But I should not have ventured to spend so much time on the banks of a comparatively obscure west country river if it had not always seemed to me about the most complete example of an ideal Devon stream within my knowledge. On a less exalted scale than the Dart in the south or the Lynn in the north of the county, and little known outside its own district, it is the better qualified to be the river of one's fancy, and the typical stream of the west country. As a trouting stream, so far as regards the dozen miles or so here lingered upon, it is perhaps the best in Devonshire; the size of its fish, for some inscrutable reason, considerably excelling as an average the over modest weight that distinguishes most of the rivers of the county. A moderate payment to the Association who preserve the water from below Brent to the sea will make the stranger free of it. But to hope for any substantial success he must be thoroughly familiar with the art of upstream wet-fly fishing in clear water, and that too among almost continuously overarching foliage. Furthermore, he must be physically strong, for wading all day upon a rocky bottom against strong currents is a labour compared to which an ordinary day's partridge-shooting under modern conditions is an easy lounge. Both salmon and peal (the west country term for sea-trout) run up the Avon to spawn, but they take the fly so sparingly as scarcely to be worth mentioning among the attractions of the river. The Tamar, which for nearly all its course divides Devon and Cornwall, is a river that, in the matter of size, ranks with the Dart and Exe. But as regards its estuary, being the principal affluent of Plymouth harbour, acquires by this a distinction far above these other streams of purely local fame. It rises within five miles of the Bristol Channel, but turning its face at once away from this northern coast, runs southward by a course that, reckoned as the crow flies, is over fifty miles, and by the bends of the river must be at least half as much again. For the whole of this distance, with the exception of a short-cut through an intrusive arm that Devon flings into Cornwall, it forms the boundary between the two counties. Its fountain springs are close to those of the Torridge, which would seem to start with some intention of running a race against the other in its long journey towards southern seas, and then changing its mind, comes northward again, almost upon its own tracks, to rival the Elizabethan glories, at any rate of Plymouth, in forming the once famous harbour of Bideford. By the time it arrives at the nearest point to Launceston, a mile or so, the Tamar has achieved that measure of importance which marks the somewhat subtle and capricious border-line between the mere stream and the full-grown river, as we count such things in England.