66 THE ADVENTURES 



to go to, hem ! to visit our weirs and cages, &c., 

 by ourselves, as he found the streams here at 

 Overton far more attractive. In fact we ourselves 

 should perhaps find the temptation too powerful to 

 be easily resisted. But as this is only in imagina- 

 tion and our reader is probably seated in a 

 railway carriage, on his way to the " Hand " at 

 Llangollen ; or better still, reclining in an easy 

 chair at the said "Hand," his heavy wading 

 boots thrown aside for slippers, luxuriating over 

 a cigar, after a long day spent in the river he 

 may not object to take a look at the two or three 

 other parts of the river to which we have alluded. 



Of these, the weir at Erbistock is perhaps the 

 most difficult and dangerous. It is not so much 

 the height of this weir as its slope, which makes 

 it so insurmountable to the fish ;. a salmon of 

 any size could easily leap it if it were perpen- 

 dicular; but its angle is so obtuse, and the 

 consequent length of the fall so great, while at 

 the same time its force is so tremendous, that it 

 is only after many essays any fish get over it ; 

 hundreds never do, as is proved by the num- 

 bers that swarm immediately beneath it, and 

 their comparative scarcity in the river above. 



We will suppose, now, that it is a fine day in 

 August; there is some fresh in the river: we are 

 standing between the mill-stream at Erbistock and 



