OBSERVATIONS OF SEVERAL RIVERS 



walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers 

 other places and palaces of note. 



3. Trent, so called for thirty kind of fishes that are found 

 in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers, who having his 

 fountain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the Counties of 

 Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the 

 turbulent current of Humber, the most violent stream of all the 

 isle. This Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river, having 

 a spring-head of his own, but it is rather the mouth, or Aestuafiutn, 

 of divers rivers here confluent and meeting together; namely, 

 your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent ; and (as the 

 Danow, having received into its channel, the rivers Dravus, 

 Savus, Tibiscus, and divers others) changeth his name into 

 this of Humberabvs, as the old geographers call it. 



4. Medway, a Kentish river, famous for harbouring the 

 Royal Navy. 



5. Tweed, the North-East bound of England, on whose 

 northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable town of 

 Berwick. 



6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coal- 

 pits. These, and the rest of principal note, are thus com- 

 prehended in one of Mr. Drayton's Sonnets. 



Our flood's queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd, 



And stately Severn for her shore is prais'd; 

 The crystal Trent for fords and fish renown'd, 



And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is rais'd. 

 Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee, 



York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 

 The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile be, 



And Kent will say her Medway doth excell. 

 Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame, 



Our Northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood, 

 Our Western parts extoll their Willy's fame, 



And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood. 



These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my 

 old deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; and because you say, 

 you love such discourses as these of rivers and fish and fishing, 

 I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to 

 you : nevertheless, Scholar, if I should begin but to name the 

 several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of 

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