AND THEIR INHABITANTS. 163 



it, besides a mass of floating soft land. Its high 

 rocky banks, with the contrast of the wooded islands, 

 make one of the loveliest pictures to be seen in Eng- 

 land. The lake Bassenthwaite, though pretty, does 

 not equal Derwentwater ; the former is not quite so 

 long it is 225 feet higher than the sea. Another 

 river, called the Cocker, also runs into the Derwent, 

 besides smaller streams. 



In the eighteenth century the river Derwent was 

 famed for its salmon fisheries. Opposing influences 

 were always at work to check the productiveness of 

 the best fishing streams ; but it is in the present 

 century, when modern mills and manufactories have 

 come to their height, that the noise and pollution of 

 the rivers, with their living inhabitants, have too often 

 changed them from streams of wealth and purity to 

 dull muddiness and unhealthy animal life. Where 

 many tourists go, and the human natives of the 

 district lose their simplicity, there too the fish are apt 

 to become scarce ; and if mills or dye-works should 

 be erected, the finny folk "cannot bear the muddy 

 stream or brook where manufacture grimly grinds its 

 iron teeth, for it pollutes earth and poisons life with 

 smoke. " l The amazing cheapness of salmon in 

 former years was due doubtless to various causes. 

 Money was more valuable and went much further in 

 the last century and first fifty years of the present 

 than it does now. The great increase of population 

 causes perhaps a manifold greater demand for food 

 in the present day, and when we add to this the ravages 



1 { Book of Nature and Book of Man,' p. 169. 

 M 2 



