84 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



managed by what is sometimes called a double 

 intender. One side of the inn merges into the 

 bricked face of the river's channel by the bridge. 

 {The bridge, if you please, there is no other for 

 miles.) Thus the inn may be said to be actually 

 in the stream. It is also in the Cliffe, which in 

 Lewes means not only the great hill-face, but 

 also the straight, shady, old street leading 

 thereto, said street named on the lucus a non 

 lucendo principle, seeing that it is about the 

 lowest-lying and levellest street in the place. 

 This low-lying Cliffe district distinguished itself 

 once in the good old no-sanitation times by 

 showing a clean bill when the rest of Lewes was 

 terribly afflicted by one of the fashionable 

 epidemics of the period — typhoid, I think. As 

 it might have been reasonably supposed that the 

 higher parts would have stood the better chance, 

 this was puzzling. The reason lay, of course, in 

 accidentally superior water supply. The Cliffe 

 furnished itself from a spring descending fresh 

 and sweet from its elevated namesake, subject to 

 no fouling en route. Let me hasten to add that 

 all the town's water has long been above reproach. 

 Let me also explain to the Bear that I do not 

 call him or it a hotel because it seems too old- 

 fashionedly solid and snug ; one does not 

 somehow associate the more modern appella- 

 tion with either quality. The good hostelry is 

 roomy enough, as witness that spacious apart- 

 ment, or rather pair of apartments, where the 

 farmers used to have such fine market-dinners in 

 the days of yore. 



The Sussex Ouse holds big sea trout, and is 

 a salmon river according to Cocker and the 

 Fisheries Act. " Muwh improved," is the local 



