THE TROUT OF THE MOOR. IQ 



In these sequestered villages and solitary inns the visitor 

 meets with sturdy, healthy folk, whose abrupt manners might easily 

 be mistaken for rudeness. But these hardy natives, who all their 

 lives have been shut out from the world, are good and kind at heart 

 in reality. They are people of few words. Superfluous language 

 is absent from their greeting, yet they welcome the stranger with 

 open arms, and by their actions and quiet attentions soon make him 

 feel at home. They are unaffected and superstitious. Traditions 

 and old-world legends die hard amongst them. Each treacherous 

 bog and'rugged height, almost without exception, is, according to 

 them, wrapt in fearsome mystery. The shepherds and gamekeepers 

 are men of the moor. The moor is an integral part of their lives. 

 The influence of retirement and the sadness of great spaces of the 

 vast, empty spaces of moorland and mountain have told plainly 

 upon their character. The smell of the peat and heather is carried 

 on their clothes ; these men are the true sons of wild nature. 



In search of the troutlings, the farther away from the habita- 

 tions of men the angler roams, the better are his chances of success. 

 He should avoid the worn paths and all signs of the presence of 

 human beings. To accomplish this he must needs be a lover of 

 nature and of solitude ; but he always is, since the necessary con- 

 dition of isolation undoubtedly forms one of the chief attractions 

 of moorland fishing. The poet, however, would have us believe 

 that it is not solitude " to climb the trackless mountain," upon which 

 " things that own not man's dominion dwell," or where " mortal foot 

 hath ne'er or rarely been," but simply " to hold converse with 

 Nature's charms." 



Let us now turn to the stream wherein our troutlings are to be 

 found. Away in a barren, wild and mountainous spot it is born 

 a birthplace befitting a stream which beckons to its side the hardiest 

 and most sport-loving only of anglers. 



After completing the first stage of its infancy the mountain 

 torrent tumbles down through a wilderness of bog and heather a 

 land sullen and lonely. Beneath rugged tors and awe-inspiring 

 heights, following whither it leads, wanders the angler, whilst the 



