than Bibury, and no snugger hostelry than the Swan.  The landlady of this inn has a nice little stretch of water for the use of those who find their way to Bibury; and a pleasanter place wherein to spend a few quiet days could not be found.  The garden and old court house of Bibury are sweetly pretty, the house, like Ablington, being three hundred years old; the stream passes within a few yards of it, over another waterfall of about ten feet, and soon reaches Williamstrip.  Here, again, the scenery is typical of rural England in its most pleasing form; and the village of Coln-St.-Aldwyns is scarcely less fascinating than Bibury.

After leaving the stately pile of Hatherop Castle and Williamstrip Park on the left, the Coln flows silently onwards through the delightful demesne of Fairford Park.  Here the stream has been broadened out into a lake of some depth and size, and holds some very large fish.  Another mile and Fairford town is reached, another good specimen of the Cotswold village—­for it is a large village rather than a town—­with its lovely church, famous for its windows, its gabled cottages, and comfortable Bull Inn.  There are several miles of fishing at the Bull, as many an Oxonian has discovered in times gone by, and we trust will again.

From what we have said, it will easily be gathered that this stream is unsurpassed for scenery of that quiet, homely type that Kingsley eulogises so enthusiastically in his “Chalk Stream Studies,” and I am inclined to agree with him in his preference for it over the grander surroundings of mountain streams: 

“Let the Londoner have his six weeks every year among crag and heather, and return with lungs expanded and muscles braced to his nine months’ prison.  The countryman, who needs no such change of air and scene, will prefer more homelike, though more homely, pleasures.  Dearer to him than wild cataracts or Alpine glens are the still hidden streams which Bewick has immortalised in his vignettes and Creswick in his pictures.  The long grassy shallow, paved with yellow gravel, where he wades up between low walls of fern-fringed rock, beneath nut and oak and alder, to the low bar over which the stream comes swirling and dimpling, as the water-ouzel flits piping before him, and the murmur of the ringdove comes soft and sleepy through the wood,—­there, as he wades, he sees a hundred sights and hears a hundred tones which are hidden from the traveller on the dusty highway above.”

But chacun a son gout!  Let us now see what sort of sport may be had in the Coln.  To begin with, it must be described as a “may-fly” stream.  This means, of course, that there is a tremendous rise of fly early in June, with the inevitable slack time before and after the may-fly time.

But there is much pleasant angling to be had at other times.  The season begins at the end of March, when a few small fish are rising, and may be caught with the March brown or the blue and olive duns.  Few big fish are in condition until May, but much fun can be had with the smaller ones all through April.  The half-pounders fight splendidly, and give one the idea, on being hooked, of pulling three times their real weight.  The April fishing, at all events after the middle of the month, is very delightful in this river.  One does not actually kill many fish, for a large number are caught and returned.