Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
I had been three times at Uphusband before, and had, as my readers will,
perhaps, recollect, described the bourn here, or the _brook_. It has, in
general, no water at all in it from August to March. There is the bed of
a little river; but no water. In March, or thereabouts, the water begins
to boil up in thousands upon thousands of places, in the little narrow
meadows, just above the village; that is to say a little higher up the
valley. When the chalk hills are full; when the chalk will hold no more
water; then it comes out at the lowest spots near these immense hills
and becomes a rivulet first, and then a river. But until this visit to
Uphusband (or Hurstbourne Tarrant, as the map calls it), little did I
imagine that this rivulet, dry half the year, was the head of the river
Teste, which, after passing through Stockbridge and Rumsey, falls into
the sea near Southampton.
We had to follow the bed of this river to Bourne; but there the water
begins to appear; and it runs all the year long about a mile lower down.
Here it crosses Lord Portsmouth's out-park, and our road took us the
same way to the village called Down Husband, the scene (as the
broad-sheet tells us) of so many of that Noble Lord's ringing and
cart-driving exploits. Here we crossed the London and Andover road, and
leaving Andover to our right and Whitchurch to our left, we came on to
Long Parish, where, crossing the water, we came up again on that high
country which continues all across to Winchester. After passing
Bullington, Sutton, and Wonston, we veered away from Stoke-Charity, and
came across the fields to the high down, whence you see Winchester, or
rather the Cathedral; for at this distance you can distinguish nothing
else clearly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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