The river in front was at half-flood; the crossing was covered a foot deep with clear, racing water. Far upstream, waterbreaks were gleaming between gray boulders and many-tinted coppices; the roar as the current fretted through its rough channel came to our ears incessantly. In the shade of the larches we found an almost level path to our left, worn, doubtless, by sheep ranging the glades of these woods. A jay screamed and flew away, its blue side-feathers attracting the eye as it winged through the maze of stems. The river was again close beside—a deep pool in which the sunlit water seemed to collect strength to go babbling down an inclined beach of smoothed stones. The river-bank became tangled with brambles and dense coppice, so we turned into a mysterious hollow where perhaps centuries ago Duddon’s stream varied from its present bed. In a few yards we cleared the trees and stood by a hollow in the woods. The stream in its ancient course had here tarried awhile and delved out a circular pool before passing seaward. Here, perhaps, the red deer had come by moonlight to drink—I never ramble by Duddonside without my memory reverting to these animals, which less than a century ago roamed in wild freedom over the great silent wastes surrounding the valley. But now the bracken is rustled by wandering sheep, which turn and stare at such unusual visitors. We fringed this eddying place of a forgetful river, and dived into the dense coppice beyond, where brambles so hampered our path that we left the proximity of the water to find an old cart-track. On the hazel bushes a few nuts still hung, and twice there were glimpses of flying russet and white—squirrels disturbed at their repast. The old ‘gait’ found, we strolled steadily along: this wood in springtime must have been carpeted with blue; the fleshy green leaves of the bluebell protrude through layers of rotting leaves and twigs. But when autumn is at hand flowers are rare in the riverside woods—a solitary strawberry bloom, maybe, with here and there a belated primrose or daisy. What the sweet summer glory of this paradise has been is recalled by the wealth of dead honeysuckle trailers and the dried-up stems of many wildvines. Now, descending a sharp hillock, we are by the ford in Tarn beck. The steady murmur to our right warns us of near Duddon, and we resolve to walk down to where the waters meet. The saplings are so dense by the waterside that we again seek the less difficult woods, coming at last to a narrow path bounded by thorn-bushes, brambles, and the punishing boughs of the wild-rosetree. Ten yards on we are on the point where the two streams meet. Tarn beck has scooped itself a little bay, but the lordly Duddon here sleeps in a deep pool among the shingles.
What words can describe the contrast between the rattling, dashing rivulet and the great placid, sunlit stream into which it falls and is lost? On this very spot, amid a tangle of brambles and many fronded brackens, the great poet of the fells stood in imagination when he wrote:
‘Duddon ...
Who, ’mid a world of images imprest
On the calm depth of his transparent breast,
Appears to cherish most that Torrent white,
The fairest, softest, liveliest of them all.’
He saw it at ‘the busy hum of noon,’ when its ‘murmur musical’ promised refreshment to distant meadows needing rain; but what would he have written if he had seen it as we did, if he had seen the velvet green of the aftermath in the fields across the river, and noted the woods of autumn just flushing into realms of red and crimson and gold—if he had witnessed the glory of that October morning, when the air was instinct with light, and the ear was charmed with varied cadences of falling and rippling water? Then Wordsworth’s magic pen would have traced lines fairer far than those the scene actually inspired. But, alas! the mind of a trifler with Nature rises with difficulty to such enchanted heights nor stays there—for cunningly hid between the veiling undergrowth and the upspringing grass I espied the stem of a sapling ash with its branchlets roughly lopped off. For curiosity I drew this forth, and, lo! there, scraped on the tender gray-green bark, here and there—bitten through to the white wood—were the marks of the rings attached to the salmon-poacher’s bag-net. Wordsworth and the serene majesty of the morning were alike instantly forgotten in the contemplation of this sign of a ‘black art.’ It was simple enough to conjure up that scene of last night.
About a dozen salmon have collected in this pool, waiting for a flood to allow them to pass through the roaring, broken rapids of the gorge to spawning redds far above. For some hours vigilant eyes have been upon their movements, and now in the pitch darkness of midnight two men approach the riverside from opposite directions. Cautious signals are exchanged ere they meet behind a screen of bushes, and are repeated as they stealthily patrol the riversides. Then away in the woods near the stepping-stones the axe is plied with muffled vigour; the branches rustle with their neighbours as, the stem being severed, they are drawn downward. The steel is scarcely audible as the lesser limbs are struck away and the net-pole prepared. With hardly a sound the poacher threads his way through the coppices, and he is soon again by the pool’s marge.
In the meantime his comrade has drawn their net from beneath the concave bank, has laid it straight on the dank grass (there is the draggled, tramped sward), and soon has the rings fixed on the pole. Now all is ready, and the younger man takes the long shaft, and with a sweep draws the net into the pool. In a moment it becomes saturated and sinks, then is carefully drawn forward. The strain on the netsman is great; he bends to the task and puts forward his utmost strength, but in vain. He cannot force his contrivance against the current—here, though flowing soft, Duddon is really very powerful—so his comrade comes to his assistance.