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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
'
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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
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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,
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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,
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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.
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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,
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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
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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 !
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.'
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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
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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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