194 TROUT FISHING 



inestimable privilege of beholding a turkey hunt 

 conducted by a pack of one. Nothing could have 

 been more ludicrous than the ignominious flight of 

 so large a bird before so small and round a pursuer. 



Besides birds there was a rich vegetable world 

 to study. Development seemed to be a month 

 later than in the south, and the meadows were rich 

 with hay and with some of the flowers which had 

 greeted me in Hampshire in June. The lanes 

 winding upward to the moors contained quite a 

 store of wild strawberries, which gave us an agree- 

 able kind of mild hvmting, and here and there were 

 wild raspberries of excellent flavour. Of an evening, 

 too, there was occasionally an Eisteddfod to which 

 one listened out of the window. Several really 

 beautiful voices well maintained the reputation of 

 Wales for folk music. 



This, of course, is not fishing, but I am not sure 

 whether our actual efforts with the rod were much 

 better deserving of the name. We frankly pottered, 

 limiting our ambitions to getting enough trout for 

 breakfast, and occasionally making a raid on the 

 chub. Here I have an observation on gratitude to 

 make. It had struck me that the Colonial was 

 getting " kind of homesick." He did not consider 

 the Penydwddwr a real creek — in real creeks you 

 can, it appears, catch brook trout in dozens on No. 6 

 flies, and you take them home on a string — ^and his 



