradventure keep them quiet for a 
 little. But the absorption of his faculties in the 
 magnum opus was apparently so complete that when 
 he moved from the front of the board instead of the 
 expected figures there was revealed to the delight of 
 his tormentors the proportions of a noble trout. A 
 bull trout, my friends used to say it was meant for, 
 the salmo eriox being a regular autumn visitor to the 
 waters of Wear and therefore an item in its literature. 
 There was a great raid by the Education Commis- 
 sioners about this time on derelict grammar schools, 
 to the eventual extinction of many. It so happened 
 that the commissioner who inspected this part of 
 England was a family friend of ours and had some rare 
 stories to tell of the humours that accompanied their 
 deplorable conditions, including more than one case, 
 I remember, where the headmaster, happy in his small 
 fixed endowment, secretly paid a solitary scholar to 
 absent himself. I remember well that our angling 
 pedagogue on the Wear and his establishment caused 
 the aforesaid commissioner immense entertainment, 
 and stood out even in the treasure-house of oddities 
 that his duties had incidentally provided and so richly 
 stored. 
 
 We occasionally undertook a pilgrimage across the 
 moors to the head-waters of the Tees, taking a pony 
 along to carry our traps. Crossing over from St. 
 John's, Weardale, and thence dropping down into 
 Teesdale and the Rokeby country at Middleton, 
 
 297
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 we struck thence up the long valley road by High 
 Force, and so on to Cauldron Snout and High-Cup- 
 nick. I have through all my life recalled the first 
 glimpse of Teesdale from the high moors upon the 
 eastern side, and the opening lines of Scott's description 
 of it in Rokeby, which poem people were familiar with 
 in those days, again and again come back to me : 
 
 Nor Tees alone in dawning bright 
 Shall rush upon the ravished sight, 
 But many a tributary stream 
 Each for its own dark glen shall gleam. 
 
 For here just below you may see the trail of ' Silver 
 Lune from Stainmore Wild,' and further away the 
 line of the Greta, of notable name in those days 
 even for Philistines impervious to the magic wand of 
 the Wizard of the North. For one of the songs out of 
 Rokeby had been in high favour, and our aunts and 
 mothers, at any rate, had been wont to sing in drawing- 
 rooms of ' How Brignall woods were fresh and fair, 
 and Greta woods were green,' and how they * would 
 rather rove with Edmund there than reign an English 
 queen.' 
 
 We used to take our rods with us and fish a bit in 
 the Tees below Cauldron Snout, where it thunders 
 down a ridge two hundred feet high from its long, 
 strange, sluggish, meandering among the high bogs 
 known as the Weald. As Yorkshire, Durham, and 
 Westmoreland all meet at the foot of the falls, I must 
 after all, I suppose, have wetted a line in Yorkshire. 
 But I think our expeditions, particularly as they were 
 in July, were prompted as much by a love of fine wild
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 country, which was deep-seated in all of us, as by 
 any very serious designs on trout. I think the sombre, 
 peaty depths of the Weald (wbeale I believe originally), 
 with possibilities more than hinted at by our accom- 
 plished friend the schoolmaster, was something of a 
 magnet, though it proved fallacious. But beyond a 
 few small fish picked out of the dark runs of the river 
 below among the roundest and most slippery boulders 
 I ever encountered in my life, there is really nothing 
 to be said, so this excursion here into Teesdale and 
 the back of the Pennines may be held, perhaps, as 
 unjustifiable. A little inn sheltered us on one occasion. 
 But on another, inspired with undue confidence by the 
 pedagogue, we pinned our faith on a small farm- 
 house on the moor. Our welcome, however, if such 
 it can be called, was of the dourest ; so much so, that 
 if it had not been nightfall, and hunger and even 
 fatigue, hardy as we accounted ourselves, insistent, 
 we should have turned our backs upon the rude in- 
 hospitable shelter and the churlish boors who so 
 grudgingly entertained us without a moment's 
 hesitation. 
 
 The rivers of Northumberland are fairly numerous, 
 and the trouting burns more numerous still. I have 
 fished at one time or another in most of the former 
 and in some of the latter. As to the rivers, I may 
 fairly say I know them qua rivers from the sea to their 
 source. For all of them rise in the Cheviots, and all 
 but the Till run eastward into the ocean. Some 
 even of the burns cut out their own course and 
 pay tribute to no lesser waters than those of the North 
 Sea. And every burn and every river in Northumber- 
 
 299
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 land contains trout. Little more than a dozen miles 
 above the pandemonium of Newcastle and the alto- 
 gether forbidding look of the tidal Tyne with its 
 besmirched industrial surroundings for a good part 
 of that distance, trout and samlets may be seen rising 
 in the clear, broad, stony shallows, and with no obvious 
 reason under such quickly changed conditions why 
 they should not be there and thus disport themselves. 
 The Tyne, unless the English share in the lower Tweed 
 be counted, is of course by far the largest river 
 in the county. The Wansbeck, Coquet, Aln, and 
 Till belong in size to altogether another class. Nay, 
 after the Tyne has split into its north and south forks 
 at Hexham, and begun to count seriously as a trout 
 and salmon river, either branch would still more than 
 hold its own in this respect against any of the sister 
 streams. The river at Hexham just below the parting 
 is of quite noble width, though as merry as a moor- 
 land burn. The bridge requires at least eight arches 
 to span its currents, and the view across it to the old 
 town beyond, crowned with its stately abbey, is one 
 to be held ever in remembrance. 
 
 If you stand in the meadows a mile above, at the 
 junction of the North and South Tyne, it is not 
 difficult to understand why a vast proportion of the 
 ascending salmon take the right-hand turn. Perhaps 
 if the waters were in spate you would understand still 
 better, and feel certain that if you were a salmon 
 you would not hesitate for a moment ; for while 
 the more southerly flood is running a thick yellowy 
 brown, the northern river is pouring in a volume of 
 porter-coloured water redolent of the moorland and 
 300
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 the moss. Both are equally clear in normal weather, 
 for the South Tyne, too, comes down from clear 
 uplands, but like the Wear is slightly if not visibly 
 tainted by various mines and works scattered along 
 its lower course, though its Arcadian qualities and 
 sometimes striking valley scenery are but little affected. 
 At any rate it is an infinitely inferior trout and 
 salmon river to its amber-tinted twin sister. 
 
 In company with a friend, I once fished the South 
 Tyne for a whole day under the most superb conditions 
 of wind and water. The woods, the rocks, the perfect 
 colour of the buoyant stream, the tempered sunshine, 
 the balmy air coupled with our own sanguine natures 
 kept us from flagging. At the close of the day we had, 
 I think, about half a dozen small trout between us. 
 To be sure it was in August, and much must be forgiven 
 that ill-omened month, but I always think of it as one 
 of the pleasantest blank days I ever had. I have no 
 doubt that if we had been up in the higher waters in 
 Allandale we should have killed some fish, but I am 
 talking now of the big river, not of its tributaries nor 
 again of its own infant gambols in the hills. I had had 
 my doubts, to be sure, of the class of river at such a 
 season, despite its fair appearance. But my friend, 
 hailing from a far south-western county, where trout 
 rise after a flood at any and all seasons, egged me on. 
 He added, I expect, to his store of experience ! Our 
 luncheon hour upon a pleasant shingly beach with a 
 fine, woody cliff confronting us across the delicious 
 swirls of the deceptive river was enlivened by the 
 company of a local salmon fisher, obviously a gentle- 
 man-at-large. He stood beside us for a long while 
 
 301
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 without speaking, and as I thought with a touch of 
 compassion in his eye. He evidently thought we were 
 natural fools to be fly-fishing for trout at such a time. 
 But in truth as it turned out if there was any sym- 
 pathy going around to spare he was the most fitting 
 recipient of it. He was a tall, ginger-whiskered man, 
 with a salmon-rod of the dimensions of a telegraph 
 post, and remained silent merely because no true 
 Northumbrian ever makes the first overture if he has 
 to wait all day. When I broke the ice he admitted 
 to having done nothing, though a little consoled by 
 the report of a fish having been killed two days previ- 
 ously at Haydon bridge, which did not suggest a high 
 standard for the South Tyne. Before we had done 
 with him, however, he had unfolded, perhaps not too 
 willingly, a tale beside which our few hours of pleasant 
 futility were as nothing ; for he had fished the river 
 steadily, so far as we could make out, for years, and to 
 his everlasting credit admitted that he had never yet 
 killed a salmon in it. Now a man who will volun- 
 tarily make that admission with no earthly reason for 
 so doing, and every temptation to tell tall stories, is 
 much more precious than a successful salmon-fisher. 
 Later on we watched him work down a fine pool below 
 us and drive his line out with all reasonable skill from 
 the telegraph post, and were forced to conclude that 
 either he was one of the unlucky ones of the earth or 
 that very few salmon patronised the South Tyne. 
 We hoped, too, he was a poet at least and saw things 
 in the moving waters and the bordering woods, and 
 so was happy. 
 
 But the North Tyne is a very different river, and 
 302
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 plenty of salmon and of sea trout, too, are killed when 
 the water serves. There is also a good stock of brown 
 trout, and the river being valuable is rather closely 
 preserved for most of its course. For the last mile 
 or so before the confluence the broad river, overhung 
 on both sides by the woods of Warden, makes fine 
 play, its amber waters churning furiously amid a 
 prodigious barrier of rocks and ledges. It bisects the 
 Roman wall just above at Cholerford, where the exca- 
 vated remains of the great cavalry station of Chesters 
 or Cilurnum and its Roman bridge still in the river 
 attract visitors from all parts of the country. A little 
 railroad runs up the North Tyne for a matter of some 
 thirty miles, crossing eventually into Scotland through 
 a wild pass of the Cheviots. It is still better, however, 
 to pursue the river by road if you want to go high up 
 the dale, as the scenery is always interesting, and if 
 you care for such things every mile is marked by a 
 castle, a peel tower, or some other martial relic of the 
 old Border wars and raids. 
 
 For North Tynedale and its tributaries was the very 
 heart and centre of the i Riding country,' the land of 
 the Herons, Swinburnes, Charltons, Robsons, and all 
 the rest of them. So up past Haughton castle of the 
 Swinburnes, in whose deep dungeon once upon a time 
 a chief of the Armstrongs, languishing in durance vile, 
 was literally forgotten, and so died of starvation ; 
 past Chipchase, where the Herons when official keepers 
 of Tynedale kept their light cavalry police ; past the 
 hamlet of Wark, where the Scottish judges of assize 
 sat when this was part of Scotland, the river beside 
 you still brawling broad and lusty ; past the mouth of 
 
 33
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 Rede, with all the bloody and romantic tale its streams 
 repeat for those who have ears to hear. And thus 
 continuing by a somewhat lessened stream for the 
 burns that it has lost, though still a broad one, you will 
 arrive at Bellingham. A big village much frequented 
 by sheep and collie dogs, and the metropolis of the dale, 
 is this, set in a wide-open bare country still thick with 
 Charltons, Robsons, Hedleys, Telfers, Dodds, and all 
 the old fighting and raiding names that ring down the 
 whole garland of Border song. There is a good inn at 
 Bellingham, and higher up the river towards Falstone 
 and Scotland there are, or were, some miles of as- 
 sociation or ticket water. I once spent a prodigiously 
 hot fortnight here. For two days the thermometer 
 stood at ninety degrees in the shade, which for a place 
 high up in the heart of the southern Cheviots was a 
 trifle disconcerting. Fishing, except with a worm, 
 was out of the question. However, I admit, and with- 
 out the slightest shame, a partiality for clear water 
 worming for trout, having done a great deal of it as 
 a young man in the clear mountain streams of the 
 southern Alleghanies, where the thick foliage exalts 
 it into something of an art. 
 
 Indeed, it is esteemed very much of an art in this 
 north country, not on a level with fly-fishing, to be 
 sure, but by no means to be dismissed from discussion 
 as a mere pot-hunting or poaching business. But 
 then one fishes with a worm, or ought to at times 
 and seasons when the fly is practically useless, and only 
 then upon rivers which are suitable for it. I should 
 never, for example, have the slightest desire to worm 
 the Kennet or the Wylie even if I had otherwise 
 
 34
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 embarked upon a career of crime. Nor do I ever feel the 
 least inclination, even at the most depressing moments, 
 to fish worm in what might be called midway rivers, 
 such as the Teme, the Monnow, or the Lugg. It is 
 the hard-bottomed, stony mountain rivers and burns, 
 with their wilder seeming trout that alone invites the 
 clear-water worm fisherman of the right sort. And 
 fishing worm up the middle of a good-sized river, 
 though I have done by comparison little of it, is more 
 interesting to me than worming a burn, of which I 
 have done a great deal. I need hardly say it has been 
 always widely practised in the Border country. Far 
 too much so indeed, for instead of confining the worm 
 to the three summer months, it is freely used in the 
 fly season in April, May, and early June, on the open 
 waters. Worm fishing in April is most unsportsman- 
 like, almost as bad as worming in discoloured flood 
 water the very lowest form of trouting. But in a 
 river like the North Tyne, where the trout cease to 
 rise, I fancy early in June and in a normal summer the 
 river runs low and clear for most of the time ; there, 
 surely, up-stream worm-fishing provides a worthy and 
 skilful method of enjoying many pleasant days, and 
 killing fish in the very pink of condition, that though 
 they might rise again in September, would be by that 
 time falling sadly away. Not many south or west 
 country fishermen know much of this branch of trout- 
 ing, and most are inclined, as I have said before, to 
 look on all worm-fishing as poaching. 
 
 Personally I do not like Stewart tackle. And by 
 the same token that great fisherman did not use the 
 worm very much himself, and was, I think, rather 
 u 305
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 amused to find some time before his death, an arrange- 
 ment of hooks, though no doubt he did use it, called 
 by his name. Every trout fisherman in England and 
 America knows the Stewart tackle ; not one in fifty 
 ever heard of the great Border angler who died forty 
 years ago. I once found myself fishing beside him, 
 and felt the same thrill I had experienced a year before 
 at being in with W. G. Grace in a country match, who, 
 by the way, returned my devotional attitude by 
 running me out most flagrantly. 
 
 I prefer the single hook myself, perhaps from long 
 use of it in North America. In burns one mainly 
 fishes the pools, as they are small and all astir. But 
 in rivers the modus operandi is to wade up stream and 
 fish the shallower rapids, the quick waters, and the 
 eddies. Rippling, stony shallows a foot deep that 
 you would hardly throw a fly on are likely places with 
 the worm. A very stiff, light fly-rod of about eleven 
 feet is my preference for this work, and a fine cast of, 
 say, six feet. A line a little longer than the rod can 
 be readily cast by various methods, and that without 
 making any appreciable commotion on the water, 
 which is generally itself in a more or less lively state. 
 One throws either straight up stream, or diagonally 
 up to the right or left, but you will hook most of your 
 fish right ahead of you. A trout fisherman's instinct, 
 whether used to the worm or not, tells him his distance, 
 and when and where he is out of sight, though it is 
 remarkable how closely you can approach trout in 
 broken water from immediately below them. The 
 novice, in other respects trout-wise, soon learns by ex- 
 perience the sort of water in which fish take a worm 
 306
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 best, and speaking generally, it is not such as he would 
 devote much attention to with a fly in the same state 
 of the river. When the worm drops, it must be allowed 
 to float down naturally towards you uninfluenced by 
 the rod. A check to the movement of the gut is 
 usually the only visible sign of a bite, not always easy 
 to see in quick, broken water, though it is often 
 accompanied by that other subconscious sensation of 
 touch. It is well to wait three or four seconds, with 
 a single hook, at any rate, before striking. Sometimes, 
 however, the fish will move swiftly up-stream directly 
 it seizes the worm, when the bite is of course much 
 more obvious. It is quite pretty work, though, and 
 perhaps not so easy of accomplishment as it may 
 appear from this bald description. It is well to be 
 up and doing betimes in bright weather, though the 
 precise hour may be left to the inclinations of the 
 angler. But if on the water by six or seven, you can 
 generally count on the fish taking till about ten o'clock ; 
 for I am not concerned with the all-night fisherman, 
 under which head fall so many of the working folk 
 of the north country, who will get into the river after 
 supper and fish up many miles through the night 
 and early morning hours, and be back by train or 
 cycle to their workshop, mine, or factory at the 
 regulation hour. This is a destructive business, and 
 to be deplored, particularly as this type of angler 
 generally baskets everything, however small. It has 
 been a regular practice, however, for all time that 
 matters up here, though there are signs that in the 
 general interests of the fishing public some limits 
 may yet be set to it. 
 
 307
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 There is little of this in the North Tyne, for the 
 simple reason that the river is nearly all preserved. 
 I had the privilege on this occasion of a mile of salmon 
 water belonging to a friend. As salmon-fishing was 
 out of the question, he kindly allowed me to ply the 
 worm for trout, and by due perseverance in early 
 rising I had some very fair dishes, some of the fish 
 running nearly up to a pound in weight, and was 
 home again before the heat of the day had well begun, 
 the only drawback to the entertainment being a white 
 bull of militant disposition. It is surprising even in 
 the matter of trouting what creatures of habit we 
 are, and how susceptible to influences and traditions. 
 Having wandered rather widely myself, I may fairly 
 claim some catholicity in such matters, and can, at 
 any rate, feel the atmosphere of all these various 
 schools of opinion. I know well that the objection 
 to the worm is very strong in many parts of the country 
 where streams are identical with those of the north. 
 Nobody knows much about it, to be sure, but there 
 is a sort of tradition against it among gentleman 
 anglers. But in the north there is no such general 
 feeling, whether a man cares for it personally or not. 
 It is regarded as a matter of course, and recognised 
 as a scientific branch of the trouting art. It is only 
 a pity that the habit of using the worm in the spring 
 is not more deprecated, and wherever possible stopped. 
 
 There is a good deal of over-preserving in the 
 southern half of Northumberland, or, I should perhaps 
 say, preservation of the useless and fussy kind ; this 
 is partly due to so much of its trouting water being 
 included in grouse-shooting tenancies, which nearly 
 308
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 always closes up even the smallest burn, regardless of 
 fish logic ; and partly perhaps to the prevalence of the 
 novus homo on a large scale, to whom the mere sensa- 
 tion of ownership carries with it an undiscriminating 
 desire to exercise its extreme rights, even when 
 perfectly useless. I always remember a day granted 
 me in a big burn by a rather magnificent gentleman 
 of this type as an illustration of what I mean. The 
 most respectable stranger would not, I am sure, have 
 stood the ghost of a chance of getting a permit, but 
 as a matter of fact my introduction was rather an 
 intimate one, and it produced a letter giving me one 
 day in the precious burn, of which there was about 
 three miles, very rough and heavily wooded in char- 
 acter. I don't suppose the owner ever fished it in 
 his life, though very likely he had a salmon river in 
 Norway, to which he proceeded in his own steam 
 yacht. The water was in good order, and it was 
 a beautiful stream and of a fair size. I fished up 
 the whole three miles, chiefly in the water, for the 
 foliage, which was beautiful, intrenched it nearly 
 everywhere. It took me about eight hours to cover it. 
 I am quite certain that I rose over a thousand fish, 
 for they were coming extraordinarily short, and con- 
 stantly two at a time, and I am equally certain that 
 I did not see six of a quarter of a pound in weight 
 the whole day. The little river was simply crammed 
 with fingerlings, and hopelessly over-stocked, a state 
 of things I should say, unnatural to it, and indeed, as 
 I was told, of recent development. Yet my friend's 
 friend gave me one day with great ceremony. It is 
 true that one day was enough, and more than enough, 
 
 309
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 so far as fishing went ; but that is not the point. 
 If this stream were thrown open for three years it 
 might possibly improve. It would, at any rate, enter- 
 tain the public, and there is nothing on its shores, 
 being quite wild, that the humble angler, even if 
 so disposed, could conceivably damage. But such a 
 suggestion, I am quite sure, would be received with 
 horror and indignation. 
 
 To return, however, to the North Tyne. There is 
 another fifteen miles of the river above Bellingham, 
 before it shrinks to a wee burn amid the wilds of 
 Kielder, the Duke of Northumberland's shooting- 
 box on the Scottish border. The little railway ascends 
 the valley, as I have said, and a tolerable road follows 
 the river, constantly reinforced by moorland burns, to 
 its source. How much ticket water there is about 
 Falstone, where there is also an inn, I do not know, but 
 I think some miles, and it looks very attractive. This 
 is in truth a great country. Once mounted up on the 
 ledge of moorland that on its south-western side over- 
 looks the dale, all beyond is solitude of a most im- 
 pressive kind a great waste of heath, peat-moss, and 
 sheep pasture, a low, rolling prairie plateau rather than 
 hills, with the high bluffs that carry the Roman wall 
 along their craggy summits, upon the hither side of the 
 South Tyne, dimly cutting the sky-line. In all this 
 wide angle between the two forks of Tyne, a dozen 
 to twenty miles across, with its base resting on the 
 lofty hills of the Scottish border, there is practically 
 nothing but a shepherd's cottage standing forlorn here 
 and there, and along its edges the occasional home- 
 stead of some great sheep farmer. Grouse, plovers, 
 310
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 curlews, wildfowl, and black-faced sheep are the only 
 other occupants of the waste, while colonies of small 
 black-headed gulls breed by its little tarns, and the 
 larger non-gregarious species, hated of the grouse pre- 
 server, haunts its spaces and works havoc by the way on 
 burns and spawning beds. This was in fact the wild 
 waste over which the Roman sentinels looked north- 
 ward for some three centuries. And as you stand on 
 that great natural barrier to-day, on the broad top of 
 the remnant of the wall which continuously caps it, 
 and look out towards the North Tyne, you might well 
 fancy for the all-pervading desolation that the centuries 
 had stood still. 
 
 Upon the other side of the river high moors and 
 sheepwalks heave away to the parallel valley of the 
 Rede, where Hotspur and Douglas met in the im- 
 mortal fight of Otterburn, and a hundred other for- 
 gotten heroes fought and bled. I remember how 
 gloriously on the eve of these warm days the sun used 
 to sink below the distant mountain rampart which 
 divides the kingdoms once so bitterly hostile, and how 
 quickly on its steps the harvest moon later on rekindled 
 this great, silent, mysterious country with a pale reful- 
 gence of the day. There are no tourists here. You 
 are as far perhaps from the madding crowd as you 
 can betake yourself anywhere in England, by rail at 
 any rate, though trains are so few that they really 
 amount to nothing as a disturbing factor. I doubt, 
 too, if motorists much fancy the road which leads over 
 Kielder into Liddesdale. A favourite route, however 
 indeed one of the main arteries into Scotland lies up 
 Redesdale, and over the Carter Fell, passing the great 
 
 3"
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 reservoir at the head of Rede, which has been made 
 for Newcastle, and is full, by the way, of free-rising 
 trout. 
 
 It is a great change from here to the country of the 
 Till, the * sullen Till ' of Scott's Marmion. Rising in 
 the Cheviots, about half-way down their course, and 
 pointing for the eastern shore, it seems to flinch in 
 almost infancy from the prospect of breaking through 
 the isolated block of upland that may be called the 
 Chillingham moors, a feat performed by its cradle 
 neighbour, the Aln. But the Till is a gentle stream, 
 nearly always ill-suited for aggressive action and break- 
 ing its way through mountain ridges. So it turns 
 away to the open north, and, running for some miles 
 under its cradle name of Breamish, waters Chilling- 
 ham on its way ; and from thence, in a succession of 
 sinuous bends, prattles cheerily on to the broad, flat 
 pasture-lands below Wooler. Here, beneath the 
 shadow of the most northerly and loftiest section of 
 the Cheviots, it sets its face through endless green 
 flats for Flodden field and the Tweed. And as if 
 always eager to prolong its easy journeying through 
 these fat haughs, it twists from edge to edge for no 
 apparent purpose, and with a sinuosity that cuts a 
 most eccentric figure on a map. Rippling gently over 
 gravelly shallows of singularly lustrous colouring and 
 varied hue, it loiters again and again, so slight is its 
 fall in sullen deeps, or dubs, into which the soft, over- 
 hanging red banks seem for ever toppling. Unlike 
 any other Northumbrian river, the Till might almost 
 have been imported straight from Herefordshire, so 
 much in its banks, its colouring, its paces, and its 
 
 312
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 bottom does it resemble the Lugg or the Teme. Like 
 these rivers, too, when it is absolutely forced, as in its 
 last mile or two, to travel through a gorge on a rocky- 
 bottom, it can play the part of a mountain river as 
 well as any. 
 
 Like the Teme and the Lugg, too, the Till is a great 
 grayling stream. But the adjective in the Till's case 
 requires a deal of qualification. The difference indeed 
 between the two Welsh border rivers and this one is 
 interesting. The former are natural grayling streams 
 in which trout and grayling always flourished side by 
 side, with no perceptible clashing of interests. But 
 less than twenty years ago there was not a grayling 
 in the Till or anywhere near it. It was a very good 
 trout stream indeed. It is now crammed with grayling, 
 which were introduced, and the trouting is almost 
 worthless from below Chillingham down to Ford at 
 any rate. Worse still, the grayling run rather small 
 three to the pound would, I think, be a flattering 
 estimate. Still worse, they can hardly be called good 
 risers. Yet in its principal tributary, the Glen, which 
 runs in at Ewart park, and is also full of grayling, the 
 latter rise splendidly. There are two or three miles 
 of association fishing in the Till below Wooler, at 
 which picturesque Cheviot town I once spent an 
 autumn month. It was a dry season, and consequently 
 perfect grayling weather. I frequently fished this 
 stretch as well as some private water below it with 
 fly as pleasant and easy a river of its kind to fish as 
 you may find anywhere. I don't think I ever killed 
 ten at one venture, and sometimes my efforts were next 
 to useless though the river was stiff with fish. The 
 
 313
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 natives were mainly worming, so I could not make 
 comparisons. But I had a day in the Glen, which in 
 the lower part where I fished it is of similar quality to 
 the main stream, and I killed thirty-four fish weighing 
 sixteen pounds, and gave up before I had finished either 
 the day or the water, for the simple reason that I 
 couldn't carry any more. This was some years ago. 
 During this past summer a friend of mine and excellent 
 fisherman went to Wooler, where, by the way, there is 
 now a capital hotel. His experience of the Till was 
 precisely mine. He, too, had a day in the Glen and 
 basketed seventy. They did not run so large as mine, 
 being earlier in the season, but included a good many 
 trout and a sea trout or two. 
 
 Where grayling are not indigenous, they prove but 
 a doubtful blessing to a trout stream in which they 
 thrive. They have ruined a large part of the Till, 
 and except to the worm fisher provided a very poor 
 substitute as risers. They have gone far to ruin the 
 Glen, so far as they have succeeded in ascending it. 
 And the Glen was one of the very finest trout streams 
 on the whole Border. That well-known Border fisher- 
 man, the late Mr. Henderson, author of My Life as an 
 Angler, gave it, all things considered, the place of 
 honour among Northumbrian streams. If the grayling 
 furnish but indifferent baskets to the fly fisherman on 
 the Till, they provide the devotee of the * running 
 worm and tooth-pick float ' abundant sport. This 
 is a Yorkshire practice, and is something of an art in 
 itself. I have watched its professors at work, and 
 with much interest. The water selected is a running 
 gravelly stream, such as the Till abounds in, the hook 
 
 3H
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 is of the smallest, mounted on a cast of the finest 
 drawn gut, and the float of the diminutive pattern 
 colloquially known as a tooth-pick. The modus operandi 
 is to let the worm trail along close to the bottom, 
 and to strike at the very first twitch of the tiny float. 
 The fine quality of the gut makes striking a delicate 
 operation, while a strong November or December 
 grayling will for the same reason put up a big fight. 
 And these are the months most affected by the artists 
 of this craft. The local fishermen were sedulously 
 cultivating it when I was last on the Till, fired by the 
 performances of two experts from Yorkshire, who, 
 they assured me, had taken twenty or thirty pounds 
 of grayling in a day from two or three hundred yards 
 of water. Possibly a large company of qualified locals 
 proceeding at that rate have reduced the stock of 
 grayling in the Till, but I doubt it. Salmon, sea 
 trout, and bull trout run up the river and its tributaries 
 in the summer and autumn, though I do not think 
 are taken in very appreciable numbers. It is quite 
 a sight to watch the latter leaping the dam on the 
 Wooler burn, a large confluent of the Till, which runs 
 down from the Cheviots, and not, I think, patronised 
 by grayling for its impetuous character. 
 
 My friend and neighbour above mentioned in con- 
 nection with a fine basket of grayling on the Glen 
 the first, by the way, he had ever caught in his life 
 is a man to whom notable feats have been frequently 
 vouchsafed, and he had a successful adventure with 
 a sea trout a day or two after on the same river, the 
 like of which I have never known. As the fish is snug 
 in a glass case within a few hundred yards of me as I 
 
 315
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 write, with the fly that captured him decorating the 
 spot where he was hooked, I may tell of the adventure, 
 albeit another man's, with a clear conscience. My 
 friend was bred a fisherman from youth up in that 
 noble county of Brecon, upon the banks of the Wye 
 and Yrfon. I was very glad to have been the indirect 
 means of providing him with one of those adventures 
 with which fortune seems to favour him, and that 
 he is well qualified not to let slip. For on the occasion 
 in question only the other day, in fact he was fishing 
 some private water near Coupland castle, up the Glen, 
 and above the habitat of the grayling. Being August, 
 and the trout, though the water was in condition, 
 proving sulky, the moving of a sea trout prompted 
 him to put on a small sea-trout fly. Shortly after- 
 wards he rose and hooked, as it so proved, in the side, 
 and much nearer the gills than the tail, what he soon 
 took for granted to be a salmon. The Glen here is a 
 small stream readily commanded by an average length 
 of line on a ten-foot rod, which was in fact on this 
 occasion my friend's weapon. The scene of action 
 was tolerably open, though with bushes here and 
 there on the very considerable stretch over which the 
 battle was waged. He soon saw that he had some- 
 thing like a ten-pounder on, and quickly discovered 
 that it was hooked in the side, a pretty formidable 
 prospect in a small stream not free of bushes with light 
 tackle. The encounter lasted an hour and a half. 
 The fish leaped continually. Once he jumped clean 
 into the middle of an alder bush, and by the mercy 
 of providence, who watches over the fortunate to whom, 
 like my friend, are granted great adventures, fell 
 316
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 through the foliage into the water again without 
 mishap ! Being out for small trout, my friend had no 
 landing-net, and ultimately, to cut short the story, 
 and at a very long distance from where he hooked the 
 fish, he tailed it successfully in a suitable place. It 
 proved to be a sea trout weighing nine pounds, the 
 largest that had ever been killed in that country. It 
 needs no telling that Wooler was agog with the event, 
 particularly the other fishermen staying at the hotel. 
 Some of them, not a little jealous that a stranger 
 from the far south had achieved such a triumph, 
 were sufficiently lacking in logic and humour to lay 
 ingenuous stress on the fact that the fish had been foul- 
 hooked ! If it had not been, the capture would be a 
 noteworthy local incident, but assuredly not worth 
 the telling here. Such a fish might, of course, have 
 been hooked by any one. If fastened in the mouth 
 it might have been landed by any good fisherman, 
 but a small hook in the side of such a powerful fish 
 is quite another matter. I frankly admit I envy my 
 friend his performance immensely, though I trust 
 ungrudgingly, and I am glad to think that I can look 
 upon that fish any day. 
 
 His other adventure was of a different character, and 
 took place two or three years ago in Brittany, where 
 he was sketching, though with a trout rod, of course, 
 among his effects. Lured by representations of a 
 fictitious or over-sanguine character and the apparent 
 moderation of the figure, he rented a stretch of what 
 under happier circumstances no doubt would have 
 been a trout stream. It soon became evident that 
 whatever it might once have been, it no longer merited 
 
 317
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 such a designation. There was nothing in that ; many 
 of us have been taken in by the alluring look of Norman 
 and Breton streams and their eloquent local advocates. 
 I was once myself granted permission by its absentee 
 proprietor to fish a lovely purling stream in Normandy. 
 Indeed there was a keeper on the river bank, and I had 
 a letter to him, so of course considered myself in clover. 
 That keeper was well worth knowing, for he was a great 
 original, so also was he, I fear, a scandalously unfaithful 
 steward. He talked rather big about the poachers, 
 * the brae comers? When I asked him how he handled 
 them he took down a cavalry sabre from over the 
 chimney, drew it from its sheath, and waved it in 
 dramatic fashion. I soon discovered that though it 
 was happy May time there were practically no trout 
 in the stream, whereupon my innkeeper informed me 
 as a dead secret that he could have told me that before, 
 which was annoying, and furthermore that the water 
 was regularly netted by poachers, the keeper himself 
 taking a leading hand in the operation. 
 
 But to return to my friend's much more exciting 
 story two days before his return to England, having 
 abandoned in disgust his leased fishing, he was walking 
 by the side of quite a large river, the name of which 
 I forget, but he describes it as about the size of one 
 of our larger chalk streams, and of rather deep, slow, 
 gliding current. The populace, and it was near a town, 
 plied their rude art upon it with worm, grasshopper, 
 and suchlike lures attached to the clumsiest tackle. 
 And they were all after trout, the river being a natural 
 trout stream. But they scarcely ever caught any- 
 thing, and what inspired my friend to think of making 
 
 318
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 one of such a company under such unpromising con- 
 ditions he hardly knows himself. But at any rate the 
 next day he brought his rod and, luckily, his creel and 
 landing-net along on the off chance of catching a trout. 
 He put up a fine cast and two small flies and proceeded 
 to fish down stream, being by the way a great believer 
 in that method. To his amazement he began to catch 
 fish almost at once, and good ones too, and more 
 wonderful still, to shorten the tale, he had one of the 
 days of his life. He filled his basket with beautiful 
 trout from half a pound to a pound in weight, the 
 natives on the bank in the meanwhile plying their lures 
 in vain, and regarding him with amazed disgust. His 
 catch supplied the whole hotel where he was one of a 
 large number of guests, being August time, which 
 makes his good fortune still more remarkable. Even 
 this, however, was not all. It might conceivably have 
 been one of those rare days in which all the fish in the 
 river seem to go mad, but my friend went back the 
 next day and repeated the performance. This was 
 the last occasion on which he saw the river as his time 
 was up. He hopes to return some day ! The French 
 anglers, some of whom with empty baskets watched 
 this astonishing performance, were thunderstruck, and 
 no wonder, and put the Englishman down as a 
 sorcerer ; for the Bretons doubtless believe in such 
 survivals. With the second day they began to show 
 marked signs of disapproval, and tried to frighten 
 him with stories of a malignant bull, and no doubt 
 they breathed freely when they found the magician 
 had really gone. 
 
 It is a quite remarkable instance of how fish that 
 
 319
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 have been worried to death with clumsy methods will 
 come with avidity at fine tackle properly presented 
 to them. If it had been a dry-fly performance, it 
 would not have been so extraordinary. But my friend 
 fished wet as related, and down stream with two flies. 
 I tell him it is a mercy his wife was with him. For 
 though a wife's evidence in criminal cases is, I believe, 
 inadmissible on her husband's behalf, in fishing cases 
 I regard it as much the most valuable of all. Judging 
 from my own experience of anglers' wives their presence 
 is the most effective curb to the natural growth of 
 a fish story, and they have a marvellous memory 
 for blank days which their men-folk have forgotten. 
 The hero of these well-authenticated triumphs is, as 
 I said, a believer in down-stream fishing. Occasionally 
 he goes into Dorsetshire and fishes a dry-fly water for 
 heavy trout with some dry-fly friends. He tells me 
 he often kills more than they do, with two wet flies 
 down stream. I have tried to make him understand 
 the egregious nature of the crime he is perpetrating. 
 But it is of no use, for he doesn't even know what a 
 dry-fly purist means. 
 
 Higher up the Till in the Chillingham castle water 
 the trout would appear to hold their own more success- 
 fully against the grayling, judging from a fair basket 
 I once killed there. Fortunately for any angler who 
 has that privilege the river doesn't run through the 
 park. A Welsh bull is bad enough, but from what 
 I have seen and heard of these famous wild cattle a 
 day's fishing among them would not justify the classic 
 designation of angling as the contemplative man's 
 recreation. 
 320
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 The great steep wall of the Cheviot, rising here to 
 two thousand seven hundred feet, beautifully over- 
 hangs the flat vale of the meandering Till, and but a 
 mill or so distant from its course. The rugged hill 
 of Homildon is the first buttress of the range, rock- 
 ribbed and heath-crowned, where the long-bow 
 achieved probably the greatest triumph in its whole 
 history ; for here seventeen hundred trained archers, 
 mainly Welsh mercenaries under Hotspur, utterly 
 paralysed, disorganised, and finally routed a brave 
 Scottish army of ten thousand men, by their terrible 
 and disciplined shooting. In the meadows, too, by 
 the Till under Wooler lay the English army the night 
 before the eve of Flodden, soaked to the skin and out 
 of provisions. High above the river, seven miles to 
 the northward, the ridge of Flodden rears its fir- 
 crowned head, easily visible from here, as were the 
 camp-fires and tents of the Scottish army on its summit 
 to the victors of that immortal fight. And as we travel 
 down stream towards it for three miles, the Glen comes 
 winding in beside the wide woods of Ewart, planted 
 by Count Horace St. Paul, who, banished in youth for 
 killing a man in a duel, went from its peel tower manor- 
 house to achieve fame as a soldier and diplomatist in the 
 Austrian service, eventually returning to live and die 
 under its roof about a century ago. And lower down 
 still, where the river growing deeper and slower earned 
 from Scott its title of the ' Sullen Till,' we have Ford 
 castle, where King James slept before the battle of 
 Flodden, and where Surrey on the morning of the fight 
 crossed the swollen ford. And then, leaving on our 
 left the long slope of Branxton hill on which eighty 
 x 321
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 thousand men met in the fiercest combat ever waged 
 on English soil, when twenty thousand fell in about 
 three hours, we are soon at Twizel bridge within a 
 short mile of Tweed. 
 
 Here, for some distance above and again below the 
 broad stone arch over which the advanced right wing 
 of Surrey's army crossed to double back on Flodden, 
 the Till, abandoning her gentle habit, moves more 
 briskly through woody gorges. And, as might be 
 expected, the trout again assert themselves not only 
 in numbers but in size, probably reinforced from the 
 neighbouring Tweed. A local friend of mine not so 
 very long ago had a wonderful day here in the castle 
 water, including a dozen or more fish of a pound 
 weight and upwards. Mr. Henderson tells of a day 
 affording a succession of much heavier trout even 
 than this seventy years ago. The roach nuisance, too, 
 is being felt in the Till, which is not surprising, seeing 
 that it has become a very serious matter in the Tweed, 
 much worse indeed than the grayling, whose increas- 
 ing prominence in the great Border river is deplored 
 by many. The roach is supposed to have been 
 introduced by pike fishermen using it as live bait. 
 Their fecundity is phenomenal, and is a cause, I believe, 
 of real anxiety to the Fishery Board, who institute 
 vigorous campaigns against them. The objection to 
 grayling is, of course, relative and qualified. But 
 that the fish food of bright Border rivers should be 
 laid under heavy tribute by roach is an almost un- 
 thinkable outrage. The Till, as I have said, makes 
 a great effort in its last rush through Twizel woods 
 into Tweed to redeem its character for sloth. But
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 Tweed is not to be taken in by this death-bed repent- 
 ance, and everybody knows the little passage-of-arms 
 the two rivers engage in at their confluence : 
 
 Said Tweed to Till, 
 
 { What gars ye rin sae still ? ' 
 
 Said Till to Tweed, 
 
 'Though ye rin wi' speed 
 
 And I rin slaw, 
 
 Whar ye droon ae man 
 
 I droon twa.' 
 
 The world hears much of Tweed salmon, but nothing 
 of Tweed trout. They are noble but capricious 
 fellows, not scarce monsters, but fairly plentiful, and 
 strenuous pounders too, fighting as becomes the fish of 
 such a river. Between Kelso and Berwick, at any rate, 
 this usually implies a boat, and when Tweed trout 
 come on the feed it means an hour or two of sport 
 such as seems to live in the memory. Even within 
 four miles of Berwick such hours and moments are not 
 infrequent, and anglers well known to me are some- 
 times thus blest. For myself, fairly well as I know 
 the river, opportunities for this further intimacy 
 have been withheld. Life, alas ! unless you have 
 nothing else to do, is much too short for all the pleasant 
 schemes that hope lays up for some future day. The 
 same, so far as I am concerned, applies to the Coquet, 
 though the disrepute as regards trout into which 
 that famous river has of late years fallen may alleviate 
 one's regrets. No river in the past has been so clpsely 
 identified with Northumbrian angling lore as the 
 Coquet. None have inspired such a garland of praise 
 in prose and verse from Northumbrian pens, and there 
 
 3 2 3
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 is no stream in the county more calculated to do so. 
 Salmon and sea trout are, I believe, more plentiful 
 than of old, and to this fact some attribute the noto- 
 rious decline over much of it of a once great trout 
 river. If this indeed be so, it is a pity. The few days 
 on which * sea fish,' as they call them in Northumber- 
 land, afford sport are a poor exchange for the months 
 in which trout give pleasure to a greater number, 
 and, on the whole, demand more skill in the catching. 
 The once fine water from Rothbury down is now full, 
 I am told, of fingerlings and samlets, and respectable 
 fish are hard to come at. The Coquet has been the 
 treasured haunt of many famous north countrymen. 
 Bewick, the great wood engraver, for one was a keen 
 fisherman, and its constant habitue; so were Roxby, 
 Joseph Crawhall, Henderson, Doubleday, and others. 
 Its streams and pools are beautiful, and its waters 
 carry to the sea the fine colour of their Cheviot 
 source. There are no grayling, nor, I think, any coarse 
 fish here, nor is there any contamination, nor any 
 serious poaching. And it is as melancholy, as well as a 
 little mysterious, that so renowned a stream should 
 have fallen away so deplorably, as all its friends report. 
 Any one familiar with the Great Northern route to 
 Edinburgh will recall that beautiful glimpse of the 
 Coquet where the train strides it a few miles south 
 of Alnwick, and what a fine view seaward you get 
 just here of Warkworth castle, whose noble ruins are 
 reflected in the lowest reach of the river. 
 
 Coquet for Northumbrians, like the Scots, often 
 drop the article in alluding to their rivers, conveying 
 therein a pleasant suggestion of intimacy and affection 
 
 3H
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 Coquet, then, rises also in the Cheviots, not far from 
 Rede, and pursues her way through the same class of 
 scenery and boasts the same stirring story as the 
 Tynes. But none, as before stated, have by anglers 
 been so much sung of, Robert Roxby in the first half 
 of the last century being perhaps the laureate of the 
 band, and certainly the editor of most of the Coquet 
 poets : 
 
 I will sing of the Coquet, the dearest of themes, 
 The haunt of the fisher, the first of a' streams ; 
 There's nane like the Coquet in a' the king's land 
 From the white cliffs of Dover to North Britain's strand. 
 
 The elder Crawhall, artist, poet, angler, and humorist, 
 is the most famous of the Coquet group, and inspirer 
 of Charles Keene, scores of whose well-known jokes 
 in Punch came from his Newcastle friend. With the 
 latter's Completest Angling Booke all fishermen of a 
 literary turn are familiar, at least by name. I fear if 
 these worthies were to return to the Coquet to-day 
 they would not sound the eulogistic note with any- 
 thing like such fervour. But I am sure till quite 
 recent times it was not undeserved. 
 
 A fine, lusty, peat-tinged stream, after a long 
 pilgrimage through fern and heath-clad uplands, 
 amid which Scott laid the opening chapters of Rob Roy 
 and the home of Diana Vernon, the river finally leaves 
 the Cheviots at the pleasant town of Rothbury, which 
 nestles beneath their outer ramparts, just here of 
 considerable height and more than considerable shape- 
 liness. Thence for fifteen miles the river urges its 
 streams over a clean, rocky bottom, through the 
 
 325
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 undulating lowlands of Northumberland to the sea. 
 Coquet, it may be said again, holds the affections of 
 Northumbrians, I think, above all their rivers. There 
 is a sort of feeling that it is, even more so than others, 
 their representative stream, partly perhaps because it 
 flows through the heart of the county, and is more 
 familiar than the remoter dales of Tyne. Like them, 
 its glens are rich in story, and thickly strewn with the 
 relics of a fighting age, while it finds its fitting end 
 beneath the great star-shaped keep with eight lofty- 
 clustered towers that was built by Hotspur's father 
 in the third Edward's stirring days. Warkworth was 
 the chief seat of the Percies before Alnwick was restored 
 in the eighteenth century. It is a deathless reminder 
 of two great English victories Crecy and Neville's 
 Cross ; for it was while the king was winning the 
 former that Henry Percy, Warden of the March, won 
 the latter against the invading Scots, for which the 
 money to build Warkworth was the royal and well- 
 earned reward. Here, too, it will be remembered, 
 Shakespeare lays the opening scene in Henry IF ., 
 when Hotspur's wife Kate tries to worm from him the 
 secret of those moody humours and restless nights 
 which ultimately led to the cataclysm at Shrewsbury, 
 and ended there for good. 
 
 The observant railway traveller before invoked 
 will be also familiar with the little seaside town of 
 Alnmouth, clustering picturesquely above the Aln, as 
 well as with the winding course of that river through 
 its green meadows from high-perched embattled 
 Alnwick to the sea. There is a fair run of sea trout 
 and salmon up here, and much of the water is accessible 
 326
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 through an association, like so much of the lower 
 Coquet. Below Alhwick castle, however, in that 
 beautiful demesne of Hulne park, the Aln has become 
 more of a brawling, rocky trout stream, and for two 
 or three miles sings through as charming a blend of 
 art and nature as one might wish to see. Having ex- 
 hausted the beauties of the park, which contains lofty 
 hills, gracefully clad with fine timber, native and 
 exotic, and two ruined abbeys, besides herds of deer and 
 Highland cattle, I returned there upon another day 
 with permission to fish it, in which matter the duke 
 is very generous. I had been told by my angling 
 friends and acquaintances in the country that a good 
 day there meant forty to fifty quarter-pounders. 
 Mine was a September day in a dry spell. I did not 
 look for any such returns, and was not disappointed 
 with a dozen and a half, for the compensations of fish- 
 ing amid that beautiful Arcady were considerable. 
 It struck me as rather odd that the trout were nearly 
 all the same size, but it suggested the possibility that 
 there were rather too many of them in the stream. 
 
 I had no intention of writing an angling guide to 
 the rivers of Northumberland in the space of a chapter, 
 but I find that the Wansbeck is literally the only one 
 in the county I have made no allusion to, and it has 
 always a rather tender place in my memory, though 
 I have only fished it once in my life. It is not for the 
 achievements of that solitary day it holds this cherished 
 position, though those being satisfactory no doubt 
 lent flavour to the occasion. But at the moment I 
 had just returned from a residence abroad of ten years, 
 which in early life is a long time. I had caught, to be 
 
 327
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 sure, heaps of trout, and those, moreover, in no 
 unpleasant exile. I had caught them, too, amid sur- 
 roundings that for beauty as such could not be 
 surpassed, I believe, upon the face of the earth. They 
 had come out of pellucid rocky streams, amid mountain 
 forests of rich foliage and exquisite splendour, thickly 
 carpeted with the dazzling bloom of rhododendrons and 
 kalmia. I had almost come to fancy myself cured of all 
 regrets for the streams and scenes of youth ; and I had 
 not thrown a fly on a British stream since I had reeled 
 up my line on the Whiteadder for the last time one 
 April day just a decade ago. On the occasion in ques- 
 tion I had run up very soon after my return home to 
 Newcastle to spend a couple of days with the most 
 intimate friend of my childhood and youth. We had, 
 in fact, been almost reared together, and then after- 
 wards as school friends on those rare occasions when 
 cricket or football was in abeyance and a whole day 
 was available, had been wont to make adventurous 
 pilgrimages in pursuit of trout or even meaner prey. 
 So it seemed only fitting and natural when I found 
 that one of my two days in the north was set aside for 
 a fishing excursion and that old days for they seemed 
 very much so at two-and-thirty were to be thus 
 commemorated. It was a felicitous coincidence, 
 too, that that very last day with the trout in the 
 old country, above alluded to, had been enjoyed 
 together. 
 
 So off we went by an evening train from Newcastle. 
 For myself I knew nothing whatever of Northumber- 
 land at that period, while my companion from the 
 nature of his duties already knew every inch of it. 
 328
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 We changed at Morpeth, took the branch line, and got 
 out at what I have since identified as Scott's Gap 
 station. We spent the night at a friend's house near 
 by, and in the morning sallied forth to a tributary of 
 the Wansbeck, which I remember was in capital order. 
 What I most recall, however, is the delight of the old 
 sensations once again, and how it all came upon 
 me in a moment that, without admitting it, I had 
 been in a trouting sense homesick all these years. It 
 was a cool, breezy summer day, with glints of sunshine, 
 and the raindrops still sparkled in the leaves and upon 
 the grass. There were scents you never get a whiff 
 of out of England, and a chorus of sound you never 
 hear out of Britain. There were the grey but glorious 
 moors once more, the wide half-boggy pasture fields, 
 the soft, fresh, moist air that is nowhere else quite the 
 same. A fig for your unbroken sunshine and tangled 
 forests, with or without the snakes and mosquitoes 
 and all the rest of it, I shouted in my thoughts at any 
 rate, and meant it and still mean it ; for I was a true- 
 born Briton after all, and there is no prejudice in these 
 worthy ingrained preferences. They are much too 
 deep for anything so common as that. Give to me 
 always and all the time the atmosphere that so vastly 
 helps to impart an indescribable scenic charm to 
 Britain, as every discerning alien admits ; that covers 
 it with a sward which is to them beyond anything they 
 have ever dreamed of, that gives a mystery to the moun- 
 tain and a character to the moor, all and absolutely their 
 own. Let the hot-house folk who do not understand 
 these things, degenerate sons of a northern race, hunt 
 the sun around the world, and curse if they choose what 
 
 329
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 to sound country-loving folk at any rate, and for anglers 
 beyond any doubt, is the finest climate in the world ! 
 
 I remember with what delight I heard the curlews 
 call once more and the plovers cry and flushed a black- 
 cock in the * white grass ' on the way to the stream. 
 And what joy it was to see again the grey wagtail 
 preening herself on the shingle of the brook edge, the 
 sandpiper scudding along its surface, the white- 
 breasted dipper nodding at one as of old from a 
 mossy rock, the kindly odours, the gracious look of 
 the brook-side that never knew the meaning of those 
 scorching agencies, fierce heat or fierce cold as most 
 of the world understands them, all seemed to welcome 
 one home again as to a place where one really belongs. 
 
 Yes, indeed, this was the true country for the angler 
 or the sportsman of any kind, where there is practically 
 not a day in the whole year when active out-door life 
 is unavailable ! It was kind, too, of the fish to signalise 
 such an otherwise auspicious day, since it was a July 
 one, by rising really well. At any rate we had half a 
 basketful apiece of sizeable little trout, when the 
 exigencies of train-time put an end to our sport. The 
 only cloud over this to me rather memorable day was 
 the feeling that it was but an interlude not to be re- 
 peated perhaps for years. Had I dreamed it was but 
 the prelude to thirty years, at any rate, of reasonable 
 enjoyment of such delights, what a day it would have 
 been ! On the other hand, what a day had I known 
 that, when we parted that evening on the Morpeth 
 platform, I should never see my old friend and play- 
 mate again in this world ! Being for the first reason 
 in rather sentimental mood, I sat down when I got 
 330
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND 
 
 home and wrote a little sketch entitled * A Northum- 
 brian stream, from a long-exiled angler's point of view,' 
 and sent it to Mr. John Morley, as he then was, who 
 as editor of the Pall Mall and Macmillan's Magazine 
 was always most kindly hospitable to my intermittent 
 contributions on out-door matters, and it was printed 
 next day. 
 
 331
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 X 
 
 THE WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 NOBODY in the south has ever heard of the 
 Whiteadder, and that very fact to my think- 
 ing is one of its many charms. There would 
 be nothing whatever in such obscurity if this were a 
 river in Sutherlandshire or the Hebrides. But it is 
 remarkable that a trouting stream which runs a broad, 
 brawling course for forty miles, and at its best points 
 is virtually within sound of the London and Edinburgh 
 mail trains, should thus have kept itself to itself, and 
 its very name unknown to the public ear. For that 
 a hungry angling public, outside that which dwells 
 between, let us say, Edinburgh and Newcastle in- 
 clusive, has never heard of it is a fact that a sufficiently 
 wide acquaintance among the fraternity enables me 
 to set down with tolerable confidence. The humour 
 of the situation and I think there is some humour 
 in it is in no way lessened by the further fact that 
 this really noble river has been for all time free to 
 any one who likes to fish it, the whole way from its 
 wild infancy in the high moors to its junction with 
 the Tweed in sight of Berwick. To clinch the matter, 
 lest such an incredible state of affairs should breed a 
 suspicion in the reader's mind that the river is un- 
 332
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 worthy of attention, I may say at once that in almost 
 any part of it baskets of from twelve to fifteen pounds 
 of trout are killed tolerably often in every season. 
 I fancy most of us are just a little more than content 
 if we are fortunate enough to stagger home under 
 so respectable a burden from any club, association, 
 or preserved water in the hill countries of England or 
 Wales ! I must hasten, however, to take the edge off 
 any justifiable scepticism of the southern reader by 
 affirming that the Whiteadder is the finest natural trout 
 stream of its class known to me in this island, though 
 the Cardiganshire Teifi may tug perhaps a little at 
 my conscience in giving utterance to this pious opinion. 
 But then the latter is mainly preserved, though against 
 this must be set the lamentable fact that nefarious 
 poachers abound in Wales. 
 
 In south-eastern Scotland, on the other hand, if 
 rod fishermen are as legion, trout poaching, for that 
 very reason an anti-popular pursuit, is tolerably well 
 kept under. If I had to fish for a wager which 
 Heaven forbid ! and had the choice of the Teifi or 
 the Whiteadder, I should certainly choose the former, 
 merely as a preserved river, while the latter, judged by 
 a south country standard, is flogged to death. But this 
 estimate of the Whiteadder as the finest trout stream 
 known to me is formed on two accounts : firstly, 
 as presenting a surface continuously and uninterrupt- 
 edly alluring to cast one's flies upon, and secondly, 
 for the astounding fertility which has resisted the 
 unchecked onslaught of generations of skilled anglers. 
 I should be inclined to think it possessed some magic 
 qualities, some supernatural fecundity, if it were not 
 
 333
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 for some other streams of the Eastern March, en- 
 dowed with the same amazingly recuperative powers, 
 such, for example, as the Blackadder and the Leader. 
 Whether we have any rivers in Yorkshire, Wales, or 
 Devonshire that would stand this treatment it would 
 be extremely interesting to know, though futile to 
 inquire. For neither is any opportunity for comparison 
 afforded, nor is anywhere to be found such a fishing 
 population among the humbler classes. But if these 
 Border rivers have in truth any such exceptionally 
 productive qualities, there is absolutely nothing in 
 their appearance to distinguish them from scores of 
 similar ones south of the Tweed. They have their 
 duplicates by the dozen in other hill and mountain 
 regions. There is nothing in either the wild moor- 
 lands of Berwickshire or in its cultivated lowlands to 
 suggest greater fecundity in its trout streams than in 
 the moors and lowlands of Yorkshire, Montgomery, 
 or Cardigan. What, then, can it be, and is all our 
 rather strict and almost timid preservation of rapid 
 waters against fair fishing just so much moonshine ? 
 I have maintained in a former chapter that a good deal 
 of it is. But the Whiteadder, the Blackadder, and 
 the Leader confound me utterly, knowing intimately, 
 as I do, the tremendous toll that is annually levied on 
 them, not merely with fly, but with bait of every 
 description. 
 
 My first acquaintance with the Whiteadder was 
 made on leaving college, now, alas ! over forty years 
 ago, and the study of agriculture from the vantage- 
 point of a famous East Lothian farm was the indirect 
 cause of introduction.' I had never before been north 
 
 334
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 of the Tweed, and an otherwise pleasant prospect 
 was not a little clouded by the report of an old comrade 
 and most skilful angler, with two years' experience of 
 my future quarters, that there was no fishing within 
 reach. Now to go to Scotland and leave all trouting 
 behind seemed an absurd anachronism, keen fisherman 
 and hardy soul as I knew my friend to be, and not few 
 the miles that we had tramped together after trout. 
 But I took some comfort in the recollection that he 
 was not of an inquiring mind, nor alert for things 
 outside the range of a day's compass, though he could 
 make this a pretty wide one. So I reached out for 
 the map, and was at once relieved to find that I had 
 measured him correctly ; for within a dozen miles 
 by surface scale of my future domicile there showed 
 dark upon the map the expansive uplands of the 
 Lammermuirs, honeycombed with the thin trail of 
 streams. Even at one-and-twenty I was at once 
 topographer and angler enough to know that on the 
 Scottish border those streams spelled trout, and that, 
 humanly speaking, nothing not easily surmountable 
 would prevent my some day or other getting at them. 
 And thus of course it proved. When after a long 
 winter day's journey and a late arrival I looked out 
 in the morning from my bedroom window over the 
 flat East Lothian land, there they were sure enough, 
 the hills of the map sweeping the whole horizon 
 dark rolling masses, obviously grouse moors, riven at 
 intervals with deep ravines, and, distant though they 
 were, eloquent to any fisherman's eye of potential 
 trout streams. That was January, and such a cold 
 one. I well remember that the roar of the curling- 
 
 335
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 stones with its accompanying babel of hearty Doric 
 echoed all through the month and far into February. 
 Nobody down on the coast knew anything to speak of 
 about the interior of these hills, or indeed anything 
 about trout, as is the way of local people. But before 
 the end of March, so eager was I, in that glorious hey- 
 day of youth, when all the world was fresh and new, 
 an oyster to be opened, I had already discovered a 
 snug inn in the heart of the moors, and was actually 
 hauling out, to my amazement, big bull-trout kelts 
 in the finest-looking river I had as yet ever fished. 
 As Devonshire trout rose well in March, and as this 
 to my eyes seemed a replica of Exmoor, I had assumed 
 they would be equally accommodating here. But to 
 shorten the story, I was in due course on terms of 
 more or less intimacy with most of the streams and 
 burns in these glorious hills, finding means of getting 
 to them for two or three days at a time, on and off, 
 throughout two whole fishing seasons. They were all 
 free water then, as they mainly are now, and despite 
 their solitude and the roughness of the few roads 
 that led to them were, by comparison with our closely 
 preserved streams of the south-west, heavily fished. 
 Edinburgh, Berwick, and Newcastle contained anglers 
 galore as they do to-day, though no doubt the great 
 increase in population of the first and last-named has 
 extended automatically to the fraternity, while the 
 motor and the cycle, even with steep and awkward 
 roads, must have made their mark. 
 
 But even forty odd years ago those truly Scottish 
 institutions, the ' Fushin Clubs ' of Edinburgh and 
 elsewhere, often held their competitions on the best 
 
 336
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 and least accessible portions of the Whiteadder and 
 its tributaries. A good deal of exaggeration, however, 
 is indulged in regarding this increase of fishermen. 
 Ten years before those here told of, that celebrated 
 Scottish angler Stewart, whose range included the 
 Whiteadder, wrote in his little classic that fishermen 
 had so multiplied, the future of sport on the Border 
 was most problematical. I think the fifties and sixties 
 did witness a very great impetus to fishing, helped 
 partly no doubt by railroad facilities. But at any rate 
 in the seventies all these open waters were full of fish. 
 As indicating the attitude then, and even still, of the 
 lowland angler, Stewart regarded open rivers as a 
 matter of course. I don't think he even discusses the 
 closing of waters in his remarks on the future of fishing. 
 That rivers could be depleted by fair fishing, which 
 here includes the worm, never, I think, entered his 
 head. Such a point of view rarely occurs to the 
 typical lowland angler even to-day, and I believe in 
 the main he is right. What change, if any, has taken 
 place in these streams since the ' good old days ' when 
 I fished them as a youth, I don't feel qualified to 
 say, interesting as such a comparison would and must 
 be to any one concerned with the welfare of trout. 
 But here is the local point of view, and apparently its 
 results illustrated. 
 
 A few years ago, after some thirty-five of complete 
 absence from this Border country, I found myself 
 standing on a bridge over the Whiteadder in the 
 Berwickshire low country. It was, in fact, my first day 
 on Scottish soil and first sight of the Whiteadder since 
 youth. My host and companion was a local land- 
 Y 337
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 owner who had been one of our little fishing company 
 in the old days. He had long ceased to be a fisher- 
 man, though the father of several. Nor were we at 
 the moment concerned at all with such things, but 
 were merely talking over old times and watching some 
 trout rising under an over-arching willow, and some- 
 thing like this passed between us. 
 
 * All is of course changed now,' said I ; l and the 
 river, no doubt, preserved up to its source ? ' 
 
 ' Preserved ? no ; why should it be ? ' replied my 
 friend in a tone of surprise. 
 
 * Do you mean to tell me, then, that with all the 
 modern development and demand for trout fishing, 
 things here are still as they were when we were young ? ' 
 [I might add that a big village of a thousand souls lay 
 in sight upon the ridge above, to say nothing of a 
 paper-mill on the river employing about a hundred 
 hands.] 
 
 ' Yes, of course they are ; what else do you ex- 
 pect ? So far as I know, the river is practically free 
 up to its source. Why not ? ' 
 
 Well, like any one else from south of the Tweed, at 
 the beginning of the twentieth century I very natur- 
 ally never expected anything of the kind. This was 
 during a brief run of a couple of days across the Border. 
 The following summer I revisited south-eastern 
 Scotland seriously, and took the further opportunity 
 of paying a longish visit to the upper Whiteadder, 
 not wholly, since the month was August, on fishing 
 bent, but with the prospect of at least throwing an 
 occasional line on its once familiar streams. 
 
 I had not assuredly forgotten my old friend's utter- 
 
 338
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 ances. But twelve months perhaps had weakened 
 their effect, and, moreover, he had himself long lost 
 interest in fishing. So when in Edinburgh I turned 
 into Hardy's (Mrs. Hogg, I found, had passed into 
 oblivion) to get some flies, and still somewhat sceptical 
 asked the manager if the waters of Whiteadder were 
 still free, and if so, whether there were any trout left. 
 
 ' Free ? ' said the blunt Scot, ' what else would they 
 be, but for a trifle of water here and there in the 
 policies ? Any trout left ! I killed sixteen pounds 
 to my ain rod on the zist of May last between Abbey 
 and Ellemford. Aye, yon 's a gran' wee river yet ! ' 
 
 If I suspected some licence of speech at the time, 
 I soon came to understand that there was no ground 
 whatever for such doubts. It was then, as I have said, 
 August, and I did not expect to kill sixteen pounds 
 or anything approaching it. But while up there we 
 had one great rain. And when the flood had run off 
 I took a day on the stretch above Abbey St. Bathans, 
 so familiar to me in youth. A companion was with 
 me, and together we nearly filled my basket, which 
 held about fourteen pounds of this class of trout or 
 grayling. We had nothing up to a pound, though 
 there are plenty very much heavier than that in the 
 river, but a goodly number of sizeable third- and 
 half-pounders were among the lot, and as the interest 
 of the matter lies in its being a heavily fished open 
 river, not in our particular doings, it may be worth 
 stating that we returned probably a hundred small 
 fish to the water. I have fished the Whiteadder many 
 times since then, but my own doings are of no im- 
 mediate purport. It is more to the point here that 
 
 339
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 I have seen and heard at close quarters in the past few 
 years a great deal of this Border fishing and realise 
 what a world unto itself it is, how large the craft looms 
 in the life of the country, and how different its con- 
 ditions are to the comparatively exclusive atmosphere 
 that pervades the trout streams even of Yorkshire, 
 Wales, and the south-west. 
 
 Now, a trout-fishing club in the south means per- 
 haps a dozen or so well-to-do gentlemen who rent a 
 stretch of river and carefully preserve it, and probably 
 nourish it periodically with fresh stock. A fishing 
 club in Scotland represents a society of anglers, gentle 
 or simple, citizens let us say of Edinburgh, which 
 exists mainly for competitions, terminated not seldom 
 by banquets of, in the old days at any rate, a most con- 
 vivial character ; for no men can dine together more 
 joyously and altogether felicitously than Scotsmen. 
 But as regards the Scottish fishing club, its main raison 
 d'etre, as I have before remarked, is competition and 
 the winning of medals and other trophies, a custom 
 not only alien but positively hateful in principle to 
 the southern trout-fisher. But there it is ' whatever,' 
 and the Scotsman likes it. There are scores of such 
 clubs in the north, and on the day appointed for a 
 competition by any one of them its members take the 
 train, not generally, unless specified, for the same 
 river for perhaps obvious reasons, but a choice is given 
 of any open water. Away they then flit in singles, 
 braces, or trios to various portions of a score of streams 
 which custom has kept free, and that owners, even if 
 they so desired, would probably find difficult to close. 
 There is an old and strong popular tradition in southern 
 
 34
 
 Photo, A. P. Hope 
 
 THE WHITEADDER AT HUTTON CASTLE 
 
 Photo, A. P. Hope 
 THE WHITEADDER NEAR ITS JUNCTION WITH TWEED
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 Scotland of a right of access to trouting waters. It 
 may or may not be justifiable. It is, of course, not 
 always recognised, but there it is anyway, and many 
 rivers testify to the fact that they can stand usage 
 without damage to the owners, and at the same time 
 provide immense pleasure to a great number of worthy 
 sportsmen. Some free waters, to be sure, are under 
 1 associations,' but the term has not the usual southern 
 significance of say half-a-crown or five shillings a day, 
 but merely the payment of some such nominal amount 
 per annum, the large number of subscribers thereby 
 providing for the maintenance of a watcher. Almost 
 the only potential enemies of trout are the miners, 
 who repair in groups to these waters for two or three 
 days at a time, sleeping in the open, and though keen 
 enough rod fishermen they are not above making up 
 for poor sport by nefarious practices. The local angler 
 bears no jealousy whatever towards his fellow-sports- 
 man, wherever he may hail from, but he loathes and 
 suspects the miner, whether from Midlothian or from 
 Lanarkshire, and probably with good cause. 
 
 When the competitors return at evening from 
 Berwickshire, the Lothians, Selkirk, Roxburgh, or 
 Peebles to the headquarters of their club, the baskets 
 are weighed in, the victors are proclaimed, and the 
 day sometimes, as related, wound up with a banquet. 
 The results (not of the banquet) are published next 
 morning in the Scotsman, along with the golfing, 
 bowling, and cricket matches. Almost every day 
 throughout the season their figures may be read ; 
 and any southerner, sceptical as to the capacity of 
 the trout to hold his own and make good his losses, 
 
 34 1
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 can there find weekly, if not daily, proof of it, and 
 account for what to him no doubt would appear an 
 insoluble problem, as best he may. 
 
 Now, there is a delightful little stream, to wit, the 
 Eye, that I used frequently to fish in youth. It 
 twists in and out of the Great Northern main line for 
 many miles, where the latter leaves the sea-coast of 
 Berwickshire and dives through the skirts of Lammer- 
 muir on its way to the flat plain of Lothian and the 
 Scottish capital. Every third person who goes to 
 Scotland, otherwise almost every third person one 
 knows, keeps close company with the little river for 
 about a quarter of an hour. But I have never in my 
 life met a southerner who ever took note of it, and 
 mighty few who have ever so much as heard of the 
 Lammermuirs, unless vaguely as the scene of a famous 
 opera and a great novel. This, however, is purely by 
 the way, and not concerned with the modest but 
 beautiful little stream here alluded to. I was talking 
 to a local sportsman on its banks only the other day 
 as a fast train, loaded with Highland-bound tourists 
 and sportsmen, roared by us towards Dunbar and 
 Edinburgh, and expressing a hope that it was as good 
 as it was in the days of yore. 
 
 ' Oh, aye, it 's a gran' wee river yet ; but maybe ye 
 havena heerd we 've formed an association ? ' 
 
 * It 's no longer free water then,' said I. 
 
 ' Well, it 's nae exactly free ; we Ve got the associa- 
 tion, ye ken.' 
 
 1 What is the subscription ? ' 
 
 * A shullin' a year, jest.' 
 
 ' Is that enough to keep a watcher ? ' 
 
 34 2
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 * Na, we Ve nae watcher ; there 's nae need.' 
 ' How do you spend the money, then ? ' 
 
 * Weel, in competeetions ; first and second prizes, 
 an' the like o' that : an' then we hae a dinner.' 
 
 This was at Grant's House station on the main line, 
 where the little Eye comes singing out of the Lammer- 
 muirs to follow the railway southward, as related, for 
 many miles. The village, including an inn vastly 
 improved since I used to frequent it in times remote, 
 is the nearest railroad point to the more beautiful and 
 less fished upper waters of the Whiteadder. These 
 can be reached in four miles by a hilly road, and in 
 charge of the railroad crossing where it leaves the 
 village there was recently, and may be still, for aught 
 I know, a superannuated porter with a prodigious 
 turn for eloquence and anecdote a burly, round- 
 faced hirsute being, with a tremendous far-carrying 
 voice, a passion for fishing, and a deathless grievance 
 against the company for putting him where he is, or 
 was. 
 
 He wasn't everybody's friend. If you had shouted 
 at him to hurry up with the gates, I doubt if he would 
 ever have spoken to you again. Indeed, I don't think 
 he was popular with the hill farmers, the dog-cart 
 men not for any official shortcomings, but for his 
 passion for conversation. It so fell out that during 
 a quite recent summer I was constantly going back 
 and forth through his barrier, and being then mainly 
 concerned with fishing, and furthermore possessed of 
 a fatal weakness for roadside ' cracks ' with originals 
 of all sorts, I was practically annexed by this one, 
 and seldom got away under ten minutes. He had 
 
 343
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 apparently fished every stream and burn within reach 
 of the various ramifications of the North British rail- 
 road system on which he had spent his life. On each 
 and all of them he had performed deeds of derring-do 
 with fly and worm, to say nothing of the various 
 grubs and beetles dear to the heart of the Border 
 angler. The precise shade of a hackle for this river, 
 the touch of gold tinsel beloved by the trout of that 
 one all such things as these, the garnered store of 
 the hard-won leisure hours of an enthusiast, were the 
 burden of his talk to willing, and I dare say to many 
 unwilling, listeners. He had known many famous 
 Border anglers, and was fond of recalling everything 
 he had said to them and all that they had said to him 
 on the unfailing topic. There was plenty of time, 
 too, for such indulgence, as mighty few wheeled traps 
 went through the gates to face the narrow, toilsome 
 road across the hills beyond them. For myself I 
 was generally cycling on these occasions, and as the 
 ascent rose steeply from the crossing, one couldn't 
 finish the business by mounting and riding away, but 
 had to push for half a mile, which gave our eloquent 
 friend a chance to keep abreast, and continue the record 
 of his past triumphs and his present grievances for 
 just so far as he dare wander from his post. He was 
 always deeply interested, too, in the news from the 
 Whiteadder, which river, poor soul, he never any 
 longer got even a sight of. If the sport had been 
 indifferent he would tell you the precise reason for 
 it, and that he had never expected anything else. 
 If, on the other hand, you had done well, he had all 
 along been confident that such would be the case, and 
 
 344
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 had remarked to himself frequently throughout his 
 passing hours and between the thunder of the lightning 
 trains, ' It 's a' richt wi' the fushin' ; the trouts 'ull be 
 jes' takin' fine up yonder the day.' There was some- 
 thing pathetic about this stranded old angler and his 
 crowded memories. The relation of them, however, 
 together with his ever-abiding professional grievance, 
 the nature of which I never could rightly grasp, must 
 have helped to keep him from wearying in the passive 
 sense, if not in the active one, as he proved something 
 of a terror to the softer-hearted wayfarer. 
 
 Now, the Whiteadder rises high up on the northern 
 brink of the Lammermuirs. From the top of the high 
 heath-clad ridge, whence spout its infant springs, you 
 look out over the noblest prospect in Scotland. Not 
 the widest perhaps, nor assuredly from a superficial 
 point of view the grandest, though in truth it is both 
 wide and grand enough. But for its significance in 
 things that matter, that stir the heart and quicken the 
 pulse, there is nothing in the Highlands, the Scotland 
 of the tourist and the hotel-keeper, the ghillie, and the 
 sporting lessee that can approach it, for it covers 
 the very heart of the northern kingdom which in the 
 days of old so infinitely outweighed in all that signified 
 its great half-civilised * back country,' if the term is 
 permissible. Below lie spread the rolling plains of 
 Lothian, the finest farmed country in the world, 
 melting away into the massed upstanding heights that 
 mark the site of Edinburgh. And shimmering beyond 
 is the whole length and breadth of the Firth of Forth, 
 washing on its further shore from end to end the entire 
 southern bounds of the ancient kingdom of Fife. 
 
 345
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 And far away behind Edinburgh and the Pentlands 
 rise the dimmer outlines of the Ochils above Stirling, 
 and fainter still, upon a clear day up on the northern 
 horizon, the blue outlines of the Grampians may be 
 plainly seen. 
 
 But the infant Whiteadder, gathering in the peat 
 mosses at one's feet, turns its back upon all this storied 
 country and heads away through the wild heart of 
 these heath-clad hills for the Merse of Berwickshire, 
 to fall eventually into the Tweed three miles above 
 Berwick. It is the last of its tributaries, and the only 
 purely Scottish river to end its course among English 
 meadows. And if this appears for the moment an 
 anachronism, it will be helpful and not amiss to remind 
 the reader that Berwick town and some four miles of 
 adjacent territory is English ground. Running down 
 through mossy valleys, winding deep among rolling 
 grouse moors, its solitude broken here and there by 
 the homesteads of some vast sheep farms, and swollen 
 by many tributaries, the Whiteadder quickly expands 
 into a good-sized river. A dozen miles from its source, 
 and while still far from the southern brink of the moors, 
 you have to get into the water to compass it con- 
 veniently. So far there is practically not a bush upon 
 the bank, and then comes rushing in the Monynut, a 
 beautiful, semi-wooded burn amazingly full of small 
 fish. Below the confluence the policies and hamlet 
 of Abbey St. Bathans entwine themselves on either 
 bank, a delightful oasis of foliage and sequestered 
 habitations amid the great wild sweep of moor and 
 sheep pasture. Here, chastened in spirit by a low 
 weir, the clear amber-tinged waters in broad, quiet 
 
 34 6
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 current run down between the laird's lawns and woods 
 on the one side and the mossy knowes clad with ferns 
 and indigenous oaks upon the other. An ancient little 
 kirk, a manse, and a few scattered cottages make up 
 one of the most idyllic spots in the south of Scotland, 
 in ancient days, as its name implies, a religious settle- 
 ment of which scarce any trace is now left. 
 
 Though but four miles from Grant's House on the 
 main line, it is virtually a cul-de-sac as regards roads, and 
 is entirely shut off from the outer world all, that is to 
 say, but the world of wandering fishermen from both 
 sides of the Border. And as there is almost nowhere 
 nowadays for such wanderers to lay their heads on the 
 upper Whiteadder, very few come up at the back-end 
 of the season, and you may usually have as much water 
 as you could wish for to yourself. From Abbey St. 
 Bathans down to the flat, low country of Berwickshire, 
 the river pursues a romantic and tempestuous course ; 
 chafing in deep-channelled rocky flumes between fern- 
 draped walls and crags all beplumed with waving 
 tufts of birch and rowan, or spreading out in wider 
 streams and pools between the over-arching foliage of 
 great forest trees. Above all these miles of stirring 
 waters with their delightful blend of crag, heather, 
 bracken, and woodland, Cockburn Law lifts its purple 
 crown a thousand feet into the sky. Bird-life is every- 
 where astir. The grouse, the partridge, the pheasant 
 are at close quarters here and in goodly numbers in 
 brake and brae ; cushats, sandpipers, water-ousels, 
 moorhens, wagtails, pied and grey, revel in the lush 
 abundance of everything their hearts most desire by 
 land and water. Broad and deep, too, are some of 
 
 347
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 these swirling pools. Great trout of two, three, and 
 four pounds, grown too wary for capture by any normal 
 lure, swim in their depths and take heavy toll no doubt 
 of the small trout and salmon fry. Some of us tried 
 the sink-and-draw minnow on these presumed canni- 
 bals one afternoon, if only for the good of the river, 
 dropping it through the foliage into deep water. 
 Several times it was seized by one or other of them, 
 but somehow or other, they always contrived when 
 all seemed safe to avoid the final appeal and get rid 
 of the bait without a serious scratch. Great numbers 
 of bull-trout, too, rest here in autumn, though rarely 
 taken on a rod at that season. It is in the spring, 
 when you don't want them, that they take such a 
 violent fancy to your fly. 
 
 My first experience of the Whiteadder in the dim 
 days referred to earlier in this chapter, was almost 
 wholly concerned with these lanky bull-trout kelts, 
 strange beasts as they seemed to us at that callow 
 period. And as to that cold winter in the early 
 seventies, the frost had not long broken and the dust 
 of March had only just begun to fly behind the harrows 
 on the flat Lothian sea-coast, when the fishing fever 
 following Devonian precedents developed its early 
 spring symptoms. The climatic contrast between 
 eastern Scotland and south-western England as 
 regards the dawn of spring was a fact I had not yet 
 grasped. The Lammermuirs, which to me looked 
 exactly like Exmoor from a distance, and incidentally 
 still more so when you got into them, seemed fairly 
 to shout across the Lothian plain that the time had 
 come to be up and doing. My youthful ardour, too, 
 
 348
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 had been whetted by vague but credible reports of fine 
 trout streams such as I had suspected behind that 
 long, dim barrier, all free to the angler. From some 
 adventurous soul in our extremely agricultural neigh- 
 bourhood, who had once made a far journey into the 
 hills, I gathered that the Whiteadder was the principal 
 river, and that a certain small inn upon its banks 
 would provide sufficient accommodation. Referring 
 to the map, I then found that the main line running 
 south from our station to Berwick touched a point 
 within seven miles of the aforesaid inn, namely, at the 
 already mentioned station of Grant's House. There 
 was apparently, however, no road to it for much of the 
 way, nor is there now, and in any case no likelihood 
 of getting a conveyance. In the meantime I had 
 kindled the enthusiasm of an Irish companion of my 
 own age who hailed from the foot of the Slieve Bloom 
 mountains in the Queen's County, and as a fisherman 
 was easily persuaded that he, too, felt those shadowy 
 Lammermuirs calling to him that the trout were on 
 the move. We had a third recruit for our voyage of 
 discovery, an East Anglian of slightly more years, who 
 had never even seen a trout and professed no desire 
 to see one, but as an enthusiastic agriculturalist was 
 consumed with meritorious curiosity to see what 
 manner of a sheep country lay within these mysterious 
 hills that day in and day out bounded our horizon 
 from east to west. So, bearing knapsacks and fishing 
 tackle, we dropped off the train on a cool March 
 morning at the little station called after the man 
 Grant, who in those days kept the only house near it, 
 to wit, the inn. After due inquiry we headed for 
 
 349
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 our destination across the ridges of half-enclosed moor- 
 land since then wholly enclosed that opened on to 
 the wilder Lammermuirs. It was still all very wintry, 
 but I remembered Exmoor and my friend recalled the 
 Slieve Bloom, and how the moorland trout in both 
 were well on the go by now in open weather. The 
 wind at any rate was in the west, if nothing else felt 
 spring-like but the sunshine. We were half-way to 
 Ellemford, our destination upon the hill, in fact, that 
 we had to descend to Abbey St. Bathans when the 
 Whiteadder burst suddenly into view beneath us. We 
 were expecting a little moorland river, and here 
 glittering below, broad and buoyant, for a full half- 
 mile, was a noble stream indeed, a hundred feet wide 
 if it was a foot. That moment abides with me yet. 
 The Irishman and I waved our hats and shouted with 
 delight. The sedate East Anglian, somewhat our 
 senior, looked with more restrained approval on a 
 sample of landscape that to him was a complete 
 novelty. 
 
 So we dropped down into the valley by a steep, 
 rocky brae, nowadays densely covered with plantations, 
 and crossed the broad river by the same high suspension 
 footbridge that I often cross to-day. The stream 
 ran full and strong beneath us, of a clear amber colour, 
 and in good condition. This, indeed, was something 
 like a river ! It was better even than Exmoor, I 
 exclaimed in my joy, while my companion swore by 
 all the saints of Erin that the Slieve Bloom streams 
 could not compare with it, which was quite true, and 
 I came to know them well enough in after years. 
 He wrung me by the hand, and what a grip he had ! 
 350
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 and blessed me then and there upon the swaying 
 bridge. ' To think of it ! ' he cried ; ' I 've been a 
 whole year down yonder without a notion that there 
 was a trout within a hundred miles, and would have 
 been another year but for you, and now look at this ! 
 Glory be to God ! ' We felt like successful explorers 
 who had reached a longed-for but uncertain goal, 
 I in the character of promoter and organiser, the 
 Irishman as a half-doubting but loyal lieutenant. A 
 friendship commenced upon that day which grew 
 intimate beyond the common, and lasted till a quarter 
 of a century later, when the speaker fired his last shot 
 and threw his last fly in my company among his own 
 Irish moors. We had still, however, three miles to 
 travel up the river bank to our inn, our enthusiasm 
 growing as each fresh pool or rocky run displayed 
 itself to our eager gaze. And, indeed, even at this 
 day, as I wander betimes, with or without a rod, up 
 those three miles of unencumbered open water be- 
 tween Abbey and Ellemford, I feel ready at all times 
 to make an oath that there is no finer-looking bit of 
 trout water in the whole kingdom. 
 
 However that may be, we found our inn, which we 
 came afterwards to know so well ; a simple-enough 
 little hostelry by the river bank, now long closed, 
 but in those days not without some modest fame 
 among anglers from Edinburgh to Newcastle. Nowa- 
 days both the bed and board it then afforded would 
 be scouted by the average angler, but we weren't so 
 fastidious in the early seventies. It was owned by a 
 couple in delicate health, but managed by their sister, 
 a rare specimen of the blunt, honest, ready-tongued, 
 
 35 1
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 capable Scottish spinster of those days, a great favourite 
 with her generation of anglers, masterful as became 
 a benignant despot, and always capable of giving a 
 little better than she got in the way of chaff or banter. 
 Her self-sacrificing nobility of character we none of us 
 realised, and I only learned long after she was dead. 
 
 At this first acquaintance the little inn was surprised 
 to see us, as well it may have been, but braced itself 
 to the extent of ham and eggs, and the afternoon lay 
 before us. The East Anglian started off to inspect 
 the nearest sheep-farm, and we with trembling and 
 eager hands rigged up our rods. We could have taken 
 our time, for not a trout responded to our Irish and 
 Devonshire flies, the local patterns not yet having 
 been revealed to us. But it was not the flies that 
 caused us half an hour or so of disappointment, but 
 our own unseasonable appearance and the increasing 
 cold of the day. Of a sudden, however, I heard a 
 shout from the Irishman at the next corner pool, and 
 noticed him waving his spare arm wildly, upon which 
 I hastened to the scene, and found him running back 
 and forth behind a heavy fish that had apparently 
 taken possession of him. The bow of his tie had 
 worked round to the back of his neck a sure sign, I 
 came to know afterwards, even to the very end of his 
 life, that he was in a state of agitation. It was one 
 of the salmon kind, quite obviously, that had shifted 
 his neckgear this time, and in due course we got him 
 safely out on a shelving beach, a three-pounder more 
 or less, but to which of the salmon kind he belonged 
 we had no notion. To shorten the story, we got six 
 of these brutes between us that afternoon, and quite 
 
 352
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 enjoyed ourselves, though we never so much as saw 
 a trout. When we got back to the inn, whose simple 
 proprietors, curiously enough, were not at all fish-wise, 
 we did learn that our fish were bull trout, which to 
 our southern ears meant nothing at all. But being ob- 
 viously of the salmon kind, it did occur to us rather late 
 in the day that they must be kelts, and that it was 
 illegal to kill them. The inn people didn't know 
 anything about this. All they knew about fish was 
 how to cook them, and that they understood to 
 perfection. When we awoke next morning the whole 
 country was under six inches of snow, and we began 
 to realise how previous we had been in our eagerness 
 after the trout, so there was nothing for it now but 
 to go home. The innkeeper proposed to drive us to 
 Duns, five miles off, in his spring cart, whence by a 
 protracted railway journey we could get back to Drem. 
 By this time we had half convinced ourselves that 
 the six big fish, weighing some fifteen pounds between 
 them, were sufficient to bring us red-handed into the 
 police courts. We were determined, however, having 
 nothing else to show, to take them home, if only to 
 save our faces against the gibes of our non-angling 
 household, who had regarded our enterprise as a 
 foolish sort of adventure. Such a display in such 
 unsophisticated quarters would, on the other hand, 
 be a great triumph. And it was now that the Irish- 
 man planned, and quite characteristically, what seemed, 
 if our ideas were correct, a most gorgeous practical 
 joke. Nothing had been said of the supposed illegality 
 of our haul to the East Anglian. And in the characters 
 our little company down in East Lothian chose to 
 z 353
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 attribute to its respective members he was pre- 
 eminently its sedate and serious-minded one, a person 
 proof against every folly of youth, even sport, but who 
 looked on our enthusiasms with kindly toleration and 
 philosophical good-humour, and with something of 
 a twinkling eye. So it was arranged that our im- 
 maculate and unsuspecting friend should go home by 
 dog-cart and train bearing in the most open fashion 
 we could devise our, as we supposed, illegal haul. 
 The price we were to pay for the enjoyment we ex- 
 pected to derive from our nefarious design was a 
 twenty-mile walk home across country, which we pro- 
 fessed the greatest desire for. And as we tramped 
 across the snow-covered moors, and later along the 
 muddy roads of East Lothian, we chuckled horribly 
 
 at the notion of dear old D , of all people in the 
 
 world, being challenged, bantered, and even sum- 
 monsed and led away to durance-vile for flourishing 
 about in a market-town and two or three subsequent 
 railway junctions with an armful of kelts. It seemed 
 simply glorious, and infinitely solaced our long and 
 weary way. Many were the conjectures as to his 
 fate, or at any rate his adventures, as we drew near 
 home, and saw the lights of our common domicile 
 shining through the gloom. Deep, I fear, our dis- 
 appointment when we found our would-be victim 
 composedly smoking his pipe before the fire without 
 a trace of past troubles or discomfort upon his benevo- 
 lent face. The briefest inquiry satisfied us that nothing 
 at all had happened, and the ugly fish were all hanging 
 up safe in the larder, objects of admiration to the rest 
 of the unsophisticated household. If our little joke 
 
 . 354
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 had missed fire for the excellent reason that bull- 
 trout kelts, so far from being illegal booty, were then 
 regarded as undesirables of which the river was well 
 rid, we had at least the domestic triumph of a good 
 basket of what passed, more or less, for salmon. The 
 household ate them with apparent appreciation. The 
 Irishman and I did not take any. We knew enough 
 for that ! 
 
 That was my first experience of the Whiteadder, 
 but many and many a good day I had subsequently 
 with my Irish friend, and others, and we must have 
 taken many a hundred trout out of it between us in 
 various visits in the course of the two or three follow- 
 ing years. It was open fishing, as it mostly is to-day, 
 and a good deal fished even then by anglers from 
 Edinburgh, Newcastle, and elsewhere, and sometimes 
 even as now the scene of fishing-club competitions. 
 Whether there were more trout in this quite remark- 
 able river in those remote days than in these, who 
 shall say ? Everybody of course says there were. But 
 after all it is extremely few people who can speak out 
 of their own experience, and even then one knows the 
 temptation to belaud the past. I have been amused 
 betimes to hear a younger generation refer to the 
 Whiteadder in their father's day as if it was stiff with 
 trout which would rise at your hat. The trout did 
 nothing of the kind, and, moreover, had daily oppor- 
 tunities of distinguishing between the artificial and 
 the natural insect. A south countryman would have 
 called the river very heavily fished in the early seventies. 
 I have myself seen eight rods upon it, between Ellem- 
 ford and Abbey St. Bathans, for two or three consecutive 
 
 355
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 days in April and May, and this was, and is, in the more 
 inaccessible and less fished half of the river. After an 
 interval of half a lifetime my own experiences of recent 
 years have only been at the back-end of the season, 
 which is of small avail for comparisons with spring and 
 early summer results in the long ago. But I have had 
 ample opportunity to see that at any rate there is still 
 a fine stock of trout, though such remarks are utterly 
 superfluous when weighed-in baskets, as I have related, 
 are published regularly in the daily press. Nay, more, 
 if any more is wanted ; for as I write these very lines 
 the postman hands in a letter with the Berwick post- 
 mark. It is from a friend up there and not concerned 
 with fishing. But there is a brief PS. * I went up 
 to the Whiteadder yesterday, and got nine pounds.' 
 Let the owner of a rapid river who thinks a rod 
 over it every other day a bit of a strain take note and 
 mark. For nine pounds is a very nice basket indeed, 
 even in closely preserved water. But it is only what 
 my correspondent expects to get in reasonable weather, 
 and usually does get on this free water, and he can fish 
 some of the best preserves in Northumberland if he 
 choses. I wish the Fly Fishers' club would appoint 
 a committee to examine and take evidence on the 
 Whiteadder and its neighbouring streams. It would 
 reveal a condition of things and possibilities that would 
 astonish the average angler, and cause the normal 
 owner and preserver of fast water, who was a kindly 
 man and not a hopeless egotist, to think furiously. 
 My old fishing companion of these early days and of 
 many much later ones the Irishman was the most 
 remarkable blend, in the sporting sense, that I ever 
 
 356
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 knew. He was recognised as the finest man to hounds 
 in a whole community of hard riders. He was as 
 sound a shot of the old-fashioned type as I ever saw, 
 and a past master in an art of which the new-fashioned 
 type knows nothing, that of handling dogs in the field. 
 Extraordinarily keen as he was in both of these depart- 
 ments of sport, he was equally fond of trout-fishing. 
 Indeed I have known few keener anglers from boy- 
 hood to the very end of his life, in spite of the fact that 
 none of his local sporting friends and neighbours cared 
 a button about it. 
 
 But here comes in the curious part of the business, 
 in that he was the most indifferent fisherman, for a 
 regular disciple, that is, that I ever knew. And 
 trouting isn't after all quite like hunting and shooting 
 or athletic diversions. Every one who is bred up to 
 it and follows it consistently must arrive at a certain 
 point of excellence. Up to that point it isn't so much 
 a question of eye or hand or nerve or physique as of 
 mere experience, though many of course pass this 
 stage and are super-excellent, having some special 
 gift, as we all of us know. But my old friend never 
 reached the ordinary average of an habitual fisherman. 
 It always seemed to me an unaccountable thing that 
 a man with beautiful hands on a horse and an un- 
 erring aim at a snipe, a grouse, or a partridge should 
 never have been able to acquire whatever it is that 
 the normal angler of experience possesses. Most of 
 my fishing companions through life have killed very 
 much the same baskets as myself, while a few have done 
 consistently better, which is in the natural order 
 of things. But this most accomplished, ardent, and 
 
 357
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 thorough sportsman, who both in youth and middle 
 age was my frequent and of all others most delightful 
 companion by the riverside, had scarcely ever more 
 than half my basket, and he always worked very hard. 
 But where the mystery lay I really do not know, any 
 more than I do not know why certain men always catch 
 the most in any company. I have watched him again 
 and again without being much the wiser. It was 
 rather a sore point, I am sure, though in all the years 
 he never uttered a single word upon the subject, and 
 from some subconscious instinct neither did I, though 
 we were very intimate. It never affected his unfailing 
 cheerfulness by the water-side, though it was a frequent 
 source of mortification to myself. 
 
 Moreover, he had two fairish trouting rivers, of 
 which he owned some four miles, under his very 
 windows. But he would often drive or even walk 
 long distances to fish other and wilder streams from 
 sheer love of the sport, and of a variety of scene and 
 water ; and I think some of these long April or May 
 days by streams unknown to fame that I spent with 
 him are among the most treasured of my angling 
 memories. A mutual and breezy friend of ours, who 
 was a super-excellent fisherman, but no respecter of 
 susceptibilities, used to tell him he killed his fish by 
 hitting them on the head with his fly and stunning 
 them. He didn't like this, and indeed it was purely 
 hyperbolic, for he threw quite a reasonable line, and 
 had the eye of a hawk for everything with wings or 
 legs. When I speak of our respective baskets, using 
 the ego merely as representing the average fisherman, 
 I am not quoting loosely from memory ; for my 
 358
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 friend, if not unique in the curiously conflicting nature 
 of his sporting endowments, was most assuredly so in 
 one particular achievement of his life. I do not 
 believe that another man ever lived who, from boy- 
 hood to the close of his life, which in this case ended 
 at forty-six, kept a strict account of every single day's 
 hunting, shooting, and fishing. And this, too, in the 
 case of a modest stay-at-home Irish country gentle- 
 man, who followed all these pursuits assiduously and 
 above all hated writing ! I regard this, for some 
 years in my possession, as in its way the most curious 
 document of the kind in existence not for the informa- 
 tion it contains, for it is merely a record of little 
 more than bare figures but it is all enclosed in a 
 single fat manuscript book, the early pages of which 
 were quite faded and yellow, while the last were still 
 being written. What is more, on its title-page was 
 the boyish scrawl with which so many of us at that 
 callow period have commenced a diary of some sort 
 with the best of intentions, that may have lasted six 
 
 months ! This one was entitled, ' J H T , 
 
 His Sporting Diary, 1865.' It began with hunting days 
 on a pony, shooting exploits with a single barrel, and 
 trouting in the home streams, and plodded on 
 methodically without a break for thirty years, un- 
 clouded by a single spell of illness, and ending with a 
 pathetic entry, because so utterly unconscious at the 
 moment of writing of what it meant. ' Sept. 20 [the 
 opening day, then, of Irish partridge shooting] : Shoot- 
 ing with B [myself]. Felt seedy ; went home 
 
 midday.' This was the last word, the end of every- 
 thing, the sudden and early break-up of an apparently 
 
 359
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 iron constitution overtaxed, no doubt, by unceasing 
 physical activities. As regards this concentrated 
 record between two covers of a whole life's sport, 
 the hunting being continuous, and including two years 
 of acting M.F.H., naturally took up most space, 
 namely, from one to three lines of small writing per 
 day, giving the covers drawn or points of a run, and 
 the horse ridden. For shooting, there is the beat 
 shot, the companions, if any, the setters out, and the 
 bag. For fishing, the stretch of water, the companion, 
 if any, and precisely what each caught. That last is 
 a curious note under the circumstances above related, 
 and runs right through all the years, for the game bags, 
 which would have usually told another story, are rarely 
 thus apportioned. 1 
 
 Often in the later years, when I was over in Ireland, 
 the book, always kept locked up, used to be produced 
 after dinner, and its author used to delight in reading 
 out the rather faded notes of our youthful days 
 together on the Lammermuirs, or in Ireland. There 
 were no fish lies here ! Just the precise number we 
 each basketed, the water fished, the weather, and 
 perhaps the flies used. But these bald entries stirred 
 the chords of memory fast enough, and with pipes 
 and hot punch before the blazing peat fire of the 
 snug little smoking-room, we used to kill our fish all 
 over again, and meet all our old friends and acquaint- 
 ances of those days once more. And then came the 
 
 1 The text as above might suggest an idle, useless life. As a matter of 
 fact, a more unostentatiously useful existence in all matters connected with 
 agriculture and county business would be difficult to imagine above all, in 
 Ireland. This indeed kept within limits the sporting days to be recorded. 
 
 360
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 solemn performance of recording the day just passed, 
 if it was one for recording, and the owner of this 
 extraordinary volume carried it to his standing desk, and 
 pulled himself together with the portentously solemn 
 expression that his humorous face always assumed 
 when any writing had to be done. Then there was 
 a brief silence, and the pen scratched away probably 
 something like this, as it was generally shooting in those 
 later days : * Ballyragget bog and Dromanore. Self 
 
 and B . Dogs, Dash and Nell 1 6 partridges, 
 
 6 snipe, I hare, 2 grouse, 2 golden plover, 2 wood 
 pigeons, I ptarmigan.' The last item, I may set down 
 with a blush, was the local for pheasant, which when 
 met with wild on the bog edge or mountain was not 
 treated with ceremony after 2Oth September, even 
 by a J.P., for excellent reasons not relevant here. 
 And it must be remembered this was Ireland, not 
 Norfolk. When the book was closed, and its owner 
 in his grave under the Slieve Bloom mountains, it 
 was sent to me, together, at my request, with a certain 
 rather wobbly, top-heavy rod, and a time-worn game- 
 bag. The book was returned not long ago, when a 
 certain infant now sailing the seas in one of His 
 Majesty's battleships reached something like man's 
 estate. The wobbly rod and the tattered game-bag 
 remain with me as cherished relics. For the race 
 has run its course like so many in Ireland, so far as its 
 old abiding place is concerned. Its extremely modest 
 record no longer figures in the latest editions of Burke. 
 The old ivy-clad house peeping down the beech avenue 
 is, I believe, replaced or obscured by the vulgar erection 
 of a political patriot who has prospered, like so many 
 
 361
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 of them, on retailing whisky and groceries, coupled 
 with much profitable usury. 
 
 There was one particular entry which always gave 
 us food for reminiscence. It ran 'June 1st, 1871 : 
 
 Fished Dye. Self 32, B 44 : two fish over a pound.' 
 
 The Dye is a beautiful stream running down from the 
 moors about Longformacus, and thence rippling over 
 pasture lands to join the Whiteadder at Ellemford. 
 It wasn't for the numbers, which, though rather 
 flattering to the diarist, were not otherwise note- 
 worthy. But we had traversed some thirty miles that 
 day, otter-hunting down in the Merse of Berwickshire ; 
 and it was only after a belated meal at about four 
 o'clock that we left our inn for the Dye, a mile distant. 
 For some reason, I remember that afternoon with 
 extraordinary clarity. I can almost smell it now the 
 fragrance of the gorse and quickening meadow grass, 
 the odour of recently penned sheep, with faint whiffs 
 of peat smoke from the cottages, all accentuated by a 
 warm sun bursting out between plumping showers. 
 The drake was up, and we caught, as the chronicle 
 relates, some seventy and odd fish far above the average 
 Whiteadder size,>and were back at the inn by sunset, 
 pretty well exhausted with so prodigious a day, which 
 had begun at four in the morning. 
 
 Far up in the heart of the moors, beyond the famous 
 sheep farms of Cranshaws, with its noble peel tower, 
 and of Priestlaw with its sweeps of solitude, the Fasney 
 water, a large troutful burn comes pouring down 
 its peaty streams into the Whiteadder, and the two 
 large burns uniting become at once a quite respect- 
 able river. There are a few large fish even thus high 
 362
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 up. It was some way above this, at a point where you 
 can easily spring across the Whiteadder, that in youth 
 I suffered the disappointment of all my days on this 
 river, and lost the largest trout I ever fairly hooked in 
 it. The water was on this occasion so low and clear 
 that I had mounted a horse-hair cast, and a fish nearer 
 two pounds than one was obviously outwitted by the 
 quite unwonted article. When it felt the prick of the 
 fly, however, it leaped clean out on to the low, rushy 
 bank, and rashly, perhaps, thinking the fish would break 
 me anyhow, I made an instant dash for it. But in its 
 untaxed vigour it slipped through my fingers and was 
 gone, fly and all. My stock of philosophy at twenty 
 was not equal to the occasion. I sat down upon the 
 bank and almost wept. 
 
 I don't think even now many anglers get up to the 
 Fasney or the Whiteadder above their junction. It 
 is a long, long way from anywhere, though a crow could 
 flv to Edinburgh in thirty miles. But then an angling 
 biped isn't a crow. Nowadays he is not often an en- 
 thusiastic pedestrian, and the narrow road that edges 
 along the hillsides to the source of the Whiteadder 
 is of a primitive description and not well adapted to 
 any of his mechanical aids to travel. Nor again is 
 bed and board to be had nowadays within the Lam- 
 mermuirs. The few inhabitants are, I believe, dis- 
 couraged, if not prohibited, from affording it, for 
 obvious reasons. It is a fine wild country where the 
 infant Whiteadder and the brawling Fasney join their 
 waters, though in a sense so near to the heart of things. 
 It is much more lonely than the heart of Exmoor or 
 Dartmoor nowadays, to make a comparison so many 
 
 363
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 can appreciate. There is not a tourist in the whole 
 country, not a human being on the whole wide waste 
 but a stray shepherd. The curlews call, the drubbing 
 pewits make unceasing clamour, the grouse cluck, the 
 burns murmur, and the black-faced sheep bleat, and 
 in August for miles and miles the hills are aglow with 
 the purple flare of their thick coat of heather. A line 
 of butts here and there upon a ridge outlined against 
 the sky are a modern innovation and a rather inhar- 
 monious note upon the wild. But the stock of grouse 
 has, I believe, doubled and trebled since I first knew 
 the country when burning was but irregularly prac- 
 tised and a small company of guns followed their dogs 
 through such a tangle of heather as nature laid before 
 them. Little strips of the Whiteadder, from its source 
 to its mouth, usually in the policies (anglice private 
 grounds or park), are kept as private water. And even 
 the Lowland Scottish angling public, that has views 
 fundamentally different from its English equivalent 
 on these matters, regards such sanctuaries without 
 disfavour. The same spider flies, with slight variation, 
 are used on the Whiteadder as were in vogue forty 
 years ago and were so much associated with Stewart's 
 then redoubtable name. Red hackles, black hackles 
 with orange body, snipe hackle with purple body, 
 and two or three other spider varieties probably ac- 
 count for a majority of all the fish killed in the river 
 and its tributaries. 
 
 Scotsmen are strong conservatives in the matter of 
 fishing as they are in so many other things not im- 
 mediately connected with a general election. And 
 indeed, as to that, any Scottish tory will tell you that 
 364
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 the strength of the opposition he has to encounter lies 
 not so much in the hankering after new and strange 
 things but in the stubborn adherence to old party 
 lines that arose from conditions which have long 
 passed away, and of which the average modern voter 
 knows nothing at all. You will see rods in use that 
 have long vanished, and with good reason, from English 
 river-sides. There may still be seen here the wobbly 
 eleven- or twelve-footer, heavy for one hand yet hardly 
 demanding two, that recall one's boyhood, when the 
 ethics of rod-making were in a torpid condition and 
 a hardy superstition still held the field, which fitted 
 a rod to a stream by a sort of geometrical process 
 almost as you might measure a man for a suit of 
 clothes. That some of these unhandy implements 
 should be still wielded by blacksmiths or rural dominies 
 or postmen of the older generation would be nothing, 
 but you frequently see them in the hands of a young 
 and different type of angler, who has obviously none 
 of these reasons for adhering to a weapon that has 
 nothing to recommend it. 
 
 The south countryman is apt to go to the opposite 
 extreme and to fuss about technicalities in rods and 
 the pattern of flies before he has acquired a reasonable 
 knowledge of how to use either. The tyro is be- 
 wildered, and no wonder, by the printed fly-lore of 
 some famous expert, not being able to read into it a 
 due sense of proportion. And then daunted at the 
 seeming prospect of having to graduate in the abstruse 
 science of entomology before he can hope to become 
 a fisherman lie liails with relief the advertisement of 
 a new patent fly. It is not like anything in the heavens 
 
 365
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 above or on the waters beneath, nor made of materials 
 hitherto familiar to fly dressers, but perhaps for that 
 very reason irresistible to the jaded appetites of the most 
 fastidious trout. So at least say the testimonials with 
 undoubtedly bona-fide signatures. Our young friend, 
 though he is not always young, is inclined to begin at 
 the wrong end. If he would cease to worry himself 
 and wait till he gets down to the district of his choice, 
 and there secure from the more or less local tackle- 
 maker the patterns which the local expert swears by, 
 they will be at least quite good enough for him. I 
 ought, I suppose, to blush in confessing the fact that 
 they have always been quite good enough for me. 
 It is unenterprising, no doubt, but I admit to having 
 always been something of a slave to local prejudices 
 and rather a good customer to the man on the spot, 
 or at any rate to the man who provides those on the 
 spot with such patterns as they demand of him. This, 
 too, involves the confession that I have tied no flies 
 myself since almost boyhood. Life has always seemed 
 too short. For those dozen or more years, when early 
 habits are confirmed, it was impossible, and both the 
 habits and the impulse proved afterwards irrecover- 
 able. I have consoled myself with the plausible and 
 common excuse that my samples would probably be 
 less effective than those of the professional fly-tier. 
 Still I admit that this has never quite satisfied me even 
 when I think of so many really first-class wet-fly fisher- 
 men who have never made a fly in their lives. 
 
 As to that redundancy of equipment with which 
 the embryo angler is apt to burden both his fly-book 
 and his mind, it is a form in miniature of the lavishness 
 366
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 characteristic of Englishmen, and always noticeable 
 to the alien eye, since the first alien recorded his 
 impressions of us. The Englishman who can afford it, 
 and sometimes when he cannot, loves an outfit a 
 trousseau. All the world over, whether as settler in 
 a new country or as a mere traveller, he is notorious 
 for the superfluity of impedimenta he drags around 
 with him. The anxiety to provide against every 
 emergency, possible and impossible, with just a touch 
 of the national thriftlessness in spending, or what 
 seems so to most other races, shows itself even in such 
 a trifle as the tyro's congested fly-book or box. It is 
 an ' outfit ' automatically inevitable in his eyes, and 
 an Englishman or an English-woman, as I have said, 
 dearly loves a trousseau. The percentage of wastage 
 in the outfits of English men and women of all kinds 
 in the last two centuries probably runs into millions. 
 
 Except that the flies used are smaller, I do not think 
 the taste in patterns, with the strong proclivity for 
 spiders, has altered much on the Scottish border. 
 Certainly the Whiteadder expert kills wonderful baskets 
 under the circumstances of his much-fished-for trout 
 with a very limited selection. Stewart, fifty years 
 ago, who, the reader may be again reminded, was 
 accounted the best trout fisherman on the Border, 
 which assuredly meant the best fisherman in Scotland, 
 considered that some half a dozen patterns were suffi- 
 cient for any one. He and Mr. Francis Frances, then 
 fishing editor of the Field, and author of a work that 
 was the delight of my boyhood, had much wordy 
 warfare on the subject. Neither had much conception 
 of the other's environment, circumstances, and tradi-
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 tions, and it was a quite futile though entertaining duel, 
 so far as the echoes of it, which lasted into my time, 
 come back to me. . Perhaps the incident stuck in my 
 mind because, at a period when one's experience 
 was inevitably limited, I had met the northern 
 champion on the river bank, while his south country 
 opponent about the same time had given me my first 
 encouragement at literary effort, a thing one never 
 forgets. 
 
 The Blackadder, like the Whiteadder and many 
 other fine streams unknown to the outer world, rises 
 in the Lammermuirs, but for most of its course it 
 plashes through the fertile lowlands of Berwickshire. 
 Though smaller than its sister river, it provides some 
 thirty miles of trouting, over some two-thirds of 
 which the public, in the shape of many scores of 
 anglers, exercise a perennial privilege which apparently 
 has no serious effect upon its stock of trout. I have 
 never fished the Blackadder, though I know much of 
 it well as a passer-by. It has but a moderate share, 
 however, of the romance and charm of its bigger 
 sister. The true rival of the Whiteadder upon the 
 eastern march in this respect, as indeed in fishing 
 qualities, and more renowned in song and story, is the 
 Leader, which, rising at the western end of the 
 Lammermuirs, runs down through Lauderdale to 
 join the Tweed near Melrose. There are plenty of 
 men in Lauderdale who maintain that their river is 
 even better than the Whiteadder. Personally I do 
 not agree with them, but it is assuredly a most beautiful 
 stream, and I have fished over much of it. It presents 
 the same insoluble problem nay, an even greater 
 368
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 one as to why there should be any trout left in its 
 waters, or at any rate in those major portions of them 
 which are open to the public on payment, in this 
 case, to be precise, of half-a-crown per annum. To be 
 literal, for there are two associations, you can fish 
 about two-thirds of the Leader and all the burns, one 
 or two of which yield on their day fat baskets, for five 
 shillings a year ! This modest contribution, by pro- 
 viding watchers, practically ensures the river against 
 the insidious wiles of the miners from Lanarkshire 
 and Midlothian, concerning whom the fishermen of 
 the Whiteadder, who are not thus protected, cherish 
 grave suspicions. 
 
 But the Leader, winsome and delightful stream that 
 it is, is much shorter than the other. Nor, like the 
 Whiteadder, does it wander for miles in the wilderness 
 comparatively aloof from the haunts of men. It 
 comes into being quite suddenly where several burns 
 break out of the Lammermuirs at the foot of the 
 Soutra pass, and this is actually the head of Lauder- 
 dale. One of the great main roads from the south 
 to Edinburgh follows the river from its junction with 
 the Tweed near Melrose to its head, and then climbing 
 by zigzags the above-named formidable pass crosses 
 this narrow western bit of the Lammermuirs, and 
 there, confronted by a most noble prospect, drops 
 quickly down into Midlothian. Thousands of motors 
 now annually thread this beautiful and peaceful vale, 
 with its wide, level pastures and spacious homesteads. 
 The swelling flanks of the Lammermuirs roll from 
 height to height upon either side, and through the 
 green levels the crystal waters of the Leader sparkle 
 2 A 369
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 in sinuous course from rocky pool to gravelly shallow, 
 between open grassy banks. Some miles lower down 
 it leaves the wide, open pasture-land, and frets and 
 flashes in a deep rocky trough between high wooded 
 hills for practically the rest of its career. The Leader 
 is not only celebrated in Scottish song, but it is quite 
 a classic stream among Scottish anglers. I had heard 
 its praises chanted by them in my youth over their 
 toddy beside the peat fire at Ellemford and elsewhere 
 again and again ; so when I made its acquaintance for 
 the first time a few years back, its double claims to 
 touch the fancy asserted themselves and stirred 
 pleasantly within me. 
 
 And is this Yarrow, this the stream 
 My waking fancy cherished ? 
 
 I am sure I quoted this and in the proper spirit as I 
 came down from the Lammermuirs on the eastward 
 by ' auld Maitland's tower ' one bright summer after- 
 noon, and saw the Leader glittering like a silver thread 
 amid its green haughs below. And if Leader is not 
 Yarrow, every one not wholly ignorant of Scottish 
 minstrelsy knows very well the poetic connection 
 between the two. Rivers have assuredly a strong 
 personality, and no wonder, for they are live and 
 animate things, not mute, like hills or buildings. All 
 fishermen know they stir the memories associated 
 with them more effectively than any other things- 
 labelled as inanimate. And little rivers, beautiful 
 rivers, if they have things to say, whether of great 
 deeds or merely of memories treasured only by yourself, 
 have a subtle eloquence that no man-made melodies 
 370
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 can equal. The Leader, for its size and length, is 
 rich indeed in suggestion for those who have ears to 
 hear, though it was not precisely of the drum and 
 trumpet I was musing when gently thrilled by my 
 first sight of it, or I should not have been moved to 
 Wordsworthian quotation. 
 
 Once more, and with apologies for such reiteration, 
 I really do not know why there are any trout at all 
 in the Leader. Its very classic qualities as a trout 
 stream should be dead against such a survival. It is 
 rural and pastoral and Arcadian enough to be sure. 
 But there are two little towns astride of its short 
 course, and pretty nearly every man and boy in both, 
 I have no doubt, knows how to fish, with a worm at 
 any rate ; while Edinburgh itself is only some twenty 
 odd miles from the head of the dale. I spent nearly 
 the whole of one recent September there in the ancient 
 little borough of Lauder, which is the capital of the 
 upper and open part of Lauderdale, as Earlston is the 
 metropolis of its lower, pent-in, and woody portions. 
 I did not go there in the main for fishing, as the month 
 selected may perhaps sufficiently indicate, but I did 
 a good deal incidentally, and in one way and another 
 covered most of the water which has moved so many 
 generations of Border fishermen and singers to con- 
 vivial or poetic invocation. This alone would have 
 interested me not a little, and as those three weeks 
 were about as hopeless from a fishing point of view as 
 the mind of angler could imagine, it was just as well 
 there were other consolations on the abounding in- 
 terests of the neighbourhood. 
 
 For centuries the Maitlands and the Lauders were 
 
 371
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 rivals for supremacy in the dale. It is nearly two 
 since the latter succumbed as regards Lauderdale, and 
 the former as its titular earls have held the field in the 
 great old rambling mansion of Thirlestane beside 
 Lauder. Here in a mile of woody policies the trout 
 of Leader have a refuge which no doubt helps to 
 maintain a sufficient stock in the much tormented 
 reaches of the river above and below. Yet in all that 
 glittering east-windy September I only met a couple 
 of stray fishermen on the river in either portion ! I 
 was out myself seven or eight days or parts of days 
 with poor results, which last was the fault of the 
 weather, not of the river, as I saw quite enough to 
 realise that there were plenty of trout in it. I ought 
 to have had a decent basket one day, and suffered on 
 that occasion some partly deserved humiliation at the 
 hands of one of the above-mentioned anglers. 
 
 Wishful to explore the lower portion of the water, 
 where pent in between the steep woody heights of 
 Chapel and Ledgerwood it pursues a picturesquely 
 fretting course, I went down there in rather lazy 
 mood as regards the fishing part of the business. As 
 the wind was blowing briskly down stream, the other- 
 wise poor prospects didn't move me to struggle up 
 against it, particularly as my chief object was to get 
 down the river and sample it. So I whipped lazily 
 downwards with such very moderate prospects as the 
 clear low water, just here and there, held out to so 
 slack a procedure. Rather to my surprise I picked 
 up some half-dozen quite sizeable fish, while the wood- 
 land scenery was delightful and the class of water so 
 alluring as to make me long to fish it seriously, when a 
 
 37*
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 reasonable supply was coming down and the wind in 
 another quarter. I had grown so accustomed to 
 having the river to myself that I was quite startled, 
 while reeling up a nice third-of-a-pounder, to see the 
 point of a rod emerging from the bushes at foot of the 
 pool. It proved to be one of the long wobbly ones 
 still extant on Border trout streams. Its owner, how- 
 ever, who was soon at my side, was unmistakably a 
 gentleman. This was about noon, and he had fourteen 
 or fifteen very nice fish in his basket. As an habitue 
 of the river, though quite obviously preserved waters 
 would have been readily accessible to him, he felt 
 bound to say something consolatory on the subject of 
 my meagre basket. This was done by way of a polite 
 suggestion that fishing up stream in this particular 
 water was the most profitable method, the * particular 
 water ' being no doubt inserted to let me down gently 
 and nicely, since it was perfectly obvious that fishing 
 down stream on such a day proclaimed the neophyte 
 upon the housetop. I lamely endeavoured to mitigate 
 the situation by explaining my rather detached motives ; 
 but as the fish had suddenly taken it into their heads 
 that morning to rise pretty well, this was not so easy. 
 My gentle, but I am sure unconvinced, critic told me 
 that on a good day in April or May he always looked 
 for eight to ten pounds weight of fish in this water, 
 and furthermore that the size of the fish had increased 
 of late on the Leader, and that a great many pounders 
 and over had been killed on the fly in the course of 
 the past year. 
 
 My other encounter on the Leader was much more 
 entertaining. The day was rather more promising of 
 
 373
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 aspect, though, as it proved, deceptively so, and about 
 noon, having successfully outwitted a half-pound fish 
 that was rising in an overhung pool beneath the old 
 Lauder peel tower of Whitslade, I espied an angler, 
 in this case, too, indisputably a gentleman, with two 
 attendants coming rapidly up stream in the water. 
 I sat down and waited for him in anticipation of those 
 friendly interchanges of current experiences and such- 
 like that are customary on the river bank. He was 
 thrashing away, too, at a great rate and in the appar- 
 ently careless fashion of a man who has done his 
 serious work and is going back to catch a train or trap, 
 for which on this particular day there seemed ample 
 reason. ' What is the matter with the fish ? ' he called 
 out the moment he got within speaking distance. 
 
 I said that I didn't know, but that I had been out 
 since ten and had only half a dozen. 
 
 * I have been out since eight, 5 he replied, * and have 
 only seven.' So I thought we were going to have a 
 comfortable chat, particularly as I was a stranger and 
 on the look out for tips. Not a bit of it. This en- 
 thusiast went down into the water again just above 
 me and flogged away for his very life. He had a man 
 on the bank with a landing-net as well as another 
 attendant, who proved to be the river watcher, for 
 soon after he caught me up to crave a sight of my 
 ticket. 
 
 * Who is that gentleman ? ' I inquired. 
 
 ' Why, yon 's Maister B ,' replied the man in 
 
 a tone almost of reproof. 
 
 * And who is Mr. B ? I suppose he wants to 
 
 catch the two o'clock train at Lauder.' 
 
 374
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 * Maister B ! I thocht ye 'd hae kent who he 
 
 waur. He 's won the gold medal of the club in 
 
 Edinborrie twice rinnin', an' if he wins it the day he 
 keeps it for his ain.' 
 
 ' He 's not running for the train then.' The 
 watcher thought this a great joke, though it wasn't 
 intended for one, and laughed quite immoderately for 
 a Berwickshire man. 
 
 ' Na ! na ! he '11 nae be awa' frae the river afore 
 nicht, an' he 's the only member on the Leader too 
 the day.' 
 
 * Where are the others ? ' 
 
 He mentioned several other streams within forty 
 miles of Edinburgh, over which they were presumably 
 distributed. After another half-hour, inspired by the 
 superhuman energies of the gold medallist, which 
 proved things to be getting worse instead of better, 
 I reeled up and went home, devoutly thankful I 
 was not in for a piscatorial Derby and my reputation 
 committed to a breathless ten-hour fight against 
 untoward conditions. 
 
 Next day in Lauder I met the man who was carry- 
 ing the landing-net for the Edinburgh champion, and 
 naturally put the inevitable query. The north-east 
 wind and the waning glitter of the day, it seems, had 
 defied all the efforts of even so great an artist, and I 
 learned that only a single fish was the reward of a 
 whole afternoon's labour. But my informant turned 
 out to be the local champion, and according to his own 
 account had arranged a private match with this hero 
 from the metropolis to which he looked forward him- 
 self with the utmost confidence. He told me he had 
 
 375
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 killed sixteen-pound baskets on two occasions in the 
 preceding June, and had never had so many fish of over 
 a pound in all his experience of the river as in the past 
 season. Truly these are miraculous streams ! The 
 Leader, to be sure, has some advantage over the other 
 Tweed tributaries, as none of the salmon tribe run 
 up it. 
 
 Lauder is the most old-fashioned little town I know 
 in Scotland. With its one long, wide street it is 
 positively picturesque, an adjective one may well be 
 chary of applying to a Scottish country town. It is, 
 moreover, fast asleep, which sounds a still hardier form 
 of description in this practical and generally wide- 
 awake country. The northward-bound motors in a 
 fairly steady stream take it, as it were, in their stride 
 and leave it quite unmoved, and for their part are 
 probably quite oblivious even of the name of the 
 place they cover with their ceaseless dust. Doubtless 
 there is a speed limit through the town, but I never 
 saw a motor show any sign that such a thing existed. 
 Nor is there any practical reason why it should, as 
 there is seldom anything in the street. Till lately 
 Lauder was six miles from a railroad, and its people 
 did a flourishing livery business in driving one another 
 to the Fountainhall station across the moors. That is 
 now scotched, and the defunct industry is still fondly 
 recalled as marking a prosperous era for ever gone. 
 The railway killed it, the railway of six miles which 
 the train, cork-screwing through winding moorland 
 glens, takes forty minutes to accomplish, though this 
 includes a stoppage or two in which the guard gets 
 down to open a gate, a quite precious incident I never 
 376
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 remember to have encountered in any other railway 
 journey. In spite of this, however, the tradesmen 
 complain that the inhabitants go to Edinburgh for 
 their shopping! Indeed, I doubt if you could buy 
 many things in Lauder. In pre-railroad days I expect 
 the inhabitants led the simple life. It is related of 
 one of the earliest female passengers by rail to Edin- 
 burgh that on beholding the sea for the first time, at 
 the moment foam-flecked by a brisk breeze, she 
 exclaimed, ' My certie, yon 's a bonnie flock o' sheep ! ' 
 But if the retail trade of Lauder is sorely harassed 
 by this lightning connection twice a day with the 
 main line, you can at any rate buy flies, the right sort 
 for the Leader, of course, and they don't hold altogether 
 with the simple spider patterns of the Whiteadder. 
 As I have already hinted, the Lauder anglers don't 
 think so much of the Whiteadder ; probably they 
 don't often fish it, or know much about it. Every- 
 body in Lauder has lots of time to spare. It isn't in 
 the least like other Scottish or northern townlets, and 
 most of the natives love a crack. There are two 
 respectable little hotels and other harbourages for 
 visitors from the outer world. A few score of such 
 from Edinburgh, with a taste for the simple life or 
 for angling, repair thither in the holiday season, and 
 there is a great deal of forgathering with patriotic 
 and reminiscent natives. A more delectable spot and 
 a more delightful neighbourhood for such a purpose 
 would be hard to find within easy reach. There are 
 other accessories in Lauder, too, besides the river and 
 the old peel towers and the many prehistoric camps 
 that crown the summits of the overlooking Lammer- 
 
 377
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 muir hills. For every morning at six o'clock or there- 
 abouts your slumbers may be abruptly shattered by a 
 horn vigorously blown in the wide, silent street : and 
 if you look out of your window you will see twenty or 
 thirty cows hastening from back-yards and byres to 
 meet the town herd who pilots them to the hills. 
 At sunset you will see them returning, a;id to the 
 sound of the same civic horn scattering to their 
 respective milk-pails. For the freemen of Lauder 
 own nearly two thousand acres, half of which is pasture 
 and half excellent tillage land, which last is divided 
 among them according to ancient rites far too intricate 
 to deal with here. Lauder is only a townlet of some 
 fifteen hundred souls, but it is a great thing to be one 
 of its hereditary freemen, the privilege being appraised 
 at about five hundred pounds, to say nothing of the 
 glory. This, no doubt, keeps its patriotic folk from 
 fretting that they are not as other bustling places, like 
 Galashiels for instance, just across the hills, or even 
 as other market towns like Melrose, Kelso, Duns, or 
 Haddington. It tends, no doubt, to making them 
 historically minded, contented with their quiet lot, 
 and ready to crack at all times about the Earls of 
 Lauderdale still beneficently reigning over them and 
 those long departed ; or even about the long vanished 
 Lauders whose ruined peel towers still dot the dale. 
 ^Esthetically it is just the place for the contemplative 
 angler, and I have made no mention of several lusty 
 burns that may be followed into the heart of the hills 
 by those who have a mind for such rambles, and are 
 content with small deer and an off-chance of something 
 better. You mustn't, of course, play about on Sunday 
 
 378
 
 WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 
 
 as in the wicked south, and in the still worse play- 
 grounds of the denationalised Highlands ; for this 
 is Scotland proper, real, typical, sturdy old Scotland, 
 not a portion of the Gaelic fringe leased out to Eng- 
 lishmen, Americans, and Israelites. Practically no 
 southerner or alien ever treads this quiet street or 
 throws a fly in these waters, or even shoots the grouse 
 upon the hills. 
 
 If you go to church on Sunday, at the Old Parish 
 Kirk you will find it well packed with men as well as 
 women, who as vocalists leave nothing in the way of 
 fervour to be desired. You will hear an admirable 
 sermon, too, from a minister who is not only a theo- 
 logian, but as a naturalist and antiquarian and essayist 
 has illuminated the wild heart of the Lammermuirs 
 to the great delectation of Edinburgh and Scottish 
 readers generally. As you are borne out of church 
 with the full flowing tide of worshippers, you are pretty 
 sure to meet the other tide pouring down the wide 
 street from the opposition place of worship that of 
 the United Free Church. This is the moment when 
 La-uder looks really animated and lively, for it is a 
 thoroughly church-going place. Moreover, it is no 
 longer incumbent upon a Scotsman to dissemble his 
 feelings on emerging from the kirk. He may now 
 show that he is cheerful and happy, and freely exercise 
 those social instincts that for no occult reason seem 
 common to all congregations on their escape into the 
 open air. 
 
 The Lauder burgesses used to ride their bounds on 
 the king's birthday, finish up with a horse-race down 
 the street, drink the king's health in front of the 
 
 379
 
 CLEAR WATERS 
 
 town hall, and then like good Scotsmen toast one 
 another till the small hours of the morning. This 
 ancient usage is no longer associated with such convivial 
 ceremonies. They are all good boys here now, or 
 nearly all. Even the toddy ladles and the rummers, 
 within easy memory in daily use throughout southern 
 Scotland, are now exhibited in glass cases as family 
 heirlooms, and gazed at by a generation of tea drinkers 
 as mysterious implements used by their ancestors for 
 some purpose or purposes unknown. Of the quality 
 of stuff that steamed habitually in these stemm'd 
 tumblers the younger folk in their moderate lapses 
 from the temperance regime cannot even guess. 
 What has become of it ? After forty years I can taste 
 its flavour still. Where has it gone ? I wonder how 
 Christopher North and the Ettrick Shepherd would 
 feel after the traditional ' ten tumblers ' of the modern 
 tavern sample ! 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press.
 
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