20 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



The Reservoir below is the ' mere ' that appeared first 

 in 'The Gamekeeper,' and again in ' The Amateur Poacher,' 

 * Wild Life/ * Round about a Great Estate,' ' Be vis,' and 

 ' After London.' It is a large, deep, weedy pond, shaped 

 like a fish, its large tail at the north-east end, and was 

 constructed in a marshy hollow in 1822 to feed the Wilt- 

 shire and Berkshire Canal. It was reputed to have a 

 whirlpool. There were, in Jefferies' day, two or three 

 boats on it, including a punt or house-boat for bathing. 

 On the north-west side Broome plantation comes to the 

 edge, and reeds and partly submerged willows keep the 

 shallows free from waves. At the south-west corner its 

 head is cut off by the road from Broome to Hodson ; but 

 this head is now almost choked by weeds. The south-west 

 side has its now peninsulated island and many willows ; 

 then a gulf — the ' fir-tree gulf ' of ' Bevis ' — shadowed by 

 taU willows. Along the eastern side a footpath runs over 

 two broad, sloping meadows — ' The Plain ' and ' Green 

 Fern ' — belonging to Day House Farm ; and in these elm 

 and oak and ash, and an old crab-tree, stand about in a 

 happy disarray. Only a dead-leaf boat could travel far 

 on the brook that enters the Reservoir at the ' Gulf '; for 

 its bed is of the narrowest, and is among willow-herb and 

 calthropped sedge, and under the overhanging brier and 

 thorn which the delicate white bryony climbs over. 

 The stream that flows out is the ' Mississippi,' that bounds 

 Coate Farm and moistens its willow-roots. The wild- 

 voiced sandpiper, duck, and coot, and moorhen haunt the 

 Reservoir regularly ; sand-martin and swallow fly over it ; 

 sometimes the heron overhangs it and clanks, seeming to 

 bring storm in his hoUowed wings. There are the largest 

 of pike and tench in the water. From the surface can be 

 seen the ' Plain,' the chimneys of Day House, and then 

 nothing beyond but the clump and castle of Liddington, 

 large and gaunt. Alongside the road by Day House Farm 

 is part of a half-buried circle of sarsen stones, which 

 Jefferies was first to notice. 



The hamlet of Coate is a wavering double row of farm- 



