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round, with a seat placed across the centre for the greater facility of guidance. Wales appears to be the only place in which it is generally used: and its value to a poor fisherman is astonishing. With his coracle, and his dog, and his fowling-piece, he traverses the swiftest rivers, rattles down cataracts and water-falls, and then returns to his cottage, with his boat upon his back, his gun in his hand, and his trusty spaniel by his side.

Having said so much about the coracle, it is high time we should get into it; a job which we speedily effected but being novices in the management, there was some little apprehension manifested on our first putting off from shore. But we soon got accustomed to the task, recollecting with the compassionate fish-woman, who excused herself for skinning eels, with "Lord bless 'em, it's nothing when they are used to it," that danger or pain of any kind is diminished by habit. To this observation, however, which I repeated to Morgan as we were entering the coracles, he begged leave to except a school-flogging, assuring me that after having been duly scourged for a week successively, he found the inconvenience as great at the termination as at the commencement of his discipline.

And now behold us seated each in his wicker boat, busily making for the centre of the pool,

where, according to the village records, the larger fish love to resort. The soldier was the first to cast out his bait without receiving any return to his letter of invitation. For my own part, I floated more discreetly by the bank-side, where a huge congregation of weeds hinted the probability of a bottom, which in the middle of the lake is almost as difficult to discover as the longitude. I soon found myself rewarded for my discretion; for on throwing the fly, a thumping pike, roused perhaps to activity by the approach of the coracle, seized it with the velocity of lightning, and, on being struck, rushed forward in a desperate hurry, churning the water into foam as he passed. Maddened with pain, he dashed about the pool, rose apparently exhausted on the surface, and then dived deep into the wave, till spent by fatigue he gave up the job, as well as the ghost; and I had the ecstacy of landing a pike of six pounds weight.

I was so much engrossed by my booty, that for some time I was deaf to the shouts of little Morgan, who had hooked a similarly sized fish, but was less able to restrain his jubilant cachinations. When at last I reverted my optics to his coracle, I found him skimming in it to and fro, now at one end, now at another part of the pool, in hasty pursuit of his prey, which was floundering about in

Reader!

the water like a fresh-water leviathan. hast thou ever seen a buttock of beef rearing its majestic form above the margin of a wash-tub?such was our magnanimous Cambrian, while seated in a squat cock-boat, his goodly stomach rose proudly pre-eminent in corpulent circumference.

At this instant, while he was landing his fish, some wild-fowl sprung up from a little thicket, at the extremity of the pool. Somerset, who by great good-luck had his fowling-piece in the coracle, hastened to pay his addresses to them; but finding that they possessed all the timid shyness of youth, resolved upon a clandestine interview, and firing from behind a prolific family of osiers, lodged a brace of wild-ducks in the water. "Bravo!" exclaimed the enraptured Morgan, and hastened to examine the bodily health of the defunct; a scrutiny which afforded him the sincerest satisfaction.

We had now been some hours on the lake, and Somerset, who laid aside his rod for his fowlingpiece, went poaching along the banks and through the copse, in hopes of scraping a further acquaintance with fish, flesh, or fowl. The Welchman returned to his position in the centre of the pool, while I, with wonted discretion, performed my noviciate with the coracle by the sides. I never indeed, such is my want of taste, could fancy a

cold-bath when I had the power of avoiding it; although I am partial to a duck, yet I have an instinctive aversion to a ducking, and can readily sympathize with poor Falstaff, "that man of continual dissolution and thaw," when he relates the pathetic circumstance of having been thrown into the Thames together with a bundle of old clothes. But although I did not venture into the great deeps, I found myself equally successful by the banks, and in a very short space had contrived to hook a fish of four pounds weight, and to lose another, which, to my express consolation, was double the size. The soldier was more fortunate with his gun, as I discovered from the frequent splashings in the water; but our worthy host, who stood demurely angling for roach, perch, and chub, was as unlucky as the man in the Pentateuch, who "toiled all day and caught nothing."

But all that we had hitherto hooked was but "cakes and gingerbread" to the monster that rose at my fly, and darted off again like a shot. He whizzed along the water with inconceivable violence; and by a transient glimpse that I gained of his side, I should fancy he must have weighed upwards of fourteen pounds. I was in a perfect tremble at the sight of him, so eager were my exertions to land him. My rod bent like an osier, when, as ill-luck

would have it, the faithless line gave way, and off went the pike, with a steel draught in his gills, and about three inches of worsted in his gorge, attached to a reasonable quantity of whipcord by way of emetic.

Evening was now drawing on, and our respectively keen appetites gave manifest tokens of the arrival of the dinner-hour. I immediately paddled to land; but being somewhat ignorant of the topography of the place, set my foot into an immense marsh, which surrounds the pool on every side but one. Each step sunk me "deeper and deeper still;" but I had the consolation of reflecting that my Welch friend was much worse off than myself, having landed in a similar spot. "Hallo," he ejaculated in tones of desponding bitterness, "is there no bottom to this cursed bog?"-"Yes," I replied, "an excellent one, when you can find it," a rejoinder which filled him with dismay.

With some difficulty we contrived to reach terra firma, when on looking back towards the water we beheld Somerset plump headlong out of his coracle, in endeavouring to reach a wild-fowl which had dropped into the pool. A fisherman, who was angling hard by, hastened immediately to his assistance, while Morgan, who is something of a philosopher, coolly took out his watch, and folded his

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