found from the powerful, swift, and travelled salmon,
to the modest little gudgeon that stays quietly at home, is a country
where the angler may live in a state of perpetual jubilee; the carp, the
eel, and the pike attain an enormous size, particularly near the dams
and flood-gates, where the depth of water is great, and in the _Gours_
or water-courses which, diverging at several points on the stream, are
constructed for supplying the flour and paper-mills with water.

The punters of Richmond, Hampton Court, and Chertsey, with their
magnificent tackle, gentles, ground-bait, and comfortable chair, &c.,
would be astonished to see the quantities of fish that are taken in one
of these _Gours_ by a half-naked peasant, with a line as thick as
packthread, during a sultry tempestuous evening in the month of June;
from thirty to forty pounds' weight of carp and eels is by no means an
unusual take,--Apodal and Abdominal, as the learned Gmelin would say.

These _Gours_ are perfect jewels in the eyes of our fishermen; on very
great occasions, for instance, when the miller marries, or an infant
miller makes his appearance, if the occurrence should happen during the
summer season, the flood-gates of the _Gours_ are opened, when the
waters being let off to within a few inches of the bottom, the quantity
of fish taken with the casting-net is enormous. In the large _Gour_ of
Akin, the longest, the deepest, and containing more fish than any on the
Cure or the Cousin, which I mention as representing the ten or twelve
second-rate rivers of Le Morvan, I have seen as much as four horse-loads
of fish taken, though every fish under two pounds was thrown back. The
average depth of water in these rivers is from three to four feet,
except near the dams and flood-gates, where it is from twelve to
thirteen. With rivers so well supplied, sport is invariably obtained; so
that patience, a virtue generally considered absolutely necessary in the
angler, is scarcely required here, and fishing is actually a pastime of
the _beau sexe_.

Well do I remember the astonishment, the pleasure, the delicious joy of
a young English lady we had the good fortune to have with us at Vezelay,
some few years since (where, by-the-bye, she made quite a sensation),
when for the first time, and seated comfortably upon the soft turf by
the river side, she gracefully threw her line into the great _Gour_ of
Akin; the bait had scarcely sunk, when the float was dancing about li