CLEAR WATERS 



have a bit of sport upon their own account. Half 

 the people in the dale know most of the hounds by- 

 name, and it is more than likely that the shepherd- 

 farmer who stops to have a crack with you on the lake 

 shore will recognise each one of these truants who are 

 waking the echoes on the screes above. Brotherswater 

 that delightful gem of molten silver, which glitters 

 beneath the westering sun in any panoramic view of 

 Patterdale ; and on airless noons and mornings almost 

 invisible from its mirror-like reflections of the woods 

 and mountain which overhang it is a shallow lake of 

 meadowy margin, but fringed with foliage upon the 

 mountain-side, where the Goldrill streams away from 

 its foot adown the dale. It is full of small trout, and 

 free to the angler (though I am afraid this is now a 

 thing of the past), save for the hire of the boat. I have 

 not fished it myself for many years, and I should per- 

 haps qualify my estimate of its fish, if only for a basket 

 I saw brought in by a local friend quite recently, after a 

 whole night with fly or bustard, which contained among 

 a great number of smaller ones at least a dozen fish of 

 a third to half a pound in weight. 



Now every one who has been up Helvellyn from 

 the Ullswater side, or even stood upon the summit, 

 must know Red tarn, since it fills the crater-like hollow 

 below the mountain's eastern precipice, and is walled 

 in on either side by the rugged, projecting flankers 

 of Striding and Swhirrel Edges. In short, it is a 

 conspicuous feature of this, the grandest side by far 

 of the mighty Helvellyn, in shape a half moon, and 

 not quite a mile in circumference. Being sheltered 

 on every side but the east, it is more than likely on 

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