Le Morvan, intersected by numerous rivers, streams, and runs of water, in the liquid depths of which the various species of the fresh-water fishy-family are found from the powerful, swift, and travelled salmon, to the modest little gudgeon that stays quietly at home, is a country where the angler may live in a state of perpetual jubilee; the carp, the eel, and the pike attain an enormous size, particularly near the dams and flood-gates, where the depth of water is great, and in the _Gours_ or water-courses which, diverging at several points on the stream, are constructed for supplying the flour and paper-mills with water. The punters of Richmond, Hampton Court, and Chertsey, with their magnificent tackle, gentles, ground-bait, and comfortable chair, &c., would be astonished to see the quantities of fish that are taken in one of these _Gours_ by a half-naked peasant, with a line as thick as packthread, during a sultry tempestuous evening in the month of June; from thirty to forty pounds' weight of carp and eels is by no means an unusual take,--Apodal and Abdominal, as the learned Gmelin would say. These _Gours_ are perfect jewels in the eyes of our fishermen; on very great occasions, for instance, when the miller marries, or an infant miller makes his appearance, if the occurrence should happen during the summer season, the flood-gates of the _Gours_ are opened, when the waters being let off to within a few inches of the bottom, the quantity of fish taken with the casting-net is enormous. In the large _Gour_ of Akin, the longest, the deepest, and containing more fish than any on the Cure or the Cousin, which I mention as representing the ten or twelve second-rate rivers of Le Morvan, I have seen as much as four horse-loads of fish taken, though every fish under two pounds was thrown back. The average depth of water in these rivers is from three to four feet, except near the dams and flood-gates, where it is from twelve to thirteen. With rivers so well supplied, sport is invariably obtained; so that patience, a virtue generally considered absolutely necessary in the angler, is scarcely required here, and fishing is actually a pastime of the _beau sexe_.