3 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY [CHAP. v. 



schooners following, and sloops and if weather permitted 

 Severn trows bringing up the rear. These, however, as 

 they differed very little in formation from canal barges, 

 required tolerably fair or at least quiet weather to allow 

 them to proceed in safety. The procession of shipping 

 came along almost beneath our cliffs, the deep channel 

 being on that side, and perhaps it was as well that they 

 were no nearer, or the nautical remarks might have been 

 more often audible to the young people than was desirable ! 

 A special convenience to ourselves was a little creek under 

 the cliffs, called in those parts a "pill" (presumably from the 

 Welsh pwll or pool), which allowed of coals being run in 

 a sloop across from Bristol and carted up to the house by a 

 shorter road than that from Chepstow. 



Salmon fishing was carried on partly by nets from fishing 

 boats, partly by rows of baskets known as " putts " or 

 " putchers." The boats during the boat fishing lay above 



FIG. (A). PUTCHER FOR CATCHING SALMON. 



the edge of the water on the sloping and slippery frontage of 

 the shore. When the tide served for fishing, the men went 

 down from the village above the cliffs to their boats across the 

 flat and precipitously-edged grass, between the base of the low 

 cliffs and the sloping shore. Each man wriggled with might 

 and main at his boat till he loosened its adhesion to the ten- 

 acious mud and started it on its slide with its 1 bows foremost 

 towards the water. Once off, of course the pace accelerated ; 

 its owner, running behind, held on and clambered in as best 

 he could, and the two arrived safely and with a great jolt on 

 the water. The boats then formed in line, secured by being 

 tied stern to stern at about a boat's length from each other, 

 and presumably anchored also, but this I do not remember. 

 The net of each boat was lowered, and nothing further 

 occurred till a fish was captured ; then the net was lifted, 

 the fish, shining in all the beauty of its silvery scales, taken 

 out, and the net lowered again. These were the best fish ; 



