Running brown flood beloved of the salmon, or the curve 

 Waters. an( j sweep of the grass -green river flowing 

 between meadows and under alders and past 

 rocky fastnesses and linking green valleys as a 

 winding snake barred with emerald, what 

 memories these suggest to every lad or lass, 

 to every man or woman who has ever thrown 

 a cast or trailed a line, or, for that matter, who 

 has lain on their leaning banks, book in hand, 

 or lost in dreams, or wandered the dewy ways 

 at dusk. Does not the very mention of 

 torrent and cataract and waterfall evoke happy 

 memories ? One can hear the tumultuous 

 surge between heather-held banks, and see the 

 rock -rooted bracken shake with the ceaseless 

 spray : can see the wild leap and foaming 

 collapse, so habitual, so orderly in disorder, 

 that the ring- ousel flies heedlessly from her 

 fragile eggs which a handful of this whirling 

 water would crush and sweep away : can recall, 

 as in dreams the mind rebuilds the phantoms 

 of natural imagery, the long, white, wavering 

 smoke down the sheer slope of some mountain- 

 bastion, or the filmy yet motionless veils of 

 delicate gauze hung high on the breasts of 

 silent and remote hills. 



What differences there are in these running 

 waters. We hear much of ' blue ' rivers, of 

 the silver flood of azure, and so forth. But 



138 



