ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 



farther shores of Craig-C6ch and the nearest road. 

 A few local anglers camp out up there every May, 

 and I have their records, which are good, but other- 

 wise I fancy these two lakes are never touched. In the 

 lower one the fish average just half a pound ; in the 

 upper so many to the pound as to be hardly worth 

 catching. Nor is there anything in the appearance of 

 these two contiguous lakes to suggest a reason for this 

 extraordinary contrast. So, too, if the parenthesis 

 will be pardoned, high up in the arms of the Rhinog 

 mountains in Merionethshire, just above the savage 

 pass of Ardudwy and amid some of the finest rock 

 scenery in Wales, there are two lakes almost as near 

 together the one a sort of crater formation cover- 

 ing perhaps twenty acres and very deep, the other 

 within sight of it, about two acres and comparatively 

 shallow. In the larger lake there is nothing at all but 

 fingerlings, with grotesquely big heads and scarcely 

 even fit for the table, which rise greedily. In the 

 smaller pool, barren and naked as its environment, any 

 fish you may catch will be a pound or over. Practi- 

 cally, however, no one but a very occasional local ever 

 wets a line on these waters, for it takes nearly two hours 

 of stiff climbing to reach them from the head of a 

 remote valley. I have done so once myself, and that 

 too, quite recently. Curiosity and the weirdness of 

 the surroundings was one motive, the other was the 

 company of a friend learned in lichens, varieties of 

 which, unknown, I believe, elsewhere in Britain, flourish 

 up here, if such a verb can be used in regard to what 

 looks to the lay eye but a dark stain upon the rock. 

 Ravens also flourish, and their hoarse, untiring cries 



191 



