The Akeman Street here divides Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. If we descend from the Thames Head Canal bridge and follow the towing-path in a westerly direction, into Gloucestershire, for half a mile, we come, by scrambling down the canal-bank to the meadow below, to the source of the river, and at the same time to the destruction of a cherished illusion. Picturesque old histories of the Thames have made us familiar with Thames Head, and have shown us dainty vignettes of that spring. One such I have before me as I write these words. It shows a rustic well, overhung by graceful trees, with a little country-girl in homely pinafore dipping a foot in the water as it gushes forth. We need expect no such scene nowadays. The well is buried under fallen masses of the dull, ochre-coloured earth of Trewsbury Mead, and all we see is a rough, dry hollow, overhung by trees which refuse to live up to the grace suggested by the old illustrations. We need not wonder any more why so few people know Thames Head, or why the spot is unmarked. It is merely a memory, and Peacock’s charming verse has long ceased to be applicable:— Let fancy lead from Trewsbury Mead, With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep; Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green, Thy infant waters softly creep. But although the pumping-stations so greedily suck up all the available moisture in summer, the spring is said often to burst out in winter, three feet high; and at such times it is only necessary to drive a walking-stick anywhere into the turf of this meadow for a little fount to spring up from the hole thus drilled. The river thus originated is known alternatively as the “Isis,” and in the writings of old pedantic antiquaries retains that alternative name until Oxford is passed and Dorchester reached; where, according to such authorities, in the confluence of the Isis and the Thame, the “Thame-Isis,” becomes the “Tamesis,” or Thames. To the Oxford boating-man, however, the streams below and above Oxford are respectively the Lower and the Upper River, and “Isis” is reserved for the title of a University magazine, or the name of a boating-club. “Isis” is, of course, a Latinised form of “Ouse,” which in its turn is a modified form of the Celtic “uisc,” for water, and gives us such other river-names as Usk, Axe, Exe, and Wye; while we find it hidden again in the names of Kirkby Wiske, in Yorkshire, and in that of “whisky,” deriving from “usquebaugh.”