CLEAR WATERS 



perpendicular road, though the irrepressible motor 

 occasionally, I believe, surmounts it. If you have a 

 mind for a real soUtary day amid the wilds on Craig- 

 Coch, with the expectation of catching, if fortune 

 be yours, rather smaller fish, and rather more of them, 

 it is better to walk and have done with it. Save your 

 companion anglers, if you have any, you will see no 

 one, and hear nothing but the curlews' call and the 

 ravens' croak, while the buzzard, of which there are 

 great numbers in these wilds, will be generally swinging 

 somewhere in the air above. 



For this great heaped-up wilderness of South Wales, 

 some five or six hundred square miles in extent, is about 

 the last refuge of the hunted of the air, and long may 

 it remain such a sanctuary. Nature, assisted possibly 

 by the sheep's tooth, has helped to make it so by 

 affording small temptation to game preserving and 

 keepering, while a local protection society, working 

 with the scattered sheep farmers, whose homesteads 

 at intervals dot the edge of the waste, keep an eye on 

 the nests, and on the indefatigable egg-stealer from 

 distant cities. As the spawning season approaches, 

 the fish from Craig-C6ch swarm up the Elan, which 

 offers no obstacles, into the inmost heart of the hills. 

 Not only the lakes but a good many streams and natural 

 tarns are within or just without this great corporation 

 estate, and can be fished either free or by ticket. The 

 Elan is free to the natives of Rhayader, and after a 

 flood in late August or September they come over 

 the hills in tolerable numbers and take heavy toll 

 with worm and fly of these migrants from the lake. 

 This sounds rather badly. But like so many things 

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