Down the River [antikvár]

The Twin Rivers I count it one of the luckiest things in life to have been born within reach of a river valley: not in it, nor above it, but just so far removed from it that it never became a too familiar sight and never quite ceased to be a wonder. A man born on a hill must look down on the world; a man born in a valley must look up to it. We, on the other hand, had neither to look up nor down. Standing on flat but raised ground, we looked across and about us; we saw things squarely, at a proper distance, on a proper plane, in a proper perspective. And that gave us perhaps, in that district, the sturdy independence for which we were noted. But I had more luck. I was born not only within reach of one river valley, but two. I could almost reach out, with my two hands, and touch those twin but quite dissimilar streams flowing on almost parallel courses to the North Sea. Tired of one, I could go to the other. On the Nene I could watch the traffic of barges I could never see on the Ouse; on the Ouse I could see a richness of flower life that the Nene, being navigated, could not offer. On both and by both I could watch birds: herons flapping up with a