CLEAR WATERS 



and wished so well to everybody, it was impossible not 

 to think he might extend his amenities to poachers. 

 Peace to his ashes, for he is long dead and was not a 

 teetotaller ! But I missed him very much one April 

 when a stalwart gamekeeper-looking man came along, 

 who asked me for my ticket as if I had just discovered 

 the river, and then informed me, rather more than 

 laconically, that my white-whiskered friend was no 

 more. 



A run down the Dee on a coracle without a rod 

 would be the ideal method of seeing one of the most 

 delightful stretches of river scenery known to me. 

 But armed with one, unless peradventure the trout 

 proved obdurate, I cannot imagine a worse one. The 

 exacting, almost feverish nature of this style of fishing 

 excludes the romantic and the picturesque sufficiently 

 from consideration for the purest of dry-fly purists. 

 My sensations on stepping ashore in the evening by 

 Llantisilio weir after a good day, though fraught with 

 all the satisfaction of meritorious work achieved, were 

 not unlike that of landing after a long sea voyage, in 

 so far as the earth and all that is thereon appeared to 

 be in active motion. Otherwise my cheeks would be 

 burning, and a sense of having been all day endeavour- 

 ing to catch up something slipping always away was 

 strong upon me. There are blanks, however, as well 

 as prizes even at this business. 



Now the Dee is what is known as an east-wind river, 

 and there are not, so far as I know, many such eccentric 

 streams. More than one of my most thrilling hours 

 have been spent here in a driving snowstorm, when I 

 have seen the river literally alive with tumbling fish, 

 60 



