18 FISHING IN EDEN 



Not much more than fifty years ago, coal was 

 brought in panniers on the backs of fell ponies into 

 the Eden Valky. 



Going back fifty years to a time when as lads at 

 school we were playing at soldiers in imitation of the 

 Franco-Prussian War, the people in those counties, 

 and particularly in the Eden Valley, were much 

 more cut off from the world than they are nowadays. 

 The ordinary farmer folk, who constituted the mass 

 of the thin population, seldom went far from home. 

 They knew little or nothing of the great world out- 

 side the ring of mountains that enclosed them. 

 Some of the older yeoman still wore knee-breeches 

 and buckled shoes. There were lots of people who 

 had never been in a railway train, and some who had 

 not even seen one. The old post houses of the 

 coaching days still lingered. Daily papers were 

 almost unknown. 



It was in this remote part of England that I first 

 threw a fly, and it is almost impossible to set a 

 particular period to that start. Perhaps, however, 

 it had its beginnings as soon as I got into male attire. 

 At that time and in that place we went about in 

 frocks much longer than children of the towns. We 

 could not always get the itinerant tailor to come 

 when we were ready for him. His visit was 

 considered quite an event in family life, for, of 



