CHAPTER XVIII 



CHESTER AND THE DEE 



There is a river of Cheshire which also spends 

 some considerable part of its time in Wales, and 

 there is a river of Oxfordshire which devotes a 

 good deal of its wanderings to making a county 

 boundary or dividing line, and — must I say it ? — 

 there are salmon in both. Salmon there are, too, 

 in the Dee — to whom you may be introduced in 

 Welsh Wales as the Coed^ — but not so many 

 salmon as are represented to have come out of it. 

 Of that I am solid sure, because much of the 

 beautiful fish purveyed as grown on the estate 

 does, so to speak, carry a strong Scotch accent, 

 and has Caledonian names on the cases in which 

 it travels. Personally, I don't care where the 

 Chester fishmongers get their salmon, or how 

 they come by it. If you prove to me that it is 

 Dutch, and has been on ice for a week, that will 

 make no difference in my appreciation of the 

 Chester sample as the brightest and most 

 attractive-looking that comes under my notice, 

 and remarkably good to eat. It may be caught, 

 as it used, by the coraclers — patient, persevering 

 toilers, who only need to take off their clothes and 

 sit with a dash of woad on their skins to be 



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