CLEAR WATERS 



hide yourself in a mountain-land from which even the 

 guide-book flinches. 



Deep in its heart, and forming early in its course some 

 small lakes, * pegged,' i.e. staked, by a fishing club from 

 Cardiganshire, and I think successfully preserved, 

 rises what the delightful twelfth-century cleric and 

 writer above quoted justly calls the ' noble river Teifi.' 

 Breaking from the hiUs it streams down into the low 

 country of Cardigan by the treasured remnants of the 

 once great abbey of Ystrydfflur or Strata Florida, 

 where, far removed and, one might venture to think, 

 secure for aU time from the world's throb, lies the dust 

 of so many of the ancient princes of South Wales. 



Now the Teifi is a wonderful fine trout stream, 

 and withal no bad salmon river, running a course of 

 fifty miles or so, by Tregaron, Lampeter, and Newcastle- 

 Emlyn to the sea at Cardigan, and that remote, un- 

 known, but gloriously rugged coast which was the 

 scene of Allen Raine's Welsh novels, and the native 

 soil of the authoress, a country lawyer's daughter. 

 She could translate Welsh peasant life into the English 

 tongue better, at any rate, than any one else who has 

 ever attempted that almost impossible task, and had 

 the distinction, I believe, of being, as regards circula- 

 tion, the most popular fiction writer of her quite 

 recent day. 



What helps to make the Teifi probably the best 

 trouting river in Wales is the great flat bog of Tregaron 

 in the lower country, some six miles in length, along the 

 edge of which it flows. This is the only instance of a 

 real Irish ' red bog ' in the low country of either 

 England or Wales. It is like a bit of the bog of Allan 

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