Says Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A., in his entertaining book, _Our River_: “I came through the lock once simultaneously with H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge. He was steering the boat he was in, and I am sorry to say I incurred his displeasure by accidentally touching his rudder with my punt’s nose.” Oh dear! He does not tell us what H.R.H. said on this historic occasion; but a knowledge of the Royal Duke’s fiery temper and of his ready and picturesque way of expressing it leads the present writer to imagine that his remarks were of a nature likely to have been hurtful to the self-respect of the Royal Academician. But it is something—is it not?—to be able to record, thus delicately, by implication, that one has been vigorously cursed by a Royal Duke. Not to all of us has come such an honour! [Illustration: COOKHAM WEIR.] And now we come to Maidenhead town, a town of 12,980 persons, and yet a place that was, not so very long ago, merely in the parishes of Cookham and Bray. (It was created a separate civil parish only in 1894.) Its growth, originally due to its situation on that old coaching highway, the Bath road (which is here carried across the river by that fine stone structure, Maidenhead Bridge, built in 1772, to replace an ancient building of timber), has been further brought about by the modern vogue of the river, and by the convenience of a railway station close at hand. “Maidenhead” is, according to some views, the “mydden hythe,” the “middle wharf” between Windsor and Marlow. Camden assures us that the name derived from “St. Ursula,” one of the eleven thousand virgins murdered at Cologne. But St. Ursula and the eleven thousand maiden martyrs, who are said to have been shot to death with arrows, A.D. 451, are as entirely mythical as Sarah Gamp’s “Mrs. Harris.” But there is plenty choice in the origin of this place-name. There are those who plump for “magh-dun-hythe,” the wharf under the great hill (of Cliveden). The place is found under quite another name in Domesday Book. There it is “Elenstone,” or “Ellington.” It is first styled “Maydehuth” in 1248; and it has been thought that the name is equivalent to “new wharf”; the wharf, or its successor, mentioned by Leland in 1538 as the “grete warfeage of tymbre and fierwood.” We need not, perhaps, expend further space upon the town of Maidenhead, for it is almost entirely modern. Its fine stone bridge has already been mentioned, and another, and a very different, type of bridge, a quarter of a mile below it, now demands attention.