386 THE COtePlfitE A&GLEIl. PART II. 



beast will give me leave, though I fear nothing in 

 your company. But what pretty river is this we are 

 goind into ? 



Pise* Why this, Sir, is called Bently-brook^ and 

 is full of very good Trout and Grayling : but so en- 

 cumbered with wood in many places, 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 

 bow many you have in the country ? 



Pise, 1 know them all t and they were not hard to 

 reckon, were it worth the trouble : but the most consi* 

 derable 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 swift- 

 ness of its current i and that swiftness [is] 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, rivulets, brooks, 

 and rills is swelled, before it falls into Trent 9 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 wears ; 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 

 lime-stone rocks, that, before it comes to my house, which 

 is but six or seven miles from its source, you will find it 

 one of the purest crystaline streams you have seen* 



Viat. Does Trent spring in these parts ? 



Pise. Yes, i.n these parts : not in this county, but 



