OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ROWING. 153 



renders it difficult for him to fall into any error in running 

 a straight line from corner to corner. The Oxonian cox- 

 swain, on the other hand, requires to be more carefully on 

 the watch lest he should suffer his boat to diverge from the 

 just course, which is far less obvious on the wider Isis than 

 on the Cam. But although the Cambridge coxswain has 

 the shores of the river close to him on either hand, and can 

 thus never be at a loss as to his just course, yet to maintain 

 this obvious course he has to be continually moving the 

 rudder-lines. In fact, there are some ' eights ' which steei 

 so ill that it is no easy matter to keep them from the shores 

 when the crew are sending them along at racing speed. In 

 rounding the three great corners which have to be passed in 

 the ordinary racing-course at Cambridge viz., First Post 

 Corner, Grassy Corner, and Ditton Corner the rudder has 

 to be made use of in a much more decided manner than in 

 the straighter course along which the Oxford racing eights 

 have to travel. I have seen the water bubbling over the 

 rudder of a racing eight, as she rounded Grassy Corner, in a 

 manner which showed clearly enough how her ' way ' must 

 have been checked ; yet, probably, if the rudder-lines had 

 been relaxed for a moment, the ill-steering craft would have 

 gone irretrievably out of her course, and been presently 

 stranded on the farther bank. And even eights which 

 steer well had to be very carefully handled along the narrow 

 and winding ditch which we Cantabs used to call * the river. 1 

 A more serious disadvantage, so far as the prospects of 

 University Boats were concerned, lay in the circumstance 

 that there was no part of the Cam (within easy reach, at 

 least, of Cambridge) along which the crew could row with- 

 out a break, for four or five miles, as they had to do in the 

 actual encounter with the Oxford boat The whole range 

 of the river between the locks next below Cambridge and 

 Bait's Bite Locks, is somewhat under four miles and a half. 

 But about a mile and a quarter from Bait's Bite sluice, the 

 railway-bridge crosses the river, and until a few years ago, 

 the supports of this bridge divided the river into three parts. 



