THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



49 



was a great economist, and regularly served up 

 my evening's take for dinner the next day, and I 

 frequently obtained, through, her intercession, a 

 holiday, to go a-fishing. My lessons in fly-fishing 

 were taken under our drawing-master, as great a 

 proficient in the art as ever I met with, and in his 

 company I have fished in the Wear, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Stanhope and Wolsingham ; in the 

 Greta ; in the Swale, near Oatterick ; and at Rich- 

 mond ; as well as in the Tees, from Piersbridge to 

 the Wheel or Weel, above Middleton. Trouts were 

 not plentiful in the Wear then, twenty-eight years 

 ago ; and I understand that they have since become 

 more scarce, nay almost extinct in the upper part 

 of the stream, in consequence of the water from the 

 lead mines. The Tees used to afford tolerably 

 good sport from Cotherstone upwards, though it 

 used to be sometimes netted by the miners about 

 Middleton. The " Weel," about ten miles above 

 Middleton, is a deep pool above two miles long, 

 and containing excellent trout. The country is 

 the most wild and desolate that I ever beheld, 

 and I have been at the head of Borrowdale, and 

 crossed Dartmoor, but the Cauldron Snout, where 

 the stream dashes from the Weel over a succession 

 of falls, and the High Force, five miles above 

 Middleton, where the stream leaps, at one bound, 

 from a ledge of rocks sixty feet high, are well de- 

 serving of the attention of the tourist who happens 

 to be within twenty miles of the place. Once, 



