THE SOUTHERN CHALK STREAMS.

THE long and strong backbone of the North Downs extends, roughly speaking, from Kent, by way of Dorking and Guildford, to the source of the Avon, north of Salisbury Plain; and the South Downs run parallel, more or less, through Sussex and Hants to the Dorset heights. From these green hills spring the streams which will be briefly traced from source to sea in this chapter. They are not rivers of first account in their aid to commerce; even the pair which combine in the formation of Southampton Water have never been reckoned in the nomenclature of dock or port. To the angler, however, some of these chalk streams are exceedingly precious—as they indeed ought to be, when a rental varying from fifty to a hundred pounds per mile per annum is gladly paid (and taken) for the right of fishing with rod and line. Such choice preserves are stocked with trout of aristocratic quality, trout which can only be reared in streams issuing from the chalk; their water, when unpolluted by contact with towns, is crystal clear; and the beds of gravel and fine sand favour the growth of typical vegetation, which in its turn favours typical water insects and other food suitable for the highest class of non-migratory salmonidæ.

Wholly different from such noisy, turbulent, masterful rivers as those which distinguish North Britain, these chalk streams enter into the very spirit of that sweet pastoral scenery which suggests repose, peace, and plenty. They maintain for the most part an even course, tranquilly flowing without fret or violence through level land, and pursuing their tireless journey seawards, unobstructed by the rugged rocks, obstinate boulders, and uneven beds which provoke your mountain-or moorland-born waters into thunderous roar, angry swirl, and headlong rapidity. For foam-flecked pools, and mighty leaps in romantic gorges, the South-country chalk stream offers forget-me-nots by the margin, and beds of flowers blossoming from its harmless depths. It is with rivers of this class we have now to deal, presenting such features as may be noticed within the limits which have been assigned to the present chapter.

Beginning, as the sun in its progress would have us do, from the east, we introduce the reader to the fair county of Kent. There are at least half-a-dozen Stours, great and small, in England; and though the stream with which we start is entirely Kentish (and might, therefore, take the name of the county), it is commonly distinguished by the name of the CANTERBURY STOUR. There are others of its namesakes—one of which we shall meet with towards the end of our journey—of greater watershed, but there is no more interesting member of the family. As a rule, a river, with its tributaries, as seen on the map, offers the appearance of the root of a tree, with its branches gracefully following in a common direction towards the parent stream, on the principle that, as the main river ever has marching orders towards the ocean, all its feeders, in the same spirit, loyally join in a forward movement. Our Stour, however, is a notable exception. It assumes a respectable magnitude at Ashford, but near that town, and almost at right angles to the subsequent direction of the main stream, two distinct branches join issue. The main stream from Ashford to the Isle of Thanet runs almost due north-east; branch number one, that comes from the hills in the direction of Maidstone, travels to Ashford almost due south-west, and the other branch that rises north of Hythe flows in a diametrically opposite course. These little rivers are of equal length, and flow, in their unpretending fashion, through purely rural country.

The first-named of these branches rises near Lenham, which takes its name from a feeder of the great river of the northern watershed of the county. Visitors to the seat of the Dering family at Surrenden, where there have been Derings since the time of the Conqueror, and to Little Chart Church, will be, at the latter place, not far from what is regarded as the real source of the river Stour, but this brook must not be confounded with the Beult at Smarden, which belongs to the Medway. Our stream flows the other way, passing Cale Hill, Hothfield, and Godinton. Hereabouts—if there is anything in tradition—is the country of troublesome Jack Cade, who must have known a good deal about the river, for the story is that he was born at Ashford, and that the squire who had the honour of taking him into custody lived on the estate known in these days as Ripley Court Farm.

The southern branch takes its rise near Postling, on the famous Stone Street, or Roman road, which from Westenhanger is a straight northerly highway to Canterbury. The farmhouse at Horton was a priory founded in the time of Henry II. Naturally, in this part of England, where Augustine landed, the countryside is rich in the earliest ecclesiastical reminiscences. At Lyminge, for example, hard by, was one of the Benedictine nunneries, and the church where the daughter of Ethelbert was buried is often visited by admirers of Roman and Anglo-Saxon masonry, for it is believed that the Saxon church was built on the site of a basilicon. There are many parish churches in Kent which are of exceptional interest, but that at Lyminge is generally accepted as the first of them.

The entire course of the Stour is about forty-five miles, and its valley from Ashford to Canterbury is one of the loveliest features of a lovely county. Overlooking it is Eastwell Park, which for many years was the country-house of the Duke of Edinburgh. The valley of the Stour, seen from one of its higher knolls as on a chart, is not always so open as it is in this neighbourhood, though its narrowing means but the concentration of charming scenery, with wooded heights on the one side and open downs on the other. For a considerable distance the Stour follows the railway line, and at Wye, where there is one of the most lovely miniature racecourses in the kingdom, it is crossed by a bridge of five arches. Thenceforth, it is a notable trout stream, gradually widening until it forms the distinctive feature of the well-known meadows, with the square-towered cathedral always a prominent object of the landscape.

Canterbury has been so often described, for it is frequently the scene of great ceremonials (as witness the impressive burial of Archbishop Benson in 1896, and the enthronisation of his distinguished successor in 1897), that a few sentences only are required as we muse by the riverside. But it is impossible to visit Canterbury without recalling its stirring and suggestive associations, and the distinction it had in times when other parts of the country were obscure. It was too near the water to escape the ravages of the sea-kings, who liked to land at Sheppey and Thanet, and it was more than once devastated by the Danes. In 1011 it was taken by storm amidst scenes of death and desolation during which the cathedral and monastery were burnt, the inhabitants slaughtered in masses, and women and children carried away into captivity. There is no need to re-tell the story of that different kind of landing, glorified by the arrival of St. Augustine and his missionaries. This also honoured the Isle of Thanet, which the Saxon chronicle mentions as the place of disembarkation of Hengist and Horsa on their heathen mission to Vortigern. The Stour in its terminal portion has probably become much cabined and confined since that period, when it must have been a broad estuary.

About two miles below Canterbury is the village of Fordwich, on the opposite bank of the Stour. As the tide in old days reached thither, it ranked as a Cinque Port. According to Izaak Walton, the old name of Fordwich was “Fordidge,” and as such he immortalised it in the “Compleat Angler” as the home of the Fordidge trout, about which there was some mystery, until in the present century it was proved to be one of the migratory salmonidæ. An occasional specimen is now found. This fish does now and then run into some of our south-east rivers, and no doubt at the time when the Thames was a salmon river and the waters were unpolluted, it was common in the Stour, which throughout is an excellent trout stream.

Below Canterbury, where the water becomes brackish and the conditions prosaic, the trout gives place to the ordinary coarse fish of our streams. Grove Ferry is one of the favourite holiday resorts of the citizens. At Sarr, a few miles from Fordwich, the ferry which now plies at Grove Ferry was formerly the means of communication with the Isle of Thanet. This historic island is formed by the Stour separating right and left, the arm to the north finding the sea a little east of the Reculvers; while the branch flowing in the opposite direction marks the boundary of the promontory which includes the watering-places of Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, and Birchington, and has for the extreme tip of its snout the lonely North Foreland. This divergence, which, on a smaller scale, corresponds with the curious right-angled course of the brooks at the source, used to have a name of its own: it was called the Wantsum, with a well-known ford at St. Nicholas-at-Wade; and no doubt this channel was once an arm of the sea. The lesser Stour, of which something will presently be said, falls into the navigable portion of the parent river below Sarr. The lower branch runs through marshes by Minster, which is a deservedly popular village to tourists exploring Kent who are specially on the lookout for interesting relics of the past. King Egbert, one of the Christian kings of Kent, founded a nunnery here by way of atonement for the murder of a couple of princely cousins, and he agreed to endow it with as much land as a hind would cover in one course. The Danes had their will of the place. The restored church in its present form has a Norman nave, with Early English transepts and choir. Minster is a favourite ramble for seaside visitors to Ramsgate; it is well situated, and its high ground affords views of distant Canterbury, the ruins of Richborough Castle, the coast country about Deal, and a proper expanse of marsh. The Stour, when nearly opposite the point of coast where it eventually falls into the Straits of Dover, takes a turn to the east, calling, as it were, at the ancient town of Sandwich, and then proceeds due north to Pegwell Bay.

Rising somewhere near the source of the lower arm of Stour major, the LESSER STOUR is another charming Kentish trout stream. It flows through what may be designated bourne ground, as the names of many of its villages testify. The source is near Bishopsbourne Church, where the judicious Hooker, a native of the place, performed the duties of parish priest. There are also Patrixbourne, Bekesbourne, Nailbourne, and Littlebourne. The last named is well known to tourists, for the village has a traditional association with the monks of St. Augustine; here are an Early English church with monuments, and the park at Lee Priory where Sir Egerton Brydges worked his press; and within a quarter of an hour’s walk is an old church formerly belonging to some of the Canterbury priors. On the banks of the stream at Bekesbourne are the remains of a palace of Archbishop Cranmer; and when the Parliamentarians, according to their custom, laid it under contribution, in their ransacking they discovered the Primate’s will behind an old oak wainscoting. Wickham Breaux is another of the Lesser Stour villages, and all around are the fruit orchards and occasional hopfields which give a distinctive and agreeable character to the entire watershed. The Lesser Stour for a while runs parallel with its companion, which it joins at Stourmouth, to assist in outlining the Isle of Thanet, and mingling therefore with the current which goes the round of Sandwich to Pegwell Bay. It seems almost incredible that Sandwich was once a great port, but if a quiet hour be spent in what is left of it, the town will be found to repay careful inspection. The Barbican, as the old gateway tower is called, and the bridge indicate the haven in which refugees from France and the Low Countries found a safe home.

From Hythe to the ancient and always interesting town of Rye, stretches the Royal Military Canal; the first stream to claim attention is the BREDE, though it is scarcely entitled to river rank. It takes its rise a few miles from Battle, and its course is held to have been the old channel of the Rother, near Winchelsea. The “Groaning Bridge” is on the Brede, and it was on this spot that the Oxenbridge ogre of ancient legend was said to have been disposed of once for all by being divided across the middle with a wooden saw.

But the principal river in the Rye and Winchelsea district, so full of suggestion in its evidences of past prosperity and present decay, is the ROTHER, known as the Eastern, to distinguish it from another of the same name in the western part of the county. At Bodiam is a famous foss, fed by the river, encircling the excellently preserved castle, with its round tower, great gateway approached by a causeway, spacious central court, outer portcullis, and portions of hall, chapel, and kitchen. This is held by antiquaries to be one of the best of the feudal fortresses in Sussex. In monkish days the stream was no doubt one of great value. Near the source, at Gravel Hill, is Robertsbridge, or Rotherbridge, where a Cistercian abbey, secluded almost from the world by the river, was visited by Edward II. and Edward III. There are still fragments of the abbey on a farm which occupies at least a portion of the site. The Rother is a river of many tributaries, one of them acting partly as the boundary of Sussex and Kent. Its scenery is somewhat commonplace, but it is navigable for a considerable portion of its course, which has much altered since the old chronicles were inscribed. Two of its branches enclose the Isle of Oxney, a flat so easily flooded that the villagers within its bounds often find the use of a boat a necessity.

The railway crosses the Rother by a stone bridge, then comes Rye Harbour, and at a distance of two miles, set upon a hill so that it cannot be hid, is the old-world borough of Winchelsea, which the sea has left high and dry, though it had been the abode of great kings, and the witness of battles by sea and land. At Hastings the Downs supply sufficient rivulet-power to maintain glen, waterfall, and dripping well, for sea-side visitors. Following the coast-line to Seaford, the quiet and unpretending watering place which was once a Cinque Port, and which returned members to Parliament until it was disfranchised by the Reform Act, a short walk over the Downs brings the tourist to the pretty broken country of East and West Dean.

The stream crossed by Exceat Bridge is the CUCKMERE, of which it need only be said that it has ceased to be a feature of importance to shipping people. It is worth while, nevertheless, to follow it up from the reaches where barges still find resting-place. At Alfriston British, Roman, and Saxon coins have been found; there is a rare sixteenth-century inn, supposed to have been built as a house of call for Canterbury pilgrims, a market cross, a church on the plan of a Greek cross, sometimes designated “the cathedral of the South Downs,” a parish register dating from 1512—possibly the oldest in England—and a half-timbered rectory of still earlier date. There is some doubt as to which is now the smallest church in Great Britain, but the claim has been made for Lullington, which is on the slope of Cuckmere vale. In rambling by this little river the tourist will make acquaintance with the South Downs free and unadulterated. The Cuckmere flows into the sea about two miles from Seaford, having escaped through the opening which takes the name of Birling Gap.

Within an area of four square miles, and almost in touch with St. Leonard’s Forest, three important Sussex streams take their rise—the Ouse, Adur, and Arun. This was the centre of the ancient iron industry of Sussex, and the position would not have been possible without water supply for the hammer ponds. The OUSE is crossed by the London and Brighton Railway a little north-west of Lindfield. The river afterwards winds round the well-wooded seat of the Earl of Sheffield; and at Fletching Common, hard by, the baronial army spent the night before fighting the battle of Lewes. Gibbon the historian was buried in the church, which is noted also for an ancient rood screen and the mausoleum of the Neville family. Maresfield, where the furnaces and forges of the old Sussex iron-masters clustered thick, retains vast expanses of the cinder and slag they created centuries ago. It is beautified by the trees of Ashdown Forest, and sends a tributary to the Ouse; another tributary presently arrives from Buxted, where the first cast cannon ever seen in Europe was made in 1543.

The Ouse is the river of the pleasant county town of Lewes. This rare old town, on its chalk hill, with downs surrounding it, and with the Ouse, on whose right bank it is spread, adding to its attractions, ranks in interest with Chester and Durham. The great battle which was fought on May 14th, 1264, is the event of which the local historians are most proud. As we have seen, it was at Fletching Common that De Montfort encamped his soldiers, and thence he sent a couple of bishops the day before the battle on a fruitless errand to the king, who was quartered at the priory. The most sanguinary slaughter appears to have taken place south of the town, where the Ouse was crossed by a bridge; and the river with its marshy flats assisted in the destruction, for many knights were discovered after the battle stuck in the swamp, “sitting on their horses, in complete armour, and with drawn swords in their lifeless hands.” The Ouse cannot be said to be picturesque; at Lewes it has long lost the sparkle which characterised it in the forest outskirts; but from any elevated point of Lewes Castle, notably the western keep, the easy stream may be seen as it is about to disappear between the hills. The disestablished locks between Cuckfield and Lewes indicate a brisk bygone barge traffic. Early in the present century the river was navigable for barges of forty tons burden for ten miles without interruption, and thence beyond Lindfield in the Hayward’s Heath country. In early times it was probably a broad estuary extending to Lewes itself, and at some time found an outlet to the sea at Seaford, three miles to the east. This, however, is very ancient history, for the river was brought back to its present channel in the sixteenth century.

Shoreham, the humble and dull attendant upon Brighton, has an advantage over the great watering-place—which is streamless—in being situated on a river. It is not a beautiful place, but it has something of a harbour, in which you may find port in a storm, and it has a bridge across the ADUR. This river comes down from openings in the hills, having passed through pretty country, with such villages as Bramber (where there was once a broad estuary in which vessels anchored) and Steyning. The source of the Adur on the borders of St. Leonard’s Forest has been previously mentioned; but there are at least two other rills that have an equal claim. From Henfield the river runs south, through pasture land, and, as we have seen, winds past Bramber, supposed to be the Portus Adurni of the Romans. There is very little of the castle left, and that is almost hidden by trees. At New Shoreham the Adur turns eastward, and runs for a while parallel with the seashore.

These Sussex rivers which are projected from the neighbourhood of St. Leonard’s Forest can scarcely be considered as akin to the pure, bright chalk stream which was described at the commencement of this chapter; and the most important of the trio, the ARUN, does not in this respect differ from its fellows. Something more than passing glimpses of it are obtained from the carriage windows by the railway traveller as he speeds through the imposing scenery around Arundel. It is navigable for an unusual distance, and whatever beauty it possesses it owes to its surroundings. Of late years the river has become the Mecca of members of the London angling clubs, who charter special trains and invade the districts by hundreds on Sundays. The first stopping-place of any account from this point of view is Pulborough, the site of an old Roman settlement, with traces of camp and buildings, which will not, however, be found on Arun-side, but at Hardham and elsewhere. Amberley was rescued from oblivion, and from the desertion enforced upon it by neighbouring marshes, by the railway; and the scenery between it and Arundel has always been prized and worked at by artists. Swanbourne Mill as a picture is probably familiar to many who have never entered the county.

The splendidly kept castle at Arundel has not been dwarfed by the cathedral-like Roman Catholic church built by the Duke of Norfolk, and dedicated to St. Philip Neri. Even now it looks like the splendid stronghold that it was, and the most venerable in the land that it is, on its commanding terminal of swelling down, with the stream from the Weald narrowing between the hills through its beautiful valley, to the characteristic marsh flats beyond. The river hence to the sea does not call for admiration or comment, save that there is a remnant of a priory at Tortington, a point of view from which Arundel with its castle-crowned heights looks its best. Littlehampton, four miles from Arundel, is better known as a port of departure for steamships than as a watering-place competing with the pleasure resorts in more favoured situations on the coast.

Hampshire is a well-watered county, and classic ground for that new school of anglers who are classified as “dry-fly” men. The masters thereof graduated on the Itchen and the Test, most famous of all South-country chalk streams, and honourably mentioned in angling literature. To know that a man is a successful fisher upon either is tantamount to a certificate of the highest skill. The Hampshire rivers, other than these celebrated feeders of the Southampton water, are few, and modest in character. There is, it is true, a small trout stream at Fareham, a busy little seaport which owes its standing to its proximity to Portsmouth Harbour, and its attractions as a district abounding in country seats to the rampart of Portsdown Hill, affording at once protection from the north and opportunity for overlooking the Solent and the Isle of Wight. Less than three miles west, across the peninsula that sustains Gosport, is a considerable stream, little known outside the county, but an ever-present delight to the villages through which it lightly flows to the eastern shore of Southampton water. This is the Arle, or Titchfield river.

In its course of some score of miles the ARLE takes its share in a diversity of scenery of a soothing rather than romantic character. Rising in the South Downs, it begins by mingling with village and hamlet life in a sequestered valley; then it proceeds through an open forest country, and becomes navigable at Titchfield. The source of the stream is but a few miles west of Petersfield, but it begins with a sweep to the north and a loop round a southerly point, passing so much in the Meon district that it is often marked on the maps by that name, which was probably its only one in the past. Meonware was a Pictish province when there was a king of the South Saxons, and Saint Wilfrid preached Christianity to the British heathen. Indeed a portion of Corhampton Church, across the stream, is ascribed to that prelate. Wickham, most beautifully situated on the Arle, is celebrated as the birthplace of William of Wykeham, the great bishop-builder. Warton the poet lived his last days at Wickham, and died there in the first year of the century.

References to William of Wykeham continually occur in county Hants: thus in the district under consideration there are a Wykeham chancel at Meonstoke, a Wykeham foundation of five chantries near the coast at Southwick, and a reputed Wykeham aisle in the church at Titchfield. The remains of Funtley Abbey are naturally not far from the stream. They are close to Titchfield, and mark the site of a Priory founded by Bishop de Rupibus in the reign of Henry III. The house which Sir Thomas Wriothesley built upon the place acquired in the usual way at the Dissolution was “right statelie” when Leland described it; and this was the Titchfield House where poor Charles Stuart found temporary refuge between the flight from Hampton Court and the grim lodging of Carisbrooke.

The ITCHEN, as next in order on our westward progress, must receive first consideration, though it is the smaller of the streams which pay tribute to the Solent at Calshot Castle. The Itchen and the Test have many things in common: they both rise out of the chalk downs which stretch from the Stour in Kent, through Hants, to the confines of Wilts; they both give Southampton importance; they are both salmon rivers, but to so unimportant a degree that they have never yet been considered worthy of governance by a Board of Conservators; and they have the distinction of being the only salmon rivers in England that may be fished without a rod licence. But these rivers are so distinct in one characteristic that they may be quoted as evidence of almost miraculous instinct. The salmon of the Test hold no communion with those of the Itchen; no fisherman acquainted with the rivers would be likely to mistake the one for the other; yet, while the Itchen fish, on return from the salt water, unerringly turn to the right, and pass the Docks on their way to Woodmill, the salmon of the Test swim straight ahead, and pause not till they reach their own river beyond the furthest of the western suburbs of Southampton.

When a river issues from a lake it is the custom to regard the latter as the headwaters. In this sense Alresford Pond may be set down as the source of the Itchen. Locally, a brook at Ropley Dean, about eleven miles from Winchester as the crow flies, has been nominated for the distinction, but there are other rivulets from the high land between Alresford and Alton which might be brought into competition. The Bishops of Winchester formerly had a summer palace at Bishop’s Sutton, and it is somewhat of a coincidence that in our own times Archbishop Longley was one of its vicars. There are stores of pike and mammoth trout in Alresford Pond, and no doubt they had ancestors there when Richard I. was king. Even now, in its reduced size, this beautiful sheet of clear water covers sixty acres.

At Cheriton the Royalists received a crushing blow on the March day when Lords Hopton and Forth led their army of 10,000 men against an equal force of Waller’s Roundheads. The engagement was fatal to the Royal cause, and it gave Winchester and its fort to the Parliamentarians. Of Tichborne this generation heard somewhat in the seventies, and the notorious trials brought for many years an increase of visitors, who would interrupt the discourse upon Sir Roger de Tychborne, and the Tychborne Dole founded by the Lady Mabell (whose monument is in the church on the hill), with questions about the Claimant and the lost Sir Roger. Martyr’s Worthy, King’s Worthy, and Abbot’s Worthy are within sound of the sonorous Cathedral bells; and after these villages are the loved Winnal reaches of the stream, one of them sadly marred by the Didcot and Newbury Railway, which, within the last few years, has been opened with a station south of the town. The Nun’s Walk is to the right as you follow the Itchen downwards, often over planks half-hidden in sedges. Sleek cattle graze in the water-meads; beyond them is the clustering city and its Cathedral, which at a distance resembles nothing so much as a long low-lying building that has yet to be finished, the squat tower seeming a mere commencement. The bye-streams, of which there are several, meet at the bottom of the town, and the strong, rapid, concentrated current has much mill work to do before it recovers perfect freedom.

Izaak Walton lived a while at Winchester, in the declining years of his long and—who can doubt?—tranquil life. He had friends among the bishops and clergy, and wrote the lives of contemporary divines. So he came to Winchester, where a room was kept for him in the Bishop’s Palace, and in this city he died on December 15th, 1683. His grave is in the Cathedral, marked by a black marble slab, and within the last few years a memorial statue has been placed in one of the niches of the newly-erected screen.

The ancient hospital of St. Cross is one of the best-known features of the Itchen in the neighbourhood of Winchester, but there are charming country-seats along the whole remaining course—fair homes of English gentlemen, planted above the grass land whence the evening mists of summer rise to shroud the winding stream and far-stretching water-meads, and adorned with smooth-shaven lawns intersected by gravel-walks, winding amidst shrubberies and parterres to the sedgy banks of the silently gliding river. But St. Cross is unique with its gateway tower and porter’s hutch, where the wayfarer may even now make the vagrant’s claim for dole of beer and bread, the former no longer brewed on the spot, and for its own sake not worth the trouble often taken by sentimental visitors to obtain it. Fine old elms surround the venerable home of the brethren of this cloistered retreat; the river flows close to its foundations; and, facing you across the stream, rises the bold rounded steep surmounted by the clump of beech-trees on St. Catherine’s Hill. The speculative builder, however, has long been pushing his outworks towards this breezy eminence where the Wykeham College boys of past generations trooped to their sports.

The Itchen as it narrows to serve the South Stoneham water-wheels loses much of its beauty, and is finally, after its course of twenty-five miles, abruptly stopped at the flour-mill. Through artificial outlets it tumbles into the tideway, and becomes at a bound subject to the ebb and flow of the Solent. Southampton, after a temporary depression due to the withdrawal of the Peninsular and Oriental Company to other headquarters, has launched out into renewed enterprise; great docks have been added, and the extension is likely to continue in the future. Queen Victoria opened the Empress Docks in 1890; the graving docks were the next scheme, and in 1893 the new American line of steamers began to run. In 1833 her Majesty, then the Princess Victoria, opened the Royal (or Victoria) Pier, which was rebuilt in 1892 and re-opened by the Duke of Connaught; and from it and other vantage points commanding views are to be had of the estuary, and of the New Forest on the further side. To meet this vigorous revival of commercial development, the suburbs have pushed out in all directions, and the estuary of the Itchen, from the Salmon Pool at South Stoneham to the Docks, is now bordered by modern dwellings, and presents an appearance of life in marked contrast to the dreariness of a quarter of a century ago.

In its general characteristics the Test resembles the Itchen. It is ten miles longer, and has a tributary assistance which its sister stream lacks; but there are in its valley similar country mansions, ruddy farm-houses, picturesque cottages and gardens, water-meads and marshy corners, mills and mill-pools, rustic bridges, and superb stock of salmon in the lower, and of trout and grayling in the higher, reaches. It springs from the foot of the ridge on the Berkshire border, and is joined below Hurstbourne Park by a branch from the north-east. For the first few miles it is the ideal of a small winding stream, and is established as a chalk stream of the first class at Whitchurch. It skirts Harewood Forest, and takes in a tributary below Wherwell. The principal feeder is the Anton, which is of sufficient magnitude to be considered an independent river. For quite sixteen miles the Test runs a sinuous course, as if not certain which point of the compass to select, but eventually it goes straight south. Stockbridge is the only considerable town, and that owes its reputation to ample training downs, and to the periodical races which rank high in that description of sport. Between this and Romsey there are many bye-waters, and it requires one accustomed to the country to distinguish the main river.

Occasionally a salmon, taking advantage of a flood, will ascend as high as Stockbridge, but this does not happen every year. At Romsey, however, gentlemen anglers find their reward, though anything more unlike a salmon river could not be found, unless, indeed, it should be the Stour and the Avon, to which we shall come presently. The Test in its upper and middle reaches is seldom so deep that the bottom, and the trout and grayling for which it is justly celebrated, cannot be clearly seen. It gets less shallow below Houghton Mill, and at Romsey there is water enough for salmon of major dimensions. But the current is even and stately, salmon pools as they are understood in Scotland and Ireland do not exist, and there are forests of weeds to assist the fish to get rid of the angler’s fly. The most noted landmark on the banks of the stream is Romsey Abbey, long restored to soundness of fabric, yet preserving all the appearance of perfect Norman architecture. Near it the first Berthon boats were built and launched on the Test by the vicar, whose name is borne by this handy collapsible craft. The Test enters Southampton Water at Redbridge, which is in a measure the port of lading for the New Forest.

There are tiny streams in the recesses of the New Forest little known to the outer world. The BEAULIEU river is worthy of mark on the maps, and when the tide is full it is a brimming water-way into the heart of the forest. The acreage of mud at low-water, however, detracts from its beauty, and the upper portion, from near Lyndhurst to the tidal limit, is small and overgrown. The ruins of Beaulieu Abbey, set in the surroundings of an exquisite New Forest village, far from the shriek of the locomotive whistle, or the smoke and bustle of a town, are truly a “fair place.” Beaulieu is one of the most entrancing combinations of wood, water, ruins, and village in the county, and the Abbey is especially interesting from its establishment by King John, after remorse occasioned by a dream.

The LYMINGTON river, the mainland channel opposite Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, is tidal to the town, a tortuous creek in low-water, the course, however, duly marked by stakes and beacons. The great Poet Laureate, Tennyson, used to cross to his Freshwater home by this route, and in the late ’fifties the writer of these words often took passage by the Isle of Wight boats for the privilege of gazing from a reverent distance at the poet, whose cloak, soft broad-brimmed hat, and short clay pipe filled from a packet of bird’s-eye, filled the youthful adorer with unspeakable admiration.

The Isle of Wight, garden of England though it has been called, is poverty-stricken in the matter of running water, and it is not rich in woods. Tho principal river is the Medina, which, flowing from the foot of St. Catherine’s Down to the Solent at East Cowes, divides the island into two hundreds. The pretty village of Wootton is situated on Fishbourne creek, also called Wootton river. There are two Yars—the Yar which rises at Freshwater, and is tidal almost throughout to Yarmouth Harbour; and the eastern Yar, at the back of Niton.

The famous salmon of Christchurch, so much in request in the spring, when the end of the close time brings out the nets in the long open “run” between the town and the bay, come up from the English Channel on their annual quest of the spawning grounds of the Avon and the Stour. These rivers unite almost under the shadow of the splendidly situated church and the priory ruins. The church was restored by the architect who performed a similar office for Romsey; and it is under the tower at the west end of the nave that the singular Shelley memorial is erected. The Avon has the finest watershed in the South of England, and its feeders water much of Hampshire and a large portion of Wilts. Its tributaries are numerous; even one of the two branches of its headwaters is formed by the junction of minor streams at Pewsey. It has a winding way from Upavon, becomes a goodly stream at beautiful Amesbury, where it traverses the pleasure grounds of the Abbey, and crosses direct south by Salisbury Plain to Old Sarum. The Wiley and Nadder are the largest tributaries, the former entering the Avon near the seat of the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton. The valleys of main stream and tributaries alike are a succession of fine landscapes, made distinctive by the downs of varying height, rising on either side, clothed at intervals with grand woods, and protecting sequestered villages and hamlets nestling at their feet.

The environs of Salisbury are intersected in all directions by the abundant water of Avon or its feeders, and the clear murmuring runnels are heard in its streets. The lofty tapering spire of the glorious cathedral is the landmark of Avon-side for many a mile around, but the river equally forces itself upon the notice of the stranger. There is no cathedral in England better set for a landmark than this, and of none can it be more literally said that distance lends enchantment. It is on the watermead level, and probably owes its position to the river. Old Sarum, perched upon its conical hill, had its fortified castle and many an intrenchment for defence, had its Norman cathedral and the pomp and power of a proud ecclesiastical settlement; but it was exposed to the wind and weather, and the Sarumites looked with longing eye at the fat vale below and its conjunction of clear streams. Wherefore, under Richard Le Poer, its seventh bishop, there was migration thither; the present cathedral was commenced, the site, according to one legend, being determined by the fall of an arrow shot as a token from the Old Sarum ramparts; and the new town soon gathered around it. At first the cathedral had no spire; that crowning glory of the structure was added nearly a hundred years later, and about the time when the work of demolition at Old Sarum had been concluded. The stone used in the new cathedral was brought from the Hindon quarries a few miles distant, and Purbeck supplied the marble pillars. The best view of the cathedral, and of the straight-streeted and richly-befoliaged city, is from the north-eastern suburb; and so gracefully is the building proportioned that it is hard to realise that the point of the spire is 400 feet in air.