Piscator
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 be, as you
may note out of Dr. Heylin's Geography and others, in number three
hundred and twenty-five; but those of chiefest note he reckons and
describes as followeth.
The chief is THAMISIS, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis; whereof
the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in Buckinghamshire, and the
latter near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, meet together about
Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is
Thamisis, or Thames; hence it flieth betwixt Berks, Buckinghamshire,
Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex: and so weddeth itself to the Kentish
Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious river feeleth 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, &c.
We saw so many woods and princely bowers,
Sweet fields, brave palaces, and stately towers;
So many gardens drest 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 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 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 aestuarium 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:
Our floods' 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 excel:
Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame:
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 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:
"This 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 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 the 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 Sopham, 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 ours, 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.
Well, scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what by reading and
conference I have observed concerning fish-ponds.
The FIFTH day-continued
Of Fish-Ponds