IN THE SUSSEX DUKERIES 23 



indeed to voyage from Putney to Littlehampton 

 via Thames, Wey, Wey and Arun Canal, and 

 Arun, but I missed the chance I had, and next 

 time I might have gone in for the journey cattle 

 were feeding on parts of the canal's bed, and 

 there was an end of that idea. Then there is 

 the Rother — I have been in that more than on 

 it — and the Mole, which, as a Sussex river does 

 not fairly count, being only a little chap till he 

 begins to get clear of the county and play pranks 

 with sinks and swallows, justifying his name by 

 working in the earth like the gentleman in the 

 fur waistcoat. Some day I mean to make up for 

 the Wey-Arun disappointment by tracking the 

 Mole to its very source in Tilgate Forest, like 

 Mr Pickwick and the Hampstead ponds. 



These are all the Sussex rivers I kn.ow as a 

 fisher and boater. I ought to explain that my 

 Rother is the one so pretty by Petersfield and 

 Midhurst way, not that near Rye, which finds its 

 way along to the sea from Rotherfield. This 

 Rother and I are acquaintances only. It is not 

 an associate, as the others have been, old friends 

 for whom I am not afraid to stick up. Shoreham 

 Harbour, the Adur's outlet, may not be all fancy 

 paints the Rhine, but it can serve. Bits on the 

 Arun about Black Rabbit might be backed 

 against the pick of Clieveden without being 

 beaten. Not many more beautiful, quiet, fishy, 

 wooded corners than the Western Rother owns 

 are to be quoted from your show rivers ; and a'^ 

 for the Sussex Ouse — well, if it were not for the 

 slime and the sewage and the absence of landing- 

 places, and the defunct dogs and other animals — 

 some in mysterious packages of quite Bosphorean 

 tone — doomed to find no rest after death, but 



