ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 



two say that they are too full. So when the angler 

 has filled his basket (but that is another story) he 

 need not worry about going home lest he should levy 

 too heavy a toll, but go on fishing, if he feels like it, 

 with an easy conscience and a light heart. I have 

 never myself been in that enviable position, for the 

 fates have so ordained that my visits have always fallen 

 at the * back ' end of the season, when baskets are in- 

 evitably much lighter, though sometimes of reasonable 

 weight. Nor are these imported fish, but merely the 

 well-developed descendants of the little fellows which 

 since time began had haunted the plashing streams 

 of the Elan and the Claerwen and their tributary 

 burns. Not till quite recently, in deference, I fancy, 

 to outside clamours, have any alien stock been put 

 in. When waters are quite full of the best kind of 

 native stock, and the only future anxiety is concerned 

 with the food supply, to put in more fish seems 

 absurd. New blood, too, has its dangers. The intro- 

 duction of more minnows would surely be more to the 

 purpose if manipulate you must ! The Elan lakes are 

 not midland or south country reservoirs, but are of 

 beautiful, limpid water, borne in with a rush by rocky 

 streams, which here and there leap with a gay bound 

 from some craggy, birch-tufted crag right into the 

 lake. For a mile or so up the lower lake of Caban 

 there is a sloping stone embankment, a trifling fore- 

 ground blemish, perhaps, at the first glimpse of it, 

 and the only one which many tourists on wheels carry 

 away with them. But practically everywhere else the 

 waters lap naturally against such bounds as nature 

 set them. Here upon sloping, half-drained pastures, 



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