The Open Air 



trees, as if the passage of the centuries had stroked and 

 soothed it into indolent peace. The meadows rested; 

 even the swallows, the restless swallows, glided in an 

 effortless way through the busy air. I could see this, 

 and yet I did not quite enjoy it; something drew me 

 away from perfect contentment, and gradually it 

 dawned upon me that it was the current causing an 

 unsuspected amount of labour in sculling. The force- 

 less particles of water, so yielding to the touch, which 

 slipped aside at the motion of the oar, in their count- 

 less myriads ceaselessly flowing grew to be almost a 

 solid obstruction to the boat. I had not noticed it 

 for a mile or so ; now the pressure of the stream was 

 becoming evident. I persuaded myself that it was 

 nothing. I held on by the boathook to a root and 

 rested, and so went on again. Another mile or more; 

 another rest: decidedly sculling against a swift 

 current is work downright work. You have no 

 energy to spare over and above that needed for the 

 labour of rowing, not enough even to look round and 

 admire the green loveliness of the shore. I began to 

 think that I should not get as far as Oxford after all. 

 By-and-by, I began to question if rowing on a river 

 is as pleasant as rowing on a lake, where you can rest 

 on your oars without losing ground, where no current 

 opposes progress, and after the stroke the boat slips 

 ahead some distance of its own impetus. On the 

 river the boat only travels as far as you actually pull 

 it at each stroke ; there is no life in it after the scull 

 is lifted, the impetus dies, and the craft first pauses 

 and then drifts backward. I crept along the shore, 

 so near that one scull occasionally grounded, to avoid 

 the main force of the water, which is in the middle of 

 the river. I slipped behind eyots and tried all I knew. 

 In vain, the river was stronger than I, and my arms 



126 



