THE MICROBE 



of the year more or less throughout the changing 

 seasons. Topography and all it signified became 

 in this free, wide-ranging life something real. From 

 the moor just above, where in those days the black 

 game still bred, we could see nearly all over Devon- 

 shire and into north Cornwall, together with the 

 whole of the Bristol Channel and the long curving 

 coast of Wales with its shadowy, mysterious, back- 

 lying mountains. The habits of observation were 

 established without injunctions or precepts, and they 

 soon extended themselves from the things that were 

 near to the things that were far away. The maps of 

 infancy began to shape themselves into real things 

 of infinite interest, into hills, moors, valleys, and 

 seas. 



The greatest joy of all, however, were the occasional 

 days upon the Barle. Our river washed the skirts 

 only of the moor, but the Barle cleft its silent heart. 

 It was a real solitary moorland stream, from where we 

 tapped it near its head four miles away in the gloomy 

 depths of Pinkerry pool, right down to Simmons- 

 bath, peaty and amber - coloured, running from 

 rocky shallows into deep dark pools which seemed 

 to my fevered unsophisticated fancy the potential 

 haunt of whales. In reality they were the stamping- 

 ground of three-ouncers and quarter-pounders and 

 a legion of sprats upon whom a venerable fly-dis- 

 daining Triton or two, made raids when they felt 

 hungry. 



Sometimes these big ones made a mistake, but it 

 was not generally the proffered fly of the boy that 

 thus deceived them. Occasionally one of our party 

 B 17 



