OF AN INSECT-HUNTER. 401 



quickly conducted to the marshes. The ground, in many 

 parts of these marshes, is more than semiaqueous. Our guide 

 had provided himself with a pole, nearly twenty feet in length; 

 and demonstrated the nature of the substance on which we 

 trod, by occasionally running its whole length into what ap- 

 peared merely a puddle. On reaching the Lady Pools, we 

 found them quite answer our expectations — rather a rare 

 occurrence, when you have heard much in favour of any 

 particular object. The description Southey has given, in his 

 rhapsodical fiction of Thalaba, is so exceedingly accurate, 

 that, although the Insect-Hunter is but little given to the 

 practice of quoting, he cannot in this instance forbear : — 



" His aching eye pursued her path, 



When, starting onwards, went the dogs ; 



More rapidly they hurried on, 



In hope of near repose. 



It was the early morning yet, 



When by the well-head of a brook 



They stopt, their journey done. 

 The spring was clear, the water deep, 

 A venturous man were he, and rash, 

 That should have probed its depths ; 

 For all the loosened bed below 

 Heaved strangely up and down, 

 And to and fro, from side to side, 



It heaved, and waved, and tost ; 

 And yet the depths were clear, 

 And yet no ripple wrinkled o'er 

 The face of that fair well. 



" And on that well, so strange and fair, 

 A little boat there lay, 

 Without an oar, without a sail ; 

 One only seat it had — one seat, 

 As if alone for Thalaba." 



It appears, from a note appended to this passage in Thalaba, 

 that a similar pool exists near Bristol, about a mile from 

 Stokes Croft. There is something very strange about these 

 pools. The excessive agitation at the bottom, demonstrated 

 by the boiling up of the sand, and the continual and rapid 

 motion of luxuriant weeds, which grow from the sides — the 

 mirror-like stillness of the surface — the extreme pellucidness 

 of the water — the symmetry of the circular form, are all re- 

 markable characters. In the most severe frost, they are never 



