We saw so many Woods and Princely bowers, 2. The second river of note, is Sabrina or Severn; it hath it's beginning in Plinilimmon-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 for 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 rivers 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. Our flood's queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd, And stately Severn for her shore is prais'd; The crystal Trent for fords and fish renown'd, And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is rais'd. 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 excell. Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame, Our Northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood, Our Western parts extoll 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 free dom 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 do any thing rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me, he 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 66 or take into it the head of a man, his stomach 66 seven or eight inches broad: he is of a slow mo"tion, and usually lies or lurks close in the mud, " and has a moveable 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." And, Scholar, do not wonder at this, for besides the credit of the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes, which are of the like, and more unusual shapes, are very often taken on the mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore; and this will be no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt, where 'tis known the famous river Nilus does not only breed fishes that yet want names, but by the overflowing of that river, and the help of the sun's heat on the fat slime which that river leaves on the banks, when it falls back into its natural channel, such strange fish and beasts are also bred, that no man can give a name to, as Grotius, in his Sophom, and others, have observed. But whither am I strayed in this discourse? I will end it by telling you, that at the mouth of some of these rivers of our's, Herrings are so plentiful, as namely, near to Yarmouth in Norfolk, and in the west-country, Pilchers so very plentiful, as you will wonder to read what our learned Camden relates of them in his Britannia, p. 178, 186. Well, Scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what by reading and conference I have observed concerning Fish-ponds. CHAPTER XX. Of Fish-ponds, and how to order them. PISCATOR. DOCTOR Lebault, the learned Frenchman, in his large discourse of Maison Rustique, gives this direction for making of Fish-ponds; I shall refer you to him to read it at large, but I think I shall contract it, and yet make it as useful. He adviseth, that when you have drained the ground, and made the earth firm where the head of the Pond must be, that you must then in that place, drive in two or three rows of oak or elm piles, which should be scorched in the fire, or half burnt before they be driven into the earth; for being thus used, it preserves them much longer from rotting; and having done so, lay faggots or bavins of smaller wood betwixt them, and then earth betwixt and above them, and then having first very well rammed them and the earth, use another pile in like manner as the first were: and note, that the second pile, is to be of, or about the height that you intend to make your Sluice or Flood-gate, or the vent that you intend shall convey the overflowings of your Pond, in any flood that shall endanger the breaking of the Pond-dam. Then he advises that you plant willows or owlers |