After pausing on the shoulder of Charlton Hill, and admiring--as who can fail to do?--the magnificent panorama of hill and valley receding into the mist of distance north and north-east, you proceed from Cheltenham along the Cirencester road to the crossways. A short divergence to the right, and a dip in the road brings you to a piece of wayside turf, with, beyond, a corner shaped like an irregular triangle. One side of this might be, perhaps, seven yards in length, another four yards, and the third something between the two. The triangular depression is reached by one of those little green hillocks so often to be found on English waysides. The bottom is covered with water, which, in spite of the place being no-man's-land, is clear as crystal, and in its deepest part there was not, at the time of my visit, more than six inches of water. The bed of this open shallow reservoir is not paved with marble, or even concrete, but is liberally provided with such unconsidered trifles as the weather or playful children would cast there. When the wind sets that way a good deal of scum will gather in the farther corner, formed by two walls. The turf near the water's edge is worn away, and the green hillock has been trodden into a mere clay bank by the feet of cattle and men, for it is, as I have said, a patch of common land abutting upon the road. Overhead, stretched from the telegraph posts, you may count nine unmistakable wires parallel with the wall which forms the base of our triangle. On the side farthest from the road the bank is high. A venerable hawthorn has become wedded apparently to an equally venerable ash, whose topmost boughs coquette at close quarters with the telegraph wires. Another ash-tree, at the outer point of the triangle, leans over the water. Between the trees a little sloe bush keeps sturdy foothold. You may mark, moreover, a few straggling briars, bits of silver-weed, a root or two of the meadow cranesbill, a clump of poverty-stricken meadow-sweet, some fool's parsley, wild strawberry plants, and a good deal of bold and always flourishing dandelion. This is the environment of the true source of the great River Thames. We are at Seven Springs.