232 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



genial companionship of my gallant young guide, not the 

 rescue of the trout from the evil attacks of Adonis, not the 

 sight of a comely Usk trout safe in the depths of the net, 

 but the homely table in the fishing lodge garnished with a 

 leg of real Welsh five-year-old mutton fed on the home farm 

 and roasted artistically. Man, I repeat, is a gross animal ; 

 but for all that, mutton when it is Welsh, when it is five-year- 

 old, when it is well roasted from knuckle to blade, is not 

 to be put aside in terms of contemptuous indifference. 



The afternoon passed principally in an inspection of the 

 pools for salmon, of which we saw several. The keeper 

 had hooked one which he pronounced an " old Turk," 

 and set at liberty, not because of its oriental attributes, but 

 because it was not in season ; the captain also had turned 

 one over, and I had scared a small fellow from the water's 

 edge. The Usk is as late a river for salmon as it is early for 

 trout. When was the Usk not famous for its salmon ? Poets 

 wrote about it in 1555 :^ — 



" In Oske doth sammon lye, 

 And of good fish, in Oske, you shall not mis ; 

 And this seems strange, and doth through Wales appere 

 In some one place are sammons all the yeere. 

 So fresh, so sweet, so red, so crimp withal, 

 That man might say ' Loe ' sammon here at call." 



Coming from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century it is 

 not difficult to furnish a convincing proof of the abundance 

 of Usk "sammon." Not many seasons since a gentleman, 

 who himself related to me the circumstance, counted on a 

 bend of the river not more than 200 yards long thirty -nine 

 old or spent fish that had perished while waiting for floods 

 to take them to the sea. Mr. Robert Crawshay, the iron 



