26‘S NAVIGABLE RIVERS AND CANALS. 
that in the winter, when the cheerless season of the year invites, anti 
requires, society and good fellowship, the intercourse of neighbours, 
few miles distant from each other, cannot be kept up, without i in mi- 
pent danger of their limbs or lives: in general, your surveyors are 
negligent of their duties to a shameful degree: they throw the 
blame on the remissness of the individuals in their district: wherer 
ever the fault lies, the fact of inattention is certain; and an evil to 
which we ought, all of us, to endeavour to apply a remedy as far as we 
are able, by duly enforcing the present laws for the amendment of 
the highways, until it shall please the wisdom of parliament to furnish 
us with better/* 
SECT. II.—NAVIGABLE RIVERS AND CANALS. 
The fine and noble river (the second in the king' 
dom) the Severn, enters this county near Bewdley, and 
after passing through it thirty miles, leaves it near 
Tewkesbury; its channel is generally eighty, or one 
hundred yards wide, sometimes much more ; and four, 
five, or six, yards deep ; in a fresh of water it runs full 
channel, and in floods overflows its hanks; and has 
been navigated with barges of about sixty tons burden, 
for time immemorial. In the lower part of the county 
the river is, at all times, a deep still water, but from 
thence to the upper part, the channel rises about thirty 
feet; and when the water is low, which generally 
occurs the latter part of every summer, presents a num¬ 
ber of shoals or shallows, which can only he navigated, 
with a small burden, and at this season the navigation 
is obstructed. 
The Severn is a free river for whoever chuses to 
embark upon it, without toll or tonnage. The barges 
against the stream, when not favoured by the wind, 
(for they hoist mast and sail) are hauled chiefly by 
men, 
