4 RECORDS OF OLD TIMES 



the country divided by hedgerows and planted with 

 timber-trees, villages and parish churches rising here 

 and there, and dotted with farm-houses and cottages, 

 the river Thame meandering through the rich 

 pastures, till it reaches the market town of that 

 name, where it becomes a tolerably broad stream, 

 falling into the Isis at Dorchester in Oxfordshire, the 

 I sis having received the Cherwell, flowing from Ban- 

 bury to Oxford, and thus forming the Thame-Isis, 

 the Tamesis, or Thames, and becoming at London 

 Bridge the richest laden and most noted river in 

 the world. This unique view caused my friend to 

 exclaim, ' Now I see why you English people so 

 deeply love your country.' I replied : ' Yes, what 

 you perceive has taken us nearly 2,000 years to 

 create.' I then pointed out to him that at our feet 

 lay the two little villages of Great and Little 

 Kimble, and that there was the residence of the 

 famed British King ' Kunobelin,' the ' Cunobelinus' 

 of the Romans, and the ' Cymbeline ' of the 

 immortal Shakespeare, and that in the thickly 

 wooded slopes of these hills had lived that most 

 lovely woman of all the great poet's creation, ' the 

 gentle Imogen.' We descended from our coign of 

 vantage, and seated ourselves on the camp, still 

 called by the country people ' Linus' Camp.' 

 Looking to the side of the hill — covered thickly, 

 and almost impenetrably with ancient box trees, 

 stretching for miles — the trees are supposed to 

 be the successors of former denizens of the 

 slopes, and to have existed for many centuries. 



