262 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



the world, and the most abounding with excellent salmon, 

 and all sorts of delicate fish.* 



VIAT. Pardon me, Sir, for tempting you into this 

 digression ; and then proceed to your other rivers, for I 

 am mightily delighted with this discourse. 



Pise. It was no interruption, but a very seasonable 

 question : for Trent is not only one of our Derbyshire 

 rivers, but the chief of them, and into which all the rest 

 pay the tribute of their names, which I had, perhaps, 

 forgot to insist upon, being got to the other end of the 

 county, had you not awoke my memory. But I will now 

 proceed. And the next river of note, for I will take them 

 as they lie eastward from us, is the River Wye ; I say of 

 note, for we have two lesser betwixt us and it, namely 

 Lathkin and Bradford ; of which Lathkin is, by many 

 degrees, the purest and most transparent stream that I 

 ever yet saw, either at home or abroad, and breeds, it 

 is said, the reddest and the best trouts in England : but 

 neither of these are to be reputed rivers, being no better 

 than great-springs. The River Wye, then, has its source 

 near unto Buxton, a town some ten miles hence, famous 

 for a warm bath, and which you are to ride through in 

 your way to Manchester ; a black water too, at the 



* There are no salmon in the Trent now, and not many trout 

 and grayling. Its trout, though few, grow to a large size, some- 

 times, but very rarely as large as those of the Thames. It is an 

 excellent river for pike, perch, barbel, chub, and other coarse fish. 

 I do not think it produces thirty different sorts of fish. Many think 

 the contrary, but have not specifically named them. Others main- 

 tain that it derives its name from having thirty (trente) tributaries, 

 and agree that Milton's distich, in his well-known description of 

 English rivers, should be read 



" Or Trent, who like an earth-born giant, spreads 

 Its thirty arms along the indented meads." 



Instead of thirsty, the usual reading. I am inclined to think that 

 thirsty is a graphical, or typographical error that Milton wrote 

 thirty, and was thinking when he did so of the earth-born (son of 

 Ccelus and Terra) giant, Briareus, and his hundred arms. Walton 

 inclines to the opinion that the Trent derives its name from thirty 

 different sorts of fish found in it, and not because it is said to have 

 thirty tributaries. E. 



