PEMBROKESHIRE. 105 



their pursuits, by angling when the breeze is suf- 

 ficiently strong for the purpose. In stormy weather 

 its surface is greatly agitated, and the fish are then 

 often thrown ashore in considerable numbers. * The 

 best road to ascend the Van Mountain is either 

 from Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire ; or from 

 Devynnock, near Brecknock. 



PEMBROKESHIRE. 



The rivers and brooks 7)f this county are so nu- 

 merous, and of so beautiful a character, that they 



* Mr. St. John, in his recent amusing work, entitled 

 " Egypt and Mohammed Ali ; or, Travels in the Valley of 

 the Nile," mentions a similar fact in reference to the waters of 

 Lake Moeris : " When we had reached the beach," says he, 

 " both sight and smell were struck by prodigious numbers of 

 dead fish ; which having, as the natives afterwards informed 

 us, recently perished through cold, had been 'driven ashore by 

 a tempestuous north wind. The quantity was incredible; 

 lining the shore in heaps as far as the eye could reach, as if a 

 multitude of fishermen had just emptied their nets there. They 

 were exceedingly varied in form and size ; some measuring 

 nearly five feet in length, and of more than proportionate 

 thickness ; and of these many hundreds lay among the smaller 

 fry, upon the mud ; while others were scarcely larger than a 

 herring. In general, the larger were closer to the water ; the 

 smaller, in many instances, having been carried by the waves 

 twenty or thirty yards inland. The stench arising from so 

 great a quantity of fish putrefying in the sun was almost in- 

 supportable, and must have communicated a pestilential quality 

 to the atmosphere. As far as we proceeded which may 

 have been, perhaps, two miles the quantity of fish upon the 

 beach continued undiminished. " Vol. ii, p. 240, 241, 



