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 London ! 



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 



