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 



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