The Naturalist on the Thames Part 3

They were all talking over the day at the top of their voices; it had been a very good one. The wood is quite isolated and not more than forty acres.

All round it is the property of one of the Oxford Colleges, which retains the sporting rights over about fifteen hundred acres. This is exercised by one of their senior fellows under some arrangement which works perfectly well so far as I can see. I asked our keeper, who always calls him "The Doctor," whether he was a medicine doctor or a doctor of divinity. He inclined to think he was the latter, as he belonged to college shooting.

This way of putting it struck me as odd, but he was right. Any way, he looked a very pleasant figure in his long shooting coat and old-fashioned Bedford cords. There is also a college keeper, who is an inst.i.tution in the village. The day's sport in "the Captain's wood" had been a success.

Forty hares had been shot, or just one per acre, as well as a number of rabbits and wild pheasants. The hares were being sent round the village in very generous fashion, and a dozen lay on a bench in a back room.

Our own day was also a satisfactory one. Rabbits were unusually numerous, and many squares had to be beaten twice. The gross total of the two days was only something over three hundred head; but it was all wild game, and shot in very pretty surroundings. With the beaters were the keeper, who is also head woodman, and two a.s.sistant woodmen. These three men cut the whole of the hundred acres down in the course of seven years. Putting their lives at something over three score and ten, they will, as they began before they were twenty-one, have cut the wood down about eight times in the course of their existence. The beaters are entirely recruited from the staff of this very large and well-managed farm. They have beaten the woods so often that they know exactly what to do, when properly generalled. Our landlord was one of the guns, and his son, who does not shoot, but knows the wood thoroughly, kindly took command of the men, and kept things going at best pace through the day. Anything prettier than the entrance to the wood would be hard to find. A long meadow slopes steeply to the Thames, with an old church and the remains of a manor house at one end and the wood at the other. Below the house is a roaring weir, and opposite the abbey of Dorchester across the flats. Our little campaign gave an added interest to the scene. The bulk of the men were going round behind the hills to drive these "kopjes" into the wood. The guns and one or two ladies, and some small boys bearing burdens were walking up the middle ride. Below was the silver Thames in best autumn livery, for the leaf was not yet off the willows, though the reed-beds were bright russet.

The sky was blue, the sun bright, and the sound of the weir came gaily up through the trees. All the wood-paths were bright with moss, the air still, and an endless shower of leaves from the oaks was falling over the whole hundred acres. There were just enough wild pheasants in the wood to make a variety in the rabbit-shooting. Hares were unexpectedly numerous, and we lined up on the side of the wood furthest from the river for a hare drive. The whole hillside is without a hedge. Watching the long slope it is a pretty and exciting sport to see the coveys of partridges, of which there are sometimes a number on the hill, rise, fly down and pitch again, and then rise once more and come fifty miles an hour over your head into the wood.

The hares are generally very wild, getting up while the folds of the ground are still between them and the beaters. As they seldom come straight into the wood it is amusing to guess which particular gun they will make for. Most of them slipped in at a safe distance, only to be picked up in the wood later. A few birds were shot, and the cover now held some forty partridges, though they are very wild in the low slop, and seldom leave more than one or two stragglers behind when the wood is beaten. The rabbit-shooting in the cover is difficult unless firing at "creepers" from the cover in front is indulged in. The rides are often very narrow, and the rabbits cross like lightning. Shooting "creepers" is also highly dangerous if there are many guns, or if the men are near. They do not seem to mind; indeed, I have known them shout out exhortations for us to fire, when only screened by a row of thistles. One thing I have learnt by shooting this big wood. The hares, and late in the season the rabbits, move at least one square ahead of the beaters. If a single gun is kept well forward, choosing his own place and taking turnabout with the others, the bag--if it is wished to kill down the ground game--will be considerably increased. One object when shooting this wood is to get the ground beaten quickly; if there are twenty squares to be beaten, and five minutes are wasted at each, it means a loss of one hour forty minutes. The guns consequently go best pace to their places forward after each beat.

What with running at a jog-trot down the rides, shooting hard when in place, and then getting on quickly to the next stand, often along spongy or clayey rides on a nice, warm, moist November day, this is by no means the armchair work which people are fond of calling wood shooting. The variety of scenery in the wood added much to the charm. Sometimes we were in the narrow rides covered with short turf and almost arched over by the tall hazels; sometimes we were in low slop or walking through last year's cuttings, shooting at impossible rabbits. There we had an occasional rise of those most difficult of all birds to kill, partridge in cover, killing both French and English birds; or a c.o.c.k pheasant would rise and hustle forward, an agreement having been made to leave these till properly beaten up later in the day. Two very pretty corners were perhaps the most enjoyable parts of the sport. By the river was a flat reed- and rush-covered corner, with a ring of oaks round, the Thames at the bottom, and some tall chestnut-trees on the outside. As the men advanced we had a regular rise of wild pheasants, rocketing up from the reeds in every direction high over the oaks and chestnuts. A fox helped the fun by trotting up and down in the reeds uncertain which way to go, and flushing the birds as he did so. Then the rushes were walked out and the rabbits sent darting in every direction. After this we hardly found a bird or rabbit in that corner during the season.

That year the wood gave constant sport, far better than in the later years. There were three times as many rabbits, as well as hares and pheasants.

One day in January we shot it during a fall of fine, dry snow. As the day went on the ground grew white, and our coats whiter. At luncheon the men were quite prepared for the emergency, or rather had prepared for it the day before when the frost began. They had a bonfire of brambles a dozen feet high, and f.a.ggots ready as seats, one set for us on one side of the fire, another for themselves on the other. The roaring blaze of the fire warmed us through and through, and by the end of luncheon our coats, which had been powdered with snow, were grey with wood ash descending. During this day a fox hung round us during the whole shoot. I think he must have been picking up and burying or hiding wounded rabbits, for every now and then he would come out into the ride, carefully smell the various places where rabbits had crossed, and then, selecting one, would go off like a retriever into the cover.

SPORT AT WITTENHAM (_continued_)

A month later Mr. Harcourt was shooting his woods at Nuneham. There are more than four hundred acres of woods round this most beautiful park, all of them giving ideal English estate scenery. The oaks of the park are like those at Richmond, but there is not much fern except in the covers.

Nuneham is the best natural pheasant preserve in the Thames Valley, except Wytham, Lord Abingdon's place, above Oxford. The woods lie roughly in a ring round the park, in which the pheasants sun themselves. Outside these woods are arable fields with quant.i.ties of feed, and all along the front lies the river, which the pheasants do not often cross. The most striking sport at Nuneham is the driving of the island by the lock cottage. Every one who has been at Oxford has rowed down to have tea under the lovely hanging woods by the old lock. Few see it later in the year when the island opposite is covered with ma.s.ses of silver-white clematis and thousands of red berries of the wild rose and thorn. In the late autumn mornings, when the mists are floating among the tall trees on the hill and the sunbeams just striking down through the vapours as they top the wood from the east, it is one of the prettiest sights on the Thames. In November or early December, when the woods are shot, numbers of pheasants are always found on the island. It holds a pool, in which and on the river are usually a number of wild ducks. Shooting from the river itself is now forbidden, and these and the half-wild duck have multiplied. The beaters, in white smocks, all cross the old rustic bridge like a procession of white-robed monks, and drive this island, and wild ducks and pheasants come out high over the river, making for the top of the hill. The shooting is fast and difficult, and the scene as the guns fire from the stations all along the bank is most picturesque.

Shooting with a neighbour on some land adjoining Nuneham, my attention was drawn to the very elegant appearance of all the gates and rails adjacent to the road. As the ground was always beautifully farmed and in good order, the condition of the gates did not surprise me. There was, however, a story attached to their smartness. A seller of quack medicines had sent out advertisers with most objectionable little bills, which he had posted on every gate adjoining the roads. My entertainer, who was the occupier of the land, had brought an action against the medicine man for defacing his gates, which was only compromised by the delinquent undertaking to paint every gate. He demurred at first to painting the railings too, but in the end had to do this also.

The stalking-horse is still part of the sporting equipment of some old Thames-valley farmhouses, but not in this neighbourhood. Only one wet season fell to my lot, and then, though I often saw bodies of duck, I had no opportunity of getting near them. A neighbour anch.o.r.ed a punt under a hedge on the line which he believed the duck would take at dusk, and killed several. Hard frosts send large bodies of duck to the river; they come as soon as ever the large private lakes, like those at Blenheim, Wootton, and Eynsham are frozen, and lie in small flocks all along the river. Water-hens are so numerous on the river now, owing to their preservation by the Conservancy, that any small covers of osier near are full of them. They make extremely pretty old-fashioned shooting when beaten up by a spaniel from the sedge and osier cover. I once turned out a dozen water-hens, a brown owl, a woodc.o.c.k, and a water-rail from one little withe patch. When shooting the wood we always had one or two water-hens in the bag, and sometimes a chance at a duck flying overhead from the river. Only once were there many woodc.o.c.ks in the cover. There must have been at least five, and all were missed. At last, as we were finishing the beat, one of the guns, who was young and keen, went off after the last-missed c.o.c.k along the river bank. As we were loading up the game at the wood gate we heard a single shot. Then he appeared in the ride with the c.o.c.k. Both he and his excellent old spaniel received warm congratulations. For my own part I was never tired of by-days in the wood in my first season. The best sport was starting rabbits from under the rows of fresh-felled ash and hazel poles, which the woodman called drills.

They are about five feet high and seven feet through. The rabbits get under them in numbers, and sit there all day. We had an old retriever who was an expert at finding them. The next process was for the gun to clamber on to the top and stand knee-deep on the springing f.a.ggots, while a woodman on each side poked the rabbit out with a pole. He might bolt any way, and was under the next drill in a trice, so the shooting was quick. I bagged twelve one afternoon in this cheerful manner. Another great ambition of our lives was to get the better of the hill partridges. There were plenty of them, but they always dived into the wood, and were lost for the day. Only once did we score off them. We drove about sixty from the hills into the wood. There they were seen running along the rides like guinea fowls, but by placing a gun at the corner of the wood, and beating towards him, we killed nine brace.

A FEBRUARY FOX HUNT

When the Yeomanry left the hunting field for South Africa, and "registered" horses were commandeered by Government, fox hunting in counties where it is not the main business of life might be supposed to languish. As a matter of fact, it did not; and if the fields were smaller than usual, and a good many familiar faces missing, the master very properly felt that as he had his pack and there were plenty of foxes, he might as well employ the one and hunt the other, and keep up the spirits of the county by good, sound sport and plenty of it. Masters who take this view, and there are very few who do not, are public benefactors and shining examples; for it is not only the men who hunt who benefit vastly by the change and exhilaration which hunting brings in its train. The whole countryside enjoys a wholesome tonic by the frequent visits of the hounds, and the well-equipped company with them. Nothing cheers up the village, or cures the influenza, or brings oblivion of war news, or puts every one into conceit with themselves, so quickly, or leaves such a glow of sound satisfaction behind it. It would be odd if it did not, considering the amount of time, money, and trouble spent before the pack trots up to the green before the old grey church at eleven on a February morning. Wittenham Wood lies on the very edge of the Old Berkshire country, and as the river blocks all one side of it is naturally not one of the favourite meets. But at the time of writing, early in February a meet was duly advertised, and punctually to time the hounds were there.

Some people seem to think that modern fox-hunting is not so thorough as it was in the past. We know better, and without imitating Mr. Jack Spraggon, or reminding every one present of that "two thousand five hundred--twenty-five 'undred--pounds a year" which Lord Scamperdale did or did not spend on his pack, are very well aware of what our master and the servants and the hounds had done that morning. The meet is on the edge of his country, sixteen miles from his house, and he has ridden over all the way, rising before the sun has got through more than the outside layer of the mists. There is no special honour and glory awaiting him in return.

The cover to be drawn is surrounded for miles by deep and holding land now soaked with rain. A run of any distinction is most improbable. On the other hand, there will be plenty of hunting of a certain kind, and the chance of seeing it, for the wood is overlooked by lofty hills. Therefore, though the meet is small, the neighbourhood as a body expect to see plenty of the hounds, and turn up expectant, the farmers on their cobs, the young ladies on ponies and in dog-carts, and all the village who can be spared for an hour on foot, while the small boys regard each other with rapturous grins, and practise "holloaing" to improve their lung-power when the fox breaks. When the hounds appear--they have come nearly as far from the kennels as the master has from home--they are covered with road mud from foot to head. The gritty splashes have changed all the white and tan to grey, and made the black badger-pied. While some roll on the gra.s.s and push themselves along sideways to get clean, and others attempt the impossible task of licking the mud off their legs and feet, the older hounds, who are less self-conscious, poke their heads into the hands and against the chests of their ready-made friends, the village children, who rush in while the master and the field and lookers-on are exchanging courtesies, and embrace all the pack whom they can reach. Meantime the "a.s.sets" for the day's sport, the material complement on which this present a.s.sembly must rely for its day's hunting, lie in the cover and its contents. A hundred acres of wood, in all stages of growth, from the high thickets which the woodmen were felling yesterday, to the teazle and stump-studded slope which they cut last year, with the deep river below and the swelling hills above, is the cover.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOX AND CUB. _From photographs by Charles Reid_.]

What the master would like would be that it should hold but one fox, that that fox should get away over the hills and on to the downs beyond as quickly as possible, and that he should never come back, but be killed three parishes away. But no one believes in such luck; and the local lookers-on do not in the least desire it. They want to see "a day's hunting" in the wood, and a fox to every half-dozen hounds. As a fact there are five foxes, not one, in the wood; and, pa.s.sing from the general to the particular, we may explain how they came there. The heavy rains of the end of January filled all the drains, in which many foxes lie, so full of water that they abandoned them in sheer disgust, and took to the warm lying of the wood. Among these was a most attractive vixen, whose society kept the rest from leaving when the weather improved; consequently, the wood seemed full of foxes, none of which were disposed to leave it. When the pack trotted up to the main ride, and the huntsman's ringing voice sent them crashing into the four-years' growth by the river, a brace were lying snug and dry in the old ash-stumps. One slipped into the river at once and quietly swam to the opposite bank, while the other crept all along the outside hedge and curled up in the corner waiting on events. The vixen slipped into a badger earth under an old oak and stayed there, and a couple more dog-foxes moved on into four acres of low slop, brambles, shoots, and blackthorns, where they were winded by half the pack, while the other half were running the first fox up the fence. The crash and music of the hounds re-echoed from the trees and the enfolding hills above, the shrieking of the jays as they flit protesting from tree to tree, the hearty ring of the huntsman's voice cheering his hounds--surely all this should send each fox flying out over the fields beyond! But a fox has no nerves. He keeps his head with the coolness of a Red Indian, and a "slimness" all his own. The first fox doubles back along his tracks, crosses the big ride, twenty yards lower, just as that part of the pack which is hunting him flings on up the fence, and waits again till he hears them break out where he first stopped. From outside, where the field are waiting on a knoll which gives a downward view into the rolling acres of the wood, the rest of the pack are seen forcing another fox upwards towards the hills. The sight is as pretty as our woods can show. Down below the red coats of the master and huntsman move up the rides, and the heads and sterns of the broad line of hounds, now all clean and bright after brushing through the wood, rise and fall, appear and vanish, as they leap over or thrust through the low slop and brambles. In front, where a goyle runs up to a hollow of the hill, the ground has been cleared of wood, and the forest of tall teazle-tops is full of goldfinches, flying from seed-head to seed-head, too tame to mind the noise or care for anything but their breakfast. Yet even they gather and fly before the approaching tumult. Hares come hurrying out, and dash over the smooth hillside; magpies rise, poise themselves, slue round, and dive backwards into the wood; and then circ.u.mspect, lopping easily and lightly along, a fox crosses through the teazles, and slips down to a drain in the hollow; and see! another fox behind him, along the same path, and on the same errand, for each trots up to a covered drain, looks at it, and finding it stopped, pauses a second to think, and takes his resolve. One slips back into the wood, the other canters to the fence, rising the hill, looks out, whisks his brush and is off--across the turf, over the fifty-acre field of growing wheat, and away to the back of the hills. Half the pack are running the first fox, who has slipped back to the river, but with the other half every one gets clear off, and does his best over the awful ground. The mud explodes like sh.e.l.ls as the hoofs crush into it, but somehow every one is across and away, and on to the green road and a line of sainfoin much sooner than could be expected. The fox can be seen crossing the back of the hill, looking big and red, and full of running; but after twenty-five minutes over all sorts of ground, from medium bad to "downright cruel," for the soaking rains have made a very pudding even of the pasture, the fox is run into and killed close to the Thames. No one need be sorry for him, for he had lived by theft and violence for the past two years, and was duly eaten himself by his natural enemies. Then back to the wood again, where the rest of the pack had been whipped off their fox, and were waiting dolefully to begin again, by which time the other foxes, of which two elected to stay, had resolved that come what might, they would stick to the wood, of which they knew every inch by heart; and by keeping under the river bank, sneaking under layers of felled brushwood, dodging along drains, and other devices, postponed their fate for two hours, when one was "chopped" and one broke away and was run till dark.

This is not the kind of thing that keeps hunting alive, but it is the kind of day which occurs in most ordinary counties in February, and at which no one greatly grumbles. But if a slow woodland day is unattractive, the man who hunts in a modest way from London and wishes to be sure of a run has no lack of choice. Try, for instance, a day on the South Downs, five miles from the sea, on the vast uplands and among the furze-covered bottoms behind Beachy Head, when the snow-clouds are rolling in from the Channel and dusting the summits of the downs with white. There is at least the certainty of foxes, and of a gallop over the highest and soundest land in the South, and even "February fill-dike" cannot make the going heavy.

EWELME--A HISTORICAL RELIC

At the head of one of the smaller Thames tributaries, a few miles from the river, lies Ewelme, the ancient Aquelma, so called from the springing waters which rise there. There are trout in the brook and excellent water-cresses higher up, which are cultivated scientifically. Also there was a political row in Gladstonian days over an appointment to the living.

But the real interest of this exceptionally beautiful Thames-valley village is that it is a survival, almost unchanged, of a "model village"

made in the time of the Plantagenets. As such it deserves a place in any history, even a "natural" history, which deals with the river.

The village lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, not far from Dorchester. The persons who made it a model village just before the Wars of the Roses were William de la Pole, the first Duke of Suffolk, and his d.u.c.h.ess, Alice, the grandchild of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Duke, as every one knows, was for years the leading spirit in England during the early part of the reign of Henry VI., whose marriage with Margaret of Anjou he arranged in the hope of putting an end to the disastrous war with France.

His murder in mid-Channel--when his relentless enemies followed him out to sea, took him from the ship in which he was going into exile, and beheaded him on the thwarts of an open boat--was the forerunner of the most ghastly chapters of blood and vengeance in civil feud ever known in this country.

But the grace and dignity of his home life in his palace at Ewelme, with his d.u.c.h.ess to help him, are less well known, though the evidences of it remain little altered at the present day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EWELME POOL. _From a photograph by Taunt & Co_.]

Of course there was a village there long before the Duke of Suffolk became possessed of it. It was such a perfect site that if any place in the country round were inhabited, Ewelme would have been first choice. The flow of water is one of the most striking natural features and amenities of the place. It is a natural spring, coming out from the chalk of the Chilterns, and forming immediately a lovely natural pool, under high, tree-grown banks. This is still exactly as it was in the ancient days. No water company has robbed it, and besides "The King's Pool," which is the old name of the water, there are overflowing streams in every direction, now used in careful irrigation for the growth of watercress, one of the prettiest of all forms of minor farming. Fertile land, shelter from gales by the overhanging hill, great trees, and abundance of ever-flowing water, are the natural commodities of the place. It was of some importance very early, for it gave its name to a Hundred. This hundred contains among other places Chalgrove, where Hampden received his death-wound. Ewelme belonged to the Chaucer family. The last male heir was Thomas, son of Geoffrey Chaucer the poet, who left an only daughter Alice, destined to become the greatest lady of her time. She married first the celebrated Earl of Salisbury, who was killed by a cannon-shot while inspecting the defences of Orleans during the siege which Joan of Arc raised. William de la Pole, then Earl of Suffolk, was appointed commander of the English forces in the Earl of Salisbury's place, and not only succeeded to his office, but also married his Countess, who now became Countess of Suffolk.

It was long before either the Earl or his Countess could revisit Ewelme, where the Earl must have had some property before his marriage, for his elder brother, Earl Michael, was buried at the public expense in the church of Ewelme after his death at Agincourt. For seventeen years the Earl never left the war in France; but when Henry VI. was grown up he arranged the marriage with Margaret of Anjou, and did his best to promote peace. At this time Suffolk was the most powerful subject in the kingdom.

He was made a Marquis, and finally a Duke, and his d.u.c.h.ess was granted the livery of the Garter. In 1424 they built a palace at Ewelme, and in due course rebuilt the church, founded a "hospital for thirteen poor men and two priests," and added to this a school. Palace, church, hospital, and school were all of the same period of architecture, and that the very best of its kind. Thus in the fifteenth century Ewelme was eminently a "one man" place, like most of the model villages of to-day. The palace was moated, and used as a prison as late as the Civil War. Margaret of Anjou was kept there in a kind of honourable confinement for a short time, for long after the Duke's murder the d.u.c.h.ess was in favour once more, in the triumph of the Yorkists, and Margaret, who had been her Queen and patroness, was given to her keeping as a prisoner both in her palace and later at Wallingford Castle. Henry VIII. spent his third honeymoon there, with Jane Seymour, and Prince Rupert lived in it during the Civil War.

Later, only the banqueting hall remained, which was converted into a manor house.

But if the palace is gone, the church remains as evidence of the magnificence of the Duke's ideas on the subject of a village place of worship. He seems to have shared the apprehension felt by the Duke in Disraeli's novel "Tancred," that he might be accused of "under-building his position." In design it is very like another large church at Wingfield in Suffolk, where his hereditary possessions lay, and where he was buried after his murder, his body having been given to his widow. The same architect possibly supervised both, but of the two Ewelme Church is the finer. The interior is especially splendid, for in it are the tombs of the Chaucers, and the magnificent sepulchre of the d.u.c.h.ess herself, on which her emaciated figure lies wrapped in her shroud. This tomb of the d.u.c.h.ess Alice is one of the finest monuments of the kind in England. The other relic of the prosperity of Ewelme under the De la Poles is the hospital and school they founded. "G.o.d's House" is the name now given to it, and it is kept in good repair and used as an almshouse. The inner court is surrounded by cloisters, and the whole is in exactly the same condition as when it was built. The higher parts, constructed of brick, were the quarters of the priest and schoolmaster. The ruin and subsequent murder of the Duke, who adorned and beautified this model village in the early fifteenth century, took place in 1450. Nearly all France was lost, and in the hopes of conciliating the enemy, Maine and Anjou were given up by Suffolk's advice. He was accused of "selling" the provinces, and a number of vague but damaging charges were drawn up against him on evidence which would not be listened to now in any court or Parliament, except perhaps in a French State trial. Suffolk drew up a pet.i.tion to the king, which shows among other things the drain which the French wars made on the lives and fortunes of the English n.o.bles. After referring to the "odious and horrible language that runneth through the land almost in every common mouth, sounding to my highest charge and most heaviest slander," he reminded the King that his father had died in the siege of Harfleur, and his eldest brother at Agincourt; that two other brothers were killed at the battle of Jargeau, where he himself had been taken prisoner and had to pay 20,000 ransom; that while his fourth brother was hostage for him he died in the enemy's hands; and that he had borne arms for the King's father and himself "thirty-four winters," and had "abided in the war in France seventeen years without ever seeing this land." The King's favour secured that he should be banished instead of losing his head, for a State trial was never anything better than a judicial murder. The following is the letter written by an eye-witness to Sir John Paston, describing what then happened: "In the sight of all his men he was drawn out of the great ship into the boat, and there was an axe and a stock. And one of the lewdest men of the ship bade him lay down his head and he should be fairly ferd (dealt) with, and die on a sword. And he took a rusty sword and smote off his head with half-a-dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet and his doublet of velvet mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover; and some say his head was set on a pole by it, and his men sit on the land by great circ.u.mstance and pray." The writer says, "I have so washed this bill with sorrowful tears that uneths ye shall not read it." The Countess survived his fall and lived to be great and powerful once more. Her son became the brother-in-law of sovereigns, and her grandchildren were princes and princesses.

EEL-TRAPS

Fish and flour go together as bye-products of nearly all our large rivers.

The combination comes about thus: Wherever there is a water-mill, a mill cut is made to take the water to it. The larger the river, the bigger and deeper the mill cut and dam, unless the mill is built across an arm of the stream itself. This mill-dam, as every trout-fisher knows, holds the biggest fish, and where there are no trout, or few trout, it will be full of big fish, while in the pool below there are perhaps as many more. Of all the food fishes of our rivers the eel is really far the most important. He flourishes everywhere, in the smallest pools and brooks as well as in the largest rivers, and grows up to a weight of 9 lb. or 10 lb., and sometimes, though rarely, more. His price indicates his worth, and never falls below 10d. per lb. Consequently he is valuable as well as plentiful, and the millers know this well. On nearly all rivers the millers have eel-traps, some of the ancient sort being "bucks," made of withes, and worked by expensive, old-fashioned machinery like the mill gear. Another and most paying dodge of the machine-made order is worked in the mill itself, and makes an annexe to the mill-wheel.

I once spent an agreeable hour watching the making of barley meal and the catching of eels, literally side by side. It was sufficiently good fun to make me put my gun away for the afternoon, and give up a couple of hours'

walk, with the chance of a duck, to watch the mill and eel-traps working.

They were both in a perfect old-world bye-end of the Thames Valley, in the meads at the back of the forgotten but perfect abbey of the third order at Dorchester, under the tall east window of which the River Thame was running bank full, fringed with giant poplars, from which the rooks were flying to look at their last year's nests in the abbey trees.

The mill was, as might be supposed, the Abbey Mill; but on driving up the lane I was surprised to see how good and large was the miller's house, a fine dwelling of red and grey brick; and what a length of frontage the old mill showed, built of wood, as most of them are, but with two sets of stones, and s.p.a.ce for two wheels. Only one was at work, and that was grinding barley-meal--meal from nasty, foreign barley full of dirt; but the miller had English barley-meal too, soft as velvet and sweet as a new-baked loaf. Stalact.i.tes of finest meal dust hung from every nail, peg, cobweb, and rope end on the walls, fine meal strewed the floor, coa.r.s.e meal poured from the polished shoots, to which the sacks hung by bright steel hooks, and on both floors ancient grindstones stood like monuments of past work and energy, while below and beside all this dust and floury dryness roared the flooded waters of the dam and the beating floats of the wheel. "Have you any eels?" I asked. "Come and see," said the miller.

He stopped his wheel, unbolted the door, and we looked up the mill dam, two hundred yards long, straight as a line, embanked by double rows of ancient yews, the banks made and the trees planted by the monks five hundred years ago. Then we stepped into the wheel-house, where the water, all yellow and foaming, was pouring into two compartments set with iron gratings below, on which it rose and foamed. Seizing a long pole with p.r.o.ngs like walrus teeth, the miller felt below the water on the bars.

"Here's one, anyway," he said, and by a dexterous haul scooped up a monster eel on to the floor. In a box which he hauled from the dam he had more, some of 5-lb. weight, which had come down with the flood--an easy and profitable fishery, for the eels can lie in the trap till he hauls them out, and sell well summer and winter. It pays as well as a poultry yard. Once he took a 9-lb. fish; 2-1/2 lb. to 4 lb. are common.

The eel-trap on the old Thames mill stream is imitated in other places where there is no mill. Thus at Mottisfont Abbey on the Test an old mill stream is used to work an hydraulic ram, and also to supply eels for the house; the water is diverted into the eel-trap, and the fish taken at any time. Another dodge for taking eels, which is not in the nature of what is called a "fixed engine," is the movable eel-trap or "grig wheel." It is like a crayfish basket, and is in fact the same thing, only rather larger.

They can be obtained from that old river hand, Mr. Bambridge, at Eton, weighted, stoppered, and ready for use, for 7s. 6d. each, and unweighted for 5s. They are neat wicker-work tunnels, with the usual contrivance at the mouth to make the entrance of the eels agreeable and their exit impossible. The "sporting" side of these traps is that a good deal of judgment is needed to set them in the right places in a river. Many people think that eels like carrion and favour mud. Mr. Bambridge says his experience is different, and his "advice to those about to fish" with this kind of eel-trap is suggestive of new ideas about eels. He says that "for bait nothing can beat about a dozen and a-half of small or medium live gudgeon, failing these large minnows, small dace, roach, loach, &c., though in some streams about a dozen good bright large lob worms, threaded on a copper wire and suspended inside, are very effective, and should always be given a trial. Offal I have tried but found useless, eels being a cleaner feeding fish than many are aware of; and feeding princ.i.p.ally in gravelly, weedy parts, the basket should be well tucked up under a long flowing weed, as it is to these places they go for food, such as the ground fish, loach, miller's thumb, crayfish, shrimps, mussels, &c. When I worked a fishery near here, I made it a rule after setting the basket to well scratch the soil in front of the entrance with the boathook I used for lowering them, and firmly believe their curiosity was excited by the disturbed gravel. Choose water from four feet to six feet deep, and see basket lays flat. Every morning when picked up, lay them on the bank, pick out all weed and rubbish, and brush them over with a ba.s.s broom, keeping them out of water till setting again at dusk."

Eel-bucks, of which few perfect sets now remain, are the fixed engines so often seen on the Thames, and are a costly and rather striking contrivance, adding greatly to the picturesqueness of parts of the river.

They are very ancient, and date from days when the "eel-run" was one of the annual events of river life. The eels went down in millions to the sea, and the elvers came up in such tens of millions that they made a black margin to the river on either side by the bank, where they swam because the current was there weakest. The large eels were taken, and are still taken, on their downward journey in autumn. It is then that the Thames fills, and at the first big rush of water the eels begin to descend to reach the mud and sands at the Thames mouth, where they sp.a.w.n. They always travel by night, and it is then that the heavy eel-bucks are lowered. Often hundredweights are taken in a night, all of good size, one of the largest of which there is any record being one of 15 lb., taken in the Kennet near Newbury. In the "grig-wheels" they are taken as small as 3 oz. or 4 oz.; but in the bucks they rarely weigh less than 1 lb. The darkest nights are the most favourable. Moonlight stops them, and they do not like still weather. The upward migration of eels goes on from February till May on the Thames, but the regular "eel-fare" of the young grigs do not a.s.sume any great size till May, when as many as 1,800, about three inches long, were seen to pa.s.s a given point in one minute. So say the records. But who could have counted them so fast?

A few recent developments of the eel trade elsewhere show how valuable this may be. Quite lately the Danes discovered that the Lim-fiord and some other shallow Broads on the West Danish Coast were a huge preserve of eels. They began trawling there steadily, and have established a large and lucrative trade in them. On the Bann, in Ireland, eel catching is still done in a large way, and the fish shipped to London. But the most ancient and yet most modern of eel fisheries is on the Adriatic, at Comacchio, where lagoons 140 miles in circ.u.mference are stocked with eels, and eel breeding and exporting are carried out on a large scale. Even as early as the sixteenth century the Popes used to derive an income of 12,000 from this source.

SHEEP, PLAIN AND COLOURED