260 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



will give me leave, though I fear nothing in your company. 

 But what pretty river is this we are going into ? 



Pise. Why this, Sir, is called Bently Brook,* and is full 

 of very good trout and grayling ; but so encumbered 

 with wood in many pla'ces, as is troublesome to an angler. 



VIAT. Here are the prettiest rivers, and the most of 

 them in this country that ever I saw ; do you know how 

 many you have in the country ? 



Pise. I know them all, and they were not hard to 

 reckon, were it worth the trouble, but the most consider- 

 able of them I will presently name you. And to begin 

 where we now are, for you must know we are now upon 

 the very skirts of Derbyshire ; we have first the River 

 Dove, that we shall come to by and by, which divides the 

 two counties of Derby and Stafford for many miles 

 together ; and is so called from the swiftness of its current, 

 and that swiftness occasioned by the declivity of its course, 

 and by being so straitened in that course betwixt the 

 rocks ; by which, and those very high ones, it is, hereabout, 

 for four or five miles, confined into a very narrow stream ; 

 a river that from a contemptible fountain, which I can 

 cover with my hat, by the confluence of other rivers, rivu- 

 lets, brooks, and rills, is swelled, before it falls into Trent, 

 a little below Eggington, where it loses the name, to such 

 a breadth and depth as to be in most places navigable, were 

 not the passage frequently interrupted with fords and 

 weirs ; and has as fertile banks as any river in England, 

 none excepted. And this river, from its head for a mile 

 or two, is a black water, as all the rest of the Derbyshire 

 rivers of note originally are, for they all spring from the 

 mosses ; but is in a few miles travel so clarified by the 

 addition of several clear and very great springs, bigger 

 than itself, which gush out of the limestone rocks, that 

 before it comes to my house, which is but six or seven miles 



* Two miles beyond Ashbourn, and still not a bad stream for 

 trout and grayling. E. 



