CLEAR WATERS 



There is nothing novel in a day's wading, though it 

 has its Httle 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 feehng 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 

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