THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 247 



Piscator. 'Twere hard else. But, in the meantime, I think 

 *twere best, while this way is pretty even, to mend our pace, 

 that we may be past that hill I speak of, to the end your appre- 

 hension may not be doubled for want of light to discern the 

 easiness of the descent. 



Viator. I am willing to put forward as fast as my beast will 

 give me leave, though I fear nothing in your company. But 

 what pretty river is this we are going into ? 



Piscator. Why this, sir, is called Bently Brook,* and is full 

 of very good Trout and Grayling, but so encumbered with wood 

 in many places, as is troublesome to an angler. 



Viator. Here are the prettiest rivers, and the most of them, 

 in this country that ever I saw: do you know how many you 

 have in the country ? 



Piscator. I know them all, and they were not hard to reckon, 

 were it w r orth the trouble : but the most considerable of them I 

 will presently name you. And to begin where we now are, for 

 you must know we are now upon the very skirts of Derbyshire, 

 w r e have, first, the river Dove, that we shall come to by and 

 by, which divides the two counties of Derby and Stafford for 

 many miles together, and is so called from the swiftness of its 

 current, and that swiftness occasioned by the declivity of its 

 course, and by being so strained in that course betwixt the 

 rocks, by which (and those very high ones) it is, hereabout, for 

 four or five miles, confined into a very narrow stream ; a river 

 that from a contemptible fountain, which I can cover with my 

 hat, by the confluence of other rivers, rivulets, brooks, and rills, 

 is swelled, before it falls into Trent, a little below Eggington, 

 where it loses the name, to such a breadth and depth as to be in 

 most places navigable, were not the passage frequently interrup- 

 ted with fords and weirs ; and has as fertile banks as any river 

 in England, none excepted. And this river, from its head for a 

 mile or two, is a black water, as all the rest of the Derbyshire 

 rivers of note originally are, for they all spring from the mosses ; 

 but is in a few miles' travel so clarified by the addition of several 

 clear and very great springs, bigger than itself, which gush out 

 of the limestone rocks, that before it comes to my house, which 

 is but six or seven miles from its source, you will find it one of 

 the purest crystalline streams you have seen.f 



* A narrow swift stream, two miles beyond Ashbourn, in the present 

 high road, and considerably neai er to it in the o'd road. 



t Between Beresford Hall and Ashbourn IIPS D.e Lale, whose crested 

 cliffs and swift torrents are again noticed by Mr Cotton, in his Wonder* of 

 the Peak. Through this singularly deep valley the Dove runs for about 

 two mile?, changing its course, its motion, and its appearance perpetually, 

 never less than ten, and rarely so .n.t.i., as twenty yards in width, making 

 a continued noise by rolling over or falling' among loose stones. The rocks 

 which form its sides are heaved up in enormous piles, sometimes connected 



