When the steamer Venus came down to Putney Bridge, however, she was stopped very quickly, and her cheated passengers were forced to remain on board and witness the start, but the steamer was fastened at anchor and could no farther go. Passengers by this unlucky boat, who were unable to stand the broiling sun for four or five hours, debarked at Putney, and consoled themselves with mutton chops and bitter beer at the Star and Garter. Formerly, at the University races between Oxford and Cambridge, there was not only danger that the race itself would be interrupted, or perhaps lost, by the reckless rushing to and fro of the innumerable steamers that were sure to follow the progress of the boats towards Mortlake, but it was also very unsafe for passengers in small boats, wherries, or launches, to venture on the river, owing to the manner in which the steamers dashed to and fro at the bidding of the eager captains. But the assertions in some of the American newspapers, that the Harvard crew would meet with foul-play from some scoundrel or other who might employ money to influence a master of one of those vessels, had aroused a determined energy among the members of the Thames Conservancy Board, and the result was a clear river, in one sense, from Putney to Mortlake, for the two crews. When I say in one sense, I mean that the channel of the river was kept clear of steamboats and skiffs alike; but, while the steamers were not allowed inside of the chains stretched across at Putney and Mortlake, thousands of every description of small craft lined the river for a space of five miles on both sides, on the Surrey and Middlesex shores,--but out of the path where the race-boats were to make the essay for superiority. [Sidenote: THOMAS HUGHES, M.P.] But two steamboats were allowed to follow the crews, and one of these was the steamer Lotus, engaged to carry the referee, Mr. Thomas Hughes, M.P., author of "Tom Brown at Oxford," "School Days at Rugby," and other well-known and popular books--Besides the umpire for each crew, the judge of the race, Sir Aubrey Paul, and a number of ladies and gentlemen specially invited. Besides this boat there was also the steamboat Sunflower, chartered for the use of the press of London and for the benefit of American correspondents in London, by one of the editors of _Bell's Life_. These two boats were never more than fifty yards to the rear of the Oxford and Harvard shells during the progress of the race.