ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



nearly as old as its driver. When we got on to the 

 moors, the lake lay glistening some half mile from the 

 road, amid the normal boggy verdure that I have said 

 clothes all these mountains but their steeps and rockier 

 summits with a ragged mantle, which at the best makes 

 laborious going and at the worst is treacherous. What 

 my friend did not know about its qualities, however, 

 was not worth knowing. Still it had been an excep- 

 tionally dry summer, and relying upon that fact in a 

 rash moment he made up his mind to risk it, and make 

 for the lake instead of hitching his horse to the trap 

 by the open road-side. It was a fatal resolve. We 

 had not gone a hundred yards when the horse, who 

 obviously had his doubts, suddenly broke the crust and 

 went straight down without any warning, till there 

 was not much more than his back and head above 

 ground. Luckily, having I believe twenty-five years 

 of experience behind him, he behaved like an angel. 

 Any ordinary beast would have struggled till he went 

 out of sight. As it was, after we had with great diffi- 

 culty got the shafts of the cart, which had also mired 

 badly, off his back, he eventually and most skilfully 

 dragged himself out, and covered with brown bog 

 slime looked his master reproachfully in the face. It 

 was obviously not the right day of the month for my 

 undertaking. There was a beautiful breeze, and Llyn 

 Berwyn is one of the nicest lakes I ever fished in. It 

 is shallow, with a firm, gently sloping sandy bottom. 

 You could wade anywhere for quite a long way out and 

 with confidence. But I only had one rise, and that 

 from a good fish — as indeed they all are here, I under- 

 stand — just after lunch, and I was so startled that if he 



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