ON THE ITHON 31 



nothing about fishing, and disliked it. He had 

 enough to do to look after his hens and young 

 pheasants here and there about the woods, so 

 his opinion about the fishing was not of much 

 account. 



Let it be distinctly understood that I am 

 writing as a fly fisherman only; for bottom fish- 

 ing no doubt it is fishable in many places, and 

 the fisherman would everywhere be richly re- 

 warded, for chub and roach and dace abound. 

 The river could also be fished here and there by 

 wading, but for the most part it runs ten feet 

 deep, where waders would not be available. 

 These parts may be fished in a collapsible Ber- 

 thon boat, or a coracle such as may be seen 

 on the Severn at Shrewsbury and elsewhere. 



At the end of this meadow the great oak 

 wood again protruded itself down to the very 

 edge of the water, loftier and thicker and steeper 

 than the portion I had already laboriously 

 struggled through. Here it lifted its oak-crowned 

 head almost perpendicularly, two hundred yards 

 up. I penetrated as far as I could go in the 

 hope of finding an opening, but it grew worse 

 and worse. This wooded hill bordered the river 

 for miles, as it seemed to me, uninterruptedly. 

 I was now in the depth of it, impossible to pro- 

 ceed farther, too far to go back, and if I had 

 gone back I could not have got out of that 

 little gate-locked, barb-wired, high-hedged 



