182 FISHING GOSSIP. 



member to have seen sporting in so diminutive a 

 stream. Wordsworth's description, which so much 

 amused Byron and his friends in former days, would 

 exactly suit it : 



" I measured it from side to side, 

 'Twas two feet deep and three feet wide." 



Boulders and fragments of rock were considerately 

 thrown across its bed at short intervals, to increase 

 its volume and give a wider playground to its tiny 

 inmates. In the churros or merry little pools caused 

 by these obstructions, almost any number of small 

 trout might be caught of a morning with a grub or 

 worm. A stone causeway ran along its margin for 

 the accommodation of royal feet, when it so pleased 

 them to go a-fishing. A diplomatic friend amused 

 himself in the regal way ; but it was dull work after 

 all to pull up a troutling at every other cast. Fly- 

 fishing was impracticable from the extreme brightness 

 of the water and clearness of the atmosphere. I had, 

 therefore, only to look on in compassionate silence at 

 this specimen of royal angling, and think of a bounding 

 skiff, a stiff breeze, and the drake just released from 

 his pupal prison starting on his first flight from the 

 crest of a swelling wave on the Inniel or the Sheeling. 

 Larger trout, I was informed, were to be found in 

 the reservoir which fed the famous fountain of La 

 Granja, hard by. This was a pretty tarn called El 

 Mar, in the grandiloquence of the Castilian, remark- 



