A Marshy Expanse. 



251 



region, where the stream, after recovering itself from a 

 passage over a shallower reach, in which the cattle love 

 to come and stand knee-deep in the summer, and thus 

 escape as best they can from the flies, gets enclosed in 

 a narrower channel, with many deep pools and rather 

 dark-looking, slow-eddying corners. It is here, they 

 tell us, that the big fish love to lie, and here that the 

 skilful angler with the worm, after a fall of rain, will 

 be likely to come and try for them. 



A little further down, just before the stream loses 

 itself in the big water, our favourite walk is lost — the 

 current spreads itself over a half marshy expanse, With 

 no end of little pools ; and not far off is a row of fisher- 

 men's huts — houses they can hardly be named — and 

 their boats, or " cobbles," as they would call them in 

 Scotland and the North, lie there fastened to old oak 

 piles, unless in the season when they are busy at the 

 fishing. In the off-season you are sure to find them in 

 front of these huts making nets or doing other such 

 work, and they will be very willing to row you about 

 on the river, or take you to the best fishing grounds 

 for a comparatively small fee. 



