SILSOE AND LEIGHTON BUZZARD 131 



lage, where three roads met. It was occupied only by the 

 schoolmaster and his sister, who kept house for him, so we had 

 the advantage of a little society in a rather lonely place. 

 They were both young people and fairly educated, but, as I 

 thought even then, rather commonplace. The chief business 

 of the village girls hereabouts was straw-plaiting, which they 

 did sitting at their cottage doors, or walking about in the 

 garden or in the lanes near, which therefore did not interfere 

 with their getting fresh air and healthy exercise, as do all 

 forms of factory work. Now, owing to cheap imported plait, 

 the only work is in hat and bonnet-sewing, which involves 

 indoor work, and is therefore less healthy as a constant occu- 

 pation. 



The district was rather an interesting one. The parish 

 was crossed about its centre by the small river Ouzel, a 

 tributary of the Ouse, bordered by flat verdant meadows, 

 beyond which the ground rose on both sides into low hills, 

 which to the north-east reached five hundred feet above the 

 sea, and being of a sand formation, were covered with heaths 

 and woods of fir trees. Parallel with the river was the Grand 

 Junction Canal, which at that time carried all the heavy goods 

 from the manufacturing districts of the Midlands to London. 

 Following the same general direction, but about half a mile 

 west on higher ground, the London and Birmingham Railway 

 was in course of construction, a good deal of the earthwork 

 being completed, most of the bridges built or building, and 

 the whole country enlivened by the work going on. 



At the same time the canal had been improved at great 

 cost to enable it to carry the increased trade that had been 

 caused by the rapid growth of London and the prosperity 

 of agriculture during the early portion of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. About thirty miles further on the watershed between 

 the river-basins of the Ouse and Severn had to be crossed, a 

 district of small rainfall and scanty streams, from which the 

 whole supply of the canal, both for its locks as well as for 

 evaporation and leakage, had to be drawn. Whenever there 

 was a deficiency of water here to float the barges and fill the 

 locks, traffic was checked until the canal filled again ; and this 



