It is a good plan to always carry some dubbing, gut, hooks, and silk, out with you in a small pocket book, that you may be able always to imitate any fly you see the fish rise at more than others.

The lighter your flies fall on the water the better, this you will not accomplish by strength, but by practice, always raising your rod by degrees, after you have made your cast. A young angler should never use more than one fly on the stretcher at first, but when he can throw out pretty well, he may add to the stretcher one or more droppers, observing always to let them be one yard asunder.

I shall now conclude these rules by giving the reader a passage relating to artificial fly-fishing, (with the alteration only of two or three monosyllables) from the Spring of that elegant and natural descriptive poet, Mr. Thomson, which cannot fail of contributing as well to his amusement, as instruc

tion:

Soon as the first foul torrent of the brooks,
Swell'd with the vernal rains, is ebb'd away,
And, whit'ning, down their mossy-tinctur'd stream
Descends the billowy foam, then is the time,
While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile,
To tempt the trout. The well-dissembl'd fly,
To rod fine tap'ring with elastic spring,
Snatch'd from the hoary steed the, floating line,
And all thy slender wat'ry stores prepare;
But let not on thy hook the tortur'd worm,
Convulsive twist in agonizing folds,
Which, by rapacious hunger swallowed deep,
Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast
Of the weak helpless uncomplaining wretch,
Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.
When with his lively ray the potent sun

Has

1

Has pierc'd the streams, and rous'd the finny race,
Then, issuing cheerful to thy sport repair;
Chief should the western breezes curling play,
And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds.
High to their fount, this day, amid the hills
And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks;
Then next pursue their rocky channel'd maze
Down to the river in whose ample wave
Their little naiads love to sport at large.
Just in the dubious point, where with the pool
Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollow bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,

There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly,
And as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urg'd by hunger leap,
Then fix with gentle twitch the barbed hook;
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow dragging some,
With various hand, proportion'd to their force.
If yet too young, and easily deceiv'd,

A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heav'n,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled captive throw; but should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly,
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimpl'd water speaks his jealous fear:
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death

1

With sullen plunge: at once he darts along,
Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthen'd line,
Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
The cavern'd bank, his old secure abode;
And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following now
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage,
Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandon'd, to the shore
You gaily drag your unresisting prize.

CHAP. VI.

Of the principal Rivers in England, and particularly of the Thames.

THE

HE rivers in England are said by Dr. Heylin, to be three hundred and twenty-five, though others increase their number to four hundred and fifty. It would be superfluous here to treat particularly of their diversities, their situations, their distance and remoteness from each other, their nearness or vicinity to the sea, the qualities of their water, and the various species of fish they contain. Those that have a more immediate intercourse with the sea, particularly of its influences, and have the same vicissitudes, the same fluxes and refluxes, the same salt water, and the same sort of fish which

frequent

frequent those seas where they disembogue themselves. The mouths of rivers are too deep to be fathomed by the cordage of a line; but more inland, and the farther distant from the common receptacle of waters, the rivers are most proper for the ang

ler's diversion.

The principal rivers in England are the Thames, Severn, Trent, Tine, Tweed, Medway, Tees, Dove, Isis, Tame, Willey, Avon, Lea, Trevel, Lon, Nen, Welland, Darvent, Calder, Wharf, Nid, Don, Swale, Hull, Ouse, and Are. The rivers in Wales are reckoned above two hundred, the principal of which are the Dee, Wye, Conwy, Tivy, Chedlayday, Cluid, Usk, Tovy, Taff, and Dovy. Several rivers in England run under ground and then rise again, as a branch of the Medway in Kent; the Mole in Surry; Hans in Staffordshire; the little rivers Allen in Denbighshire, and Deveril in Wiltshire; the river Recall hides itself under ground, near Elmsley in the NorthRiding of Yorkshire; at Ashwell in Bedfordshire, rise so many sources of springs that they soon drive a mill; at Chedder, near Axbridge in Somersetshire, is a spring that drives twelve mills in a quarter of a mile. In the midst of the river Nen, south of Peterborough in Northamptonshire, is a deep gulf, called Medeswell, so cold, that in summer no swimmer is able to endure it, yet is not frozen in the winter. But of these enough.

As the maps will give a better prospect of these than any enumeration of them can do, let every angler have a large one of England, or at least of the particular county where he usually angles, and therein he may with delight observe the spring head, scite, distance, various passages, windings, turnings, and confluxes of each particular river, with what towns, castles, churches, gentlemen's seats, and places

places of note, are on or near the banks; making, as he angles, remarks proper to the nature of each. The six principal rivers are as follow:

1. The Thames, compounded of two rivers, Tame and Isis. The Tame rises in Bucks, beyond Tame in Oxfordshire, and the latter in Cotswold-hills, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. They meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire, and thence run united betwixt that county and Bucks, and between Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, and Essex, on the one side, and Surry and Kent on the other, wedding itself to the Kentish Medway in the very jaws of the ocean. This river is said to feel the violence and benefit of the sea more than any other river in Europe, ebbing and flowing twice a day, more than sixty miles. Sir John Denham has given so grand a description of the Thames, in his Cooper's-hill, that I think the insertion of some part, cannot prove unacceptable to the reader:

My eye descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays:
Thames! the most lov'd of all the ocean's sons
By his old Sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity;

Tho' with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold:
His genuine and less guilty wealth t'explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore;
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring;
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay:
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.

No