man as Sinodun Hill and the hut remains at Northfield. It has 151 miles of
fresh water and 77 of tideway, and is almost the only river in England in
which there are islands, the famous eyots, the lowest and largest of which
at Chiswick touches the London boundary.

After leaving Oxford the writer has lived for many years opposite this
typical and almost unspoilt reach of the London river, and for a
considerable time shot over the estate on the upper Thames of which
Sinodun Hill is the hub and centre. This fine outlier of the chalk, with
its twin mount Harp Hill, dominates not only the whole of the Thames
valley at its feet, but the two cross vales of the Thame and the Ock. On
the bank opposite the Thame joins the Isis, and from thence flows on the
THAMES. Weeks and months spent there at all seasons of the year gave even
better opportunities for becoming acquainted with the life of the Upper
Thames, than the London river did of learning what the tidal stream really
is and may become. Fish, fowl and foxes, rare Thames flowers and shy
Thames chub, butterflies, eel-traps, fountains and springs, river shells
and water insects, are all parts of the "natural commodities" of the
district. There is no better and more representative part of the river
than this. Close by is Nuneham, one of the finest of Thames-side parks,
and behind that the remains of wild Oxfordshire show in Thame Lane and
Clifton Heath. How many centuries look down from the stronghold on Sinodun
Hill, reckoning centuries by human occupation, no one knows or will know.
There stands the fortress of some forgotten race, and below it the double
rampart of a Roman camp, running from Thame to Isis. Beyond is Dorchester,
the abbey of the oldest see in Wessex, and the Abbey Mill. The feet of the
hills are clothed by Wittenham Wood, and above the wood stretches the
weir, and round to the west, on another great loop of the river, is Long
Wittenham and its lovely backwater. Even in winter, when the snow is
falling like bags of flour, and the river is chinking with ice, there is