12 By Stream and Sea. 



Not so many years ago the Rickmansworth fishery was 

 one of the best in the country. It was carefully preserved 

 by a limited club of gentlemen, who paid a high price for 

 their sport ; but the sport was worth the paying for, and the 

 angler was seldom indeed sent empty away. 



One morning the keeper walked down the meadows to 

 perform his daily inspection, and saw a burly speckled 

 object circling slowly by the side of the stream. It was a 

 trout, too sickly to dart away at the approach of footsteps. 

 A few yards further there was another fish in extremis; then 

 another, and others. In short, along the entire margin the 

 magnificent trout, objects of his most constant watchfulness, 

 were dead and dying by the hundred, and by the hundred- 

 weight. The man has often told me that he wept like a 

 child at the sight. His employer went to law with the mill- 

 owner above Rickmansworth, whose iniquities had caused 

 this dire destruction, and through some technicality lost the 

 cause. This portion of the river is still preserved as a sub- 

 scription water, and I know of none that surpasses it for 

 heavy and plentiful roach, for large dace that afford good 

 sport to the fly-fisher, and for chub. The pike run small, 

 though they are of extra quality. The poachers in the 

 neighbourhood run large, and they also are of extra quality 

 — bad quality. 



No better excursion can be made to behold our Hertford- 

 shire valley scenery at its best, and at the same time to 

 visit one of the show-places of the neighbourhood, than to 

 Cheneys, just over the Buckinghamshire border, five miles 

 from Rickmansworth. The drive is through delightful 

 country, along a high road overlooking the course of the 

 River Chess, which joins the Colne near Rickmansworth. 

 You ascend from that town by a steep street, which soon 

 brings you into high ground, among the hedges and trees 



