The name, then, of the Thames is singular, not plural; while yet the river is formed of many confluent streams descending from the Cotswold Hills. Which is the actual source is perhaps a question of words; and yet it is one as keenly contended, and by as many competing localities, as the birthplace of Homer was of old. Of the seven, however, only two can show a plausible case. The traditional Thames Head is in Trewsbury Mead, three miles from Cirencester, not far from the Tetbury Road Station, on the Great Western Railway, and hard by the old Roman road of Akeman Street, one of the four ** that radiate from Cirencester, or, as the Romans called the city, Corinium. Here the infant stream is at once pressed into service, its waters being pumped up into the Thames and Severn Canal, whose high embankment forms the back-ground to the wooded nook which forms the cradle of the river. It is an impressive comment on the reported saying of Brindley the engineer, that "the great use of rivers is to feed canals." Half-a-mile farther down, and when clear of the great pumping-engine, the baby river issues again to light in a secluded dell, and now has room to wander at its own sweet will. The cut on the preceding page delineates its early course, and shows "the Hoar Stone," an ancient boundary, mentioned in a charter of King Æthelstan, a.d. 931. The river now receives a succession of tiny rivulets, which augment its volume and force until, near the village of Kemble, it is crossed by a rustic bridge,--"the first bridge over the Thames," as depicted for us in the charming volume of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, with its three narrow arches, and its sides undefended by a parapet, with the solitary figures of the labourer and his boy, wending their way home after work. * "The Ouse, whom men do Isis rightly name."--Spenser, Faerie Queen. ** The other three were the Fossway, or "entrenched road," running to the north-east, the Ikenild Street or "road to the Iceni," nearly due east, and Ermine or Irmin Street, passing through Cirencester, north-west to Gloucester, and south-east to Silchester. Akeman Street is a continuance of the Fossway, and runs south-west to Bath. Its name probably means, "Oak-man," or Forester. [Illustration: 8019] What a contrast with the _last_ bridge that spans the river, with its mighty sweep of traffic below and above! But we must dally yet among scenes of rural quietude. A few miles beyond Kemble, the Thames has acquired force sufficient to turn a mill. Hence, leaving the highway, and taking our path through pleasant meadows, we pass by one or two rural villages, and so to Cricklade, the first market-town on the Thames. And here a considerable affluent joins the stream--a river, in fact, that has come down from another part of the Cotswold Hills, with some show of right to be the original stream. [Illustration: 8018]