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upon it. On the landing-place we waited under our umbrellas. Two or three of Salter's men staid to see us crawl into the long, green tunnel and to give us a parting push. They probably regretted their bargain when they saw us come to a dead stop in mid-stream and swing round with the wind. I had never steered, J had scarcely ever rowed a boat. We thought there was a laugh on shore, and we were quite sure we heard some one say: "If you 're going down the Thames in that boat you'd better use the right sculls." The river, after the long-continued rains, was very high. For two persons who knew nothing about boats and could not swim, the Thames journey with such a stream running was not promising. Somehow we got down to Iffley Lock, where we could hear the noise of the water tumbling over the dam, and could see the strong current of the mill-way sweeping in a swift rushing funnel ready to carry us with it. We were glad to find the lock gates open, so that there was no occasion to hang on to the muddy banks. J put his sculls in deep, giving strong but uncertain dabs, and pulled them out with a jerk: I cannot call his frantic efforts of those first days sculling. But the lock-keeper, as in the time of Tom Brown, was equal to the occasion. He came out, smoking his pipe with enviable indifference, seized our bow with his long boathook and pulled us into the lock. The great upper gates were slowly closed, he opened the lower sluices, and the water began to fall. At this point is run one of the dangers to be remembered on the river journey. You must not lose control of your boat, but you must be on the lookout to prevent bow or stern catching in the slippery beams or posts found in some locks, especially in old ones. If the boat were so caught, the water, rising or falling, would turn it over at once. It is very easy to upset in a lock, though there is no necessity

IFFLEY MILL.

to do so; it is as difficult to get out again. The fact that we never had trouble proves that with ordinary common sense and a little bit of prudence the danger is avoided.

While the water ran out the lock-keeper came and gave us our ticket. The Thames lock ticket is a curious literary production. It admits you through, by, or over the lock or weir for threepence. That is, I suppose, you can go through the lock in Christian fashion, drown under the weir, push and pull over the roller if there is one, or drag your boat round by the shore; but whether you come out dead or alive, for any of these privileges the Thames Conservancy will have its threepence.

The minute you get through Iffley Lock you see to its right Iffley Mill. It is only an old whitewashed, brown-roofed mill with a few poplars and near tumbling water, but the composition is the finest you will find between Oxford and London. We spent the afternoon there, dry under our cover, while J-made his drawing and I read "Thyrsis " to him, and the rain pattered on the canvas. On the other side of the lock were three dripping tents; at their doors sat half a dozen wretched men. We vowed that unless every inn on the river were crowded we would not sleep out that night; for before we started we had talked a great deal of beautiful nights to be spent upon the river, when we would go to bed with the swans and rise up with the larks, cook our breakfast under the willows, and wash our dishes and ourselves in quiet, clean pools. Salter had supplied us with an ingenious stove, with kettles and frying-pans fitting into each other like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle, a lantern, cups and saucers and plates, forks and knives and spoons, a can of alcohol. He had even offered us a mattress large enough for a double bedstead. But as it was clear that if it went we must stay, we had decided to sleep on our rugs.

In the late afternoon we paddled slowly away, meeting no one, but seeing at every turn a picture to whose beauty nothing was wanting but sunlight; by Rose Island, where a dreary boatman waited in vain for us to come ashore, and by Sandford lasher, where we remembered Tom Brown, and left all the river between it and our boat. A lasher, which we had never understood, we found to be merely a place above the lock where the overflow of water falls to a lower level. The entire Thames, from London to its source, is a series of locks and lashers, which help to produce a uniform current.

Just beyond was Sandford; from the river but an old church, a picturesque inn, a big barn, a mill, and a lock. When the inn came out of the rain we determined to stay in it, even before we saw how bright and fresh it was inside; and though we had made just three miles, we had the house to ourselves. The landlady was as blue as we were, telling

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ABINGDON.

us no one had staid with her for a month; and we wondered if we should have to pay to make up for the crowd that had not come. For we had been warned that riverside inns are expensive; and this is, in a measure, true, since in the tiniest village inn you pay hotel prices - that is, about two or three dollars a day. You can camp for one-third of this. But then the inns are always as comfortable as tents are uncomfortable. We had also been warned that these inns were so crowded that a room must be secured a week beforehand. Probably in a good season this would be the case; but the summer of 1888 was so exceptionally wet that comparatively no one was in the upper reaches of the Thames.

The unexpected is always happening in English weather. We woke in the morning to find the sun shining in through the little leaded windows of our low-ceilinged room. We came down to an excellent breakfast, and soon got away after paying a moderate bill. Passing through Sandford Lock seemed an easy matter now that our green cover was caught up by its many strings. It hung, however, between the loops in tantalizing folds, an ugly blot in the scenery, a hindrance to my steering. We were all the morning- so often did we stop by the way-making the mile and a half to Nuneham, the place of the Harcourts, where there is a very ugly house which only shows for a minute, and a beautiful hill which grows wooded as you wind with the river towards it, and get nearer and nearer until you come to the pretty cottages at its foot. All afternoon we drifted slowly downstream or lay for hours among the reeds by the banks, watching the sail-boats hurrying before the wind, the canoes paddling slowly after, the camping parties with tents piled high in the stern, the occasional great barges gaudily painted and trailed by slow

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horses, the small boats towed for pleasure, and the swans which, in the most crowded and loneliest reaches, are ever at hand to group themselves into picturesque foregrounds. In the stillness we could hear far voices and even the sharpening of a scythe on shore, or the plashing of oars and the grinding of rowlocks long before the boats came in sight. And then a shrill whistle and a train rushing across the meadowland would remind us that this great quiet of the Thames is within easy reach of the noise of London.

BRIDGE AT ABINGDON.

Not long after Abingdon spire showed itself in the flat landscape, we pulled into Abingdon Lock, where there is a fall of several feet. Beyond the lock the channel is narrow and, owing to the deep fall, the stream is swift. It carried us quietly and quickly on, until all at once, as we watched the growth of the spire and the lovely arrangement of the town on the quaint old bridge, we were startled by the shouts of men on both banks. As we looked to find the cause of their excitement we crashed, broadside on, against a stone wall that juts out into the river and divides it suddenly into two rapid streams, which pass out of sight under the low arches of the bridge. Had not our boat been a broad-beamed, family tub, it would have turned us out; that the men on the banks expected this was evident from the way they rushed round with boathooks and life-preservers. But as there is nothing

SAILING.

about the strong current in the many guidebooks and maps and charts of the Thames, we could not be prepared for what is unquestionably one of the few really dangerous places in the river.

How could we think of sleeping in our boat when the proprietor of the Nag's Head, who seemed certain he had saved us from a watery grave, literally dragged us into his inn? We had nothing to regret. We left the boat for another very old and rambling house, another good little dinner. Instead of being alone, as at Sandford, men in flannels like ourselves were in the coffee-room, at the bar, and in the garden. Every time we looked out on

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WITTENHAM CLUMP, FROM DAY'S

LOCK.

the river, from the inn windows or from the bridge, we saw a passing pleasure boat.

Abingdon is very picturesque, with its old gabled houses, its town hall by Inigo Jones, its abbey gateway and St. Helen's Church, whose graveyard is bounded by quaint old almshouses and whose spire is a landmark for the Thames traveler. But were I to begin to describe the endless beauty that lies near the Thames, and just hidden from it, I should never get back to the river again.

When we were ready to leave Abingdon, late the next day, our first care was to stow away the three hoops and the green cover at the bottom of our boat. Our next was to find out something about the current from the landlord. He told us there was no use of our attempting to go down the back way, and we were nervous about again passing and this time rounding the stone wall. It was in anything but a pleasant frame of mind we started, the landlord looking after us with evident uneasiness. J pulled slowly, apparently with tremendous effort, up above the island, which we cleared so successfully that we ran into the opposite mud bank. Here we made believe we had stopped to look at the view and Jto smoke a pipe. As we pulled off again there came a moment of breathless suspense, and then the boat began to gather headway. The current here was so strong that earlier in the day it had taken all the available loafers of the town to pull a steam tug upstream against it. Now it caught us, and the first thing we knew we were on the other side of the bridge. It was only here at Abingdon we met with even the suggestion of an accident, so that in the simple tale of our voyage no one need look for Haggardian descriptions of shipwreck.

After the bridge it was easy going. By the time we had passed Culham Lock we began to take heart again, and actually braved the current of a mill-race in order to explore a little back-water. For one of the great charms of the Thames is the number of its "sedged tributaries,"-back-waters they are called,-which sometimes lead to and from mills and then are nothing but mill-streams, and sometimes are really the main river, which is left by the boats as they pass up the cut to the lock. But the most beautiful are those which seem to tire of running with the current, and turn from it to rest where lilies blow round long islands, or where cattle graze in quiet meadows.

It was near Clifton Lock we first saw Wittenham Clump, a hill with a group of trees on top, which is after this for many miles forever cropping up in the most unexpected places, now before you, now behind, giving a good idea of the many windings of the river. We had come too into the region of the tall clipped elms, which from here to London are one of the most beautiful, if familiar, features

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of the Thames.

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There was no sleeping in the boat that night, for we expected two friends-a publisher and a parsonto meet us at the Barley Mow, a little roadside inn on the other side of the river from Clifton Hampden. It is a favorite stopping-place with river men, and the two days we spent there we never went into its lowpaneled parlor without finding some one eating lunch or tea or dinner; on the road to the river flowed a neverceasing stream of men in flannels and women in serges; at the landing-place, where the pretty girl was in charge, boats were always coming in and going out, and once in the midst of them we saw the Minnehaha and the Hiawatha, two real canoes. On the other side of the bridge, almost under the shadow of the little church on the cliff, was a punt. Inside it were three chairs, and on the three chairs sat three solemn men fishing. They never stirred, except when one, still holding fast to his line with his left hand, with his right lifted a great brown jug from the bottom of the boat, drank long and deep and handed it to the next, and so it passed to the third. The sun shone, the rain fell, the shadows grew longer and longer and the jug lighter and lighter, but whenever I passed there they still sat.

THE BARLEY MOW.

All the near elm-lined roads and willowed back-waters lead to pretty villages-to Long Wittenham, which deserves its adjective with its one street straggling far on each side its old cross; to Little Wittenham, only a group of tiny houses just at the foot of Wittenham Clump; and to Dorchester, with its huge abbey, of all perhaps best worth a visit. But the beauty of Clifton Hampden is that which will not let itself be told; and he will never know it who does not feel the charm of peaceful country when the sunset burns into the water and the elms are black against the glory of the west, and little thatched cottages disappear into the darkness of the foliage-the charm of long walks through hedged-in lanes as the red fades into the gray twilight and a lone nightingale sings from the near hedge, and far church bells ring softly across the sleeping meadows.

Sunday afternoon we came home from church at Dorchester, just at the hour when kettles were boiling in every boat. On the river every one makes afternoon tea, just as every one wears flannels, and so of course we felt we must make it with the rest. We pulled up a little backwater and landed with our stove among the willows. The publisher went to the near lock for water, the parson filled the spirit-lamp, the trouble was great and the tea was bad. This was the only time during our month on the river that the stove was disturbed. From that time forward it rested from its labors in the box in which Salter had packed it.

When we left the Barley Mow on Monday morning, heavy rain was followed by soft showers and grayness. But it was bank holiday, and holiday makers in great numbers were on the river. Steam launches tossed us on their waves and washed the banks on each side. River fiends, they are popularly called, for in these narrow upper reaches, whenever they pass, the angler is aroused from contemplation, the camper interrupted in his dish-washing, the idler disturbed in his drifting, and sometimes the artist and his easel upset, and all for people who turn their backs on the beauty of the river and play "nap" and drink beer or champagne, as they might in the nearest publichouse at home.

But the great business of the day was eating and drinking. The thin blue smoke of camp-fires rose above the reeds. In small boats kettles sung and hampers were unpacked. In the launches the cloth was never removed. We were but humans like the rest. After Shillingford, where the arches of the bridge framed in the river with its low island and the far blue hills, and where, near the Swan, 'Arry and 'Arriet were romping, or Phyllis sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, as the parson had it, Benson, a few red roofs straggling landward from a gray pinnacled church tower, came in sight, and to Benson we walked for lunch.

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"LOCK! LOCK!"

Our resting-place for the night was Wallingford, a town with much history and little to show for it. When we pulled ashore it was raining, and of course out of the question to sleep in the boat. We went instead to the gabled George, where we found a great crowd. It was the day on which the Galloway races, whatever they may be, had been held, and local excitement ran high. We ate our supper in company with a party of flanneled record makers who were in fine spirits because they had sculled twenty miles since morning. "Not bad for a first day out, by Jove, you know!"

"Twenty miles," said J, not in the least impressed; "why, we may have come only eight by the map, but it was full twenty and a half by the parson's steering."

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Later, when the landlady came in for orders, they called for beer for breakfast, but we asked for jam. "Jam by all means," said J-; we 're training to make our four miles a day," which was our average. After this they would have nothing to do with us, but drank whisky and wrote letters at one end of the table, while at the other we studied the visitors' book, and learned how many distinguished people, including our friend Mr. William Black, had been at the George before us.

Next morning the parson and the publisher took an early train to London, and we were again a crew of two. The champions we left over their beer and breakfast. But already, while we loaded our boat, campers sailed swiftly past and under the bridge, and punts leisurely hugged the opposite shore.

The punt is to the Thames what the gondola is to the canals of Venice. Wherever you go you see the long, straight boat with its passengers luxuriously outstretched on the cushions

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in the stern, the punter walking from the bow and pushing on his long pole. To enjoy his work he must know not only the eddies and currents of the stream, but something of the river bed as well. For this reason it is not easy to pole in unknown waters. Countless as were the punts we saw, I do not remember one laden as if for a trip. The heaviest freight was a lunchbasket. As often as not a girl was poling, and I never ceased wondering how work that looked so easy could be so difficult to learn as punters declare it. But these are the three situations, I am told, which the beginner at the pole must brave and conquer before

he can hope for ease and grace: first, that in which he abandons the pole and remains helpless in the punt; secondly, that in which, for reasons he will afterwards explain, he leaves the punt and clings to the inextricable pole; and thirdly, that of fearful suspense when he has not yet decided whether to cling to the pole or the punt.

By the shores beyond Wallingford here and there house-boats were moored. The typical Thames house-boat is so big and clumsy, with such a retinue of smaller boats, sometimes even with a kitchen attached, that it is not so easily moved as the big hotels we used to see wandering on wheels through the streets of Atlantic City. Indeed, because of the trouble of moving, it often remains stationary summer after summer. One we caught in the very act of being poled downstream; another we saw just after it had finished an enterprising journey; the rest looked as if nothing would tempt them from their moorings. They do not add much picturesqueness to the river. A square wooden box set on a scow is not and can not be made a thing of beauty. At Henley regatta the flat top always becomes gay with flowers and Japanese umbrellas and prettily dressed women, so that there color makes up

HOUSE-BOAT OFF READING.

in a measure for ugliness of form. But on many house-boats we passed that day from Wallingford buckets and brooms and life-preservers were the only visible armaments.

The inns, by the way, were a pleasant contrast. Nothing could be prettier than the little Beetle and Wedge, red and gabled, with a big landing-place almost at the front door; or the Swan at Streatley, with its tiny lawn where the afternoon tea-table was set, as in every other riverside garden we had passed above and below Cleve Lock.

It would have been foolish indeed to put up for the night under our canvas when in Streatley a whole cottage was at our disposal once we could find it. We rang up the postmistress, whose door was shut while she drank tea like the rest of the world. She directed us

PANGBOURN.

to a little brick cottage with jasmine over the door where lived a Mrs. Tidbury; and Mrs. Tidbury, armed with a key big enough to open all Streatley, led the way almost to the top of the hilly road, to a cottage with deep thatched roof and a gable where an angel, his golden wings outstretched, his hands folded, kept watch. Nisi Dominus Frustra was the legend, beaten in brass-headed nails, on the door which opened from the front garden into a low room with great rafters across the ceiling, and a huge fireplace, where every morning of our stay we saw our bacon broiled and our bread toasted. There were jugs and jars on the carved mantelshelf; volumes of Balzac and Turgeneff, Walt Whitman and George Eliot, Carlyle

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