UNLUCKY DAYS IN WALES. 241 



give you, as in the olden days, prime trout and salmon 

 angling, but it is always wiser to push farther than the 

 beaten track of tourists. The strongest claim the country 

 has upon English anglers is its nearness to them. Leaving 

 Euston at night, you may be casting a fly upon mountain 

 lakes by breakfast time next morning. Salmon used to be 

 to Welshmen what bales of cloth are to the Central Africans 

 — specie payment. Hence the lines : — 



" Though weak and fragile, now I'm found 

 With foaming ocean's waves around, 

 In retribution's hour I'll be 

 Three hundred salmoit's worth to thee." 



Let the angler get up into the mountains, and be prepared 

 to rough it, securing a lift by coach or cart as opportunity 

 offers. The loneliness of the land will be compensated for 

 by the finny company in the streams. Carnarvonshire is 

 a rare country for artists and fishermen ; and Merionethshire 

 and Denbighshire abutting upon it are scarcely inferior. 

 Dolgelly, Bangor, Aberystwith, Barmouth, and Betts-y-Coed 

 are serviceable head-quarters. In South Wales, especially 

 in Glamorganshire, the collieries and mineral workings have 

 ruined many a fishing stream, but outside of the mineral 

 basin, and even on the hills within it, trout may yet be 

 found, and are frequently potted by prowling pitmen filching 

 them from under the stones, when other means of obtaining 

 them fail. In Carmarthenshire there are the Towy and 

 Tave; Radnorshire receives the Wye eighteen miles out 

 from Plinlimmon, and there are many small streams and 

 lakes in the county ; Brecknockshire is rich with Wye and 

 Usk. 



