made me hope that you will make good your promise, and say something of the several rivers that be of most note in this nation; and also of fish-ponds and the ordering of them; and do it, I pray, good master, for I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing; the time spent in such discourse passes away very pleasantly.

EHN

CHAPTER XIX

Of several Rivers, and some observations of Fish.

ISC. Well, scholar, since the ways and weather do both favour us, and that we yet see not Tottenham Cross, you shall see my willingness to satisfy your desire. And first, for the rivers of this nation, there bet (as you may note out of Doctor Heylin's Geography, and others) in number 325, but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as followeth :

1. The chief is Thamesis, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis, whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in Buckinghamshire, and the latter in Cirencester in Gloucestershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamesis, or Thames; hence it flieth betwixt Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex; and so weddeth himself to the Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious river feeleth

R

the violence and benefit of the sea more than any river in Europe, ebbing and flowing twice a day, more than sixty miles about whose banks are so many fair towns and princely palaces that a German poet thus truly spake :

:

TOT CAMPOS, ETC.

We saw so many woods and princely bowers,
Sweet fields, brave palaces, and stately towers,
So many gardens dress'd with curious care,

That Thames with royal Tiber may compare.

2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn it hath its beginning in Plynlimmon Hill in Montgomeryshire, and his end seven miles from Bristol, washing, in the mean space, the walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers other places and palaces of note.

3. Trent, so called from thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers; who, having his fountain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the counties of Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the turbulent current of Humber, the most violent stream of all the isle. This Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river, having a spring-head of his own, but it is rather the mouth or æstuarium of divers rivers here confluent, and meeting together, namely, your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent; and (as the Danow, having received into its channel the river Dravus, Savus, Tibiscus, and divers others) changeth his name into this of Humberabus, as the old geographers call it.

4. Medway, a Kentish river, famous for harbouring the royal navy.

5. Tweed, the north-east bound of England; on whose northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable town of Berwick.

6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coal-pits. These and the rest of principal note, are thus comprehended in one of Mr. Drayton's sonnets.

The floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd;
And stately Severn for her shore is praised;
The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd;
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised.
Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee;

York many wonders of her Ouse can tell;
The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be;
And Kent will say, her Medway doth excel.
Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame;

Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood;
Our western parts extol their Willy's fame;

And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.

These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my old deceased friend, Michael Drayton; and because you say you love such discourses as these, of rivers and fish and fishing, I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to you nevertheless, scholar, if I should begin but to name the several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, or both; and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth concerning one lately dissected by Dr. Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom to communicate it; one that loves me and my art; one to whom I have been beholden for many of the choicest observations that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares to do anything rather than tell an untruth, did (I say) tell me he had lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described it to me :

"The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length; his mouth wide enough to receive, or take into it, the head of a man; his stomach seven or eight inches broad: he is of a slow motion, and usually lies or lurks close in the mud, and has a movable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long, by the moving of which (which is his natural bait) when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him that he can suck them into his mouth, and so devours and digests them."