A WHIT-MONDAY FISHING 261 



the arrangement of his hypocaust and neatly con- 

 structed Turkish bath, still remaining, to the u stagna," 

 or fish-ponds, which gave him grilled trout for 

 breakfast. 



The spot selected lay in a wood, at a point where 

 the brook divided for some distance into two streams, 

 the one, straight, deep, and rapid ; the other, a 

 succession of small pools, joined by miniature cata- 

 racts, in which the water danced down from pool 

 to pool over lumps of flint and brown chalcedony. 

 Early in the morning, the men for this is no boy's 

 work had dammed the last stream at the fork, and 

 turned most of the water down the straight channel ; 

 and when we tramped through the squashy meadows, 

 and the thick growth of wood-elder, wake-robin, wild 

 garlic, and blue and pink comfrey in the wood, to join 

 the workers, the chain of pools was only connected by 

 an inch of trickling water. But the instinct by which 

 fish detect and follow the first warning of scarcity, had 

 already caused them to withdraw to the deepest holes 

 and hollows, and even the groping of a practised hand 

 under the banks detected no sign of a trout. No one 

 who has not tried to empty it, would believe the 

 quantity of water which a small pool holds. When a 

 dam of turf cut from the banks has been thrown across, 

 to prevent the waters below running back as the surface 

 sinks, two men step into the pool, and rapidly and 

 steadily, like machines, fling the water forward and over 

 it, until the sweat rolls from their foreheads, and we 

 volunteer to take their places. Stepping into the cool 



