It was none of these , the salmon stream at Harthover . It was such a stream as you see in dear old Bewick ; Bewick , who was born and bred upon them . A full hundred yards broad it was , sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow , and broad shallow to broad pool , over great fields of shingle , under oak and ash coverts , past low cliffs of sandstone , past green meadows , and fair parks , and a great house of gray stone , and brown moors above , and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney of a colliery . You must look at Bewick to see just what it was like , for he has drawn it a hundred times with the care and the love of a true north countryman ; and , even if you do not care about the salmon river , you ought , like all good boys , to know your Bewick . At least , so old Sir John used to say , and very sensibly he put it too , as he was wont to do : `` If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in France , I hear , they say of him , ` Il sait son Rabelais . ' But if I want to describe one in England , I say , ` He knows his Bewick . ' And I think that is the higher compliment . '' But Tom thought nothing about what the river was like . All his fancy was , to get down to the wide wide sea . And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out into broad still shallow reaches , so wide that little Tom , as he put his head out of the water , could hardly see across . And there he stopped . He got a little frightened . `` This must be the sea , '' he thought . `` What a wide place it is ! If I go on into it I shall surely lose my way , or some strange thing will bite me . I will stop here and look out for the otter , or the eels , or some one to tell me where I shall go . '' So he went back a little way , and crept into a crack of the rock , just where the river opened out into the wide shallows , and watched for some one to tell him his way : but the otter and the eels were gone on miles and miles down the stream . There he waited , and slept too , for he was quite tired with his night 's journey ; and , when he woke , the stream was clearing to a beautiful amber hue , though it was still very high . And after a while he saw a sight which made him jump up ; for he knew in a moment it was one of the things which he had come to look for . Such a fish !
ten times as big as the biggest trout , and a hundred times as big as Tom , sculling up the stream past him , as easily XXXXX Tom had sculled down .
about as down for if in that though upon while