along the edge of the great plain; like as when ye fare a-sailing
past two nesses of a river-mouth, and the main-sea lieth open before
you.

Besides the river afore-mentioned, which men called the Weltering
Water, there were other waters in the Dale. Near the eastern pass,
entangled in the rocky ground was a deep tarn full of cold springs
and about two acres in measure, and therefrom ran a stream which fell
into the Weltering Water amidst the grassy knolls. Black seemed the
waters of that tarn which on one side washed the rocks-wall of the
Dale; ugly and aweful it seemed to men, and none knew what lay
beneath its waters save black mis-shapen trouts that few cared to
bring to net or angle: and it was called the Death-Tarn.

Other waters yet there were: here and there from the hills on both
sides, but especially from the south side, came trickles of water
that ran in pretty brooks down to the river; and some of these sprang
bubbling up amidst the foot-mounds of the sheer-rocks; some had cleft
a rugged and strait way through them, and came tumbling down into the
Dale at diverse heights from their faces. But on the north side
about halfway down the Dale, one stream somewhat bigger than the
others, and dealing with softer ground, had cleft for itself a wider
way; and the folk had laboured this way wider yet, till they had made
them a road running north along the west side of the stream. Sooth
to say, except for the strait pass along the river at the eastern
end, and the wider pass at the western, they had no other way (save
one of which a word anon) out of the Dale but such as mountain goats
and bold cragsmen might take; and even of these but few.

This midway stream was called the Wildlake, and the way along it