280 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART II, 



Pise. Why this, Sir, is called Bently -brook, 1 and is full 

 of very good Trout and Grayling, but so encumbered with 

 wood in many places as is troublesome to an angler. 



yiat. 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 ? 



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

 were it worth 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, we have, first, the river Dove, that 

 we shall come to by and by, which divides the two coun- 

 ties 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 straitened in that course betwixt the rocks, by 

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

 or live 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 river?, 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 interrupted with fords 

 and weirs ; and has as fertile banks as any river in Eng- 

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

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

 shire 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 lime-stone rocks, that 

 before it comes to my house, which is but six or seven 



(I) A mrro* swift stream, two miles beyond Ashbourn, in the present lii 

 Ad, bat cooudeiably ueaier to it in (he old road. 



