The Compleat ^Angler 



enough, and so passable, that we who are natives of these mountains 

 and acquainted with them, disdain to alight. 



VIAT. I hope, though, that a foreigner is privileged to use his 

 own discretion, and that I may have the liberty to entrust my neck 

 to the fidelity of my own feet, rather than to those of my horse, for 

 I have no more at home. 



Pise. 'Twere hard else. But in the meantime, I think 'twere 

 best, while this way is pretty even, to mend our pace, that we may 

 be past that hill I speak of ; to the end your apprehension may not 

 be doubled for want of light to discern the easiness of the descent. 



VIAT. I am willing to put forward as fast as my beast will give 

 me leave, though I fear nothing in your company. But what pretty 

 river is this we are going into ? 



Pise. Why this, sir, is called Bently-brook, and is full of very 

 good trout and grayling ; but so encumbered 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 how many you have in the 

 country ? 



Pise. I know them all, and they were not hard to reckon, were it 

 worth the trouble ; but the most considerable 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 swiftness of its current, and that swiftness 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, 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 weirs ; and has as fertile banks as any river in England, 

 none excepted. And this river, from its head for a mile or two, i& 



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