CHAPTER XIX. 



OF SEVERAL RIVERS, AND SOME OBSERVATIONS OF FISH. 



Pise. Well, scholar, since the ways and weather do both 

 favour us, and that we yet see not Tottenham Cross, you 

 shall see nay willingness to satisfy your desire. And first, 

 for the rivers of this nation, there be, as you may note out 

 of Doctor Heylin's Geography, and others, in number 325, 

 but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as fol- 

 loweth : 



1. The chief is Thamesis, compounded of two rivers, Thame 

 and Isis, whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame 

 in Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Glou- 

 cestershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire ; 

 the issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamesis, or 

 Thames ; hence it flieth between Berks, Buckinghamshire, 

 Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex : and so weddeth himself 

 to the Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This 

 glorious river, feeleth the violence and benefit of the sea more 

 than any river in Europe, ebbing and flowing twice a day, 

 more than sixty miles ; about whose banks are so many fair 

 towns and princely palaces that a German* poet thus truly 

 spake : 



"Tot campos," etc. 



We saw so many woods and princely bowers.. 

 Sweet fields, brave palaces, arid stately towers, 

 So many gardens dress'd with curious care, 

 That Thames with royal Tiber may compare. 



2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn ; it hath 

 its beginning in Plynlimmon-hill in Montgomeryshire, and 

 his end seven miles from Bristol, washing, in the mean space, 

 the walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and 

 divers other places and palaces of note. 



* Who this German poet was I cannot find ; but the verses, in the original 

 Latin, are in " Heylin's Cosmography," p. 240, and are as follow : 

 Tot campos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos, 

 Artifici excultos dextra, tot vidimus arces ; 

 Tit mine Ausonio, Thamesis, cum Tibride certet. H. 



