_Kinderley_, many years ago, has given the following account of this river and its several branches: “The Ouse (says he) formerly _Usa or Isa_, which is the most famous of all the rivers that pass through this Level, has its original head on a gentle rising ground full of springs, under Sisam in Northamptonshire, 54 miles from Erith bridge, at which place it first touches the Isle of Ely. It falls by Brackley, Buckingham, Newport Pagnel, Bedford, Huntingdon, and St. Ives, to Erith, and so on till it comes to Lynn. It has 5 rivers emptying themselves into it, beside many brooks and rills; _Grant_, _Mildenhall_, _Brandon_, _Stoke_, and the river _Lenne_, or Sandringham Ea [otherwise _Nare_,] which rises under Lycham, and comes by Castleacre, Narford, and Sechy.” [He omits the _Nene_, which surely he ought to have mentioned.] Afterward he adds, “That the Ouse by its situation, and having so many navigable rivers falling into it from eight several counties, does therefore afford a great advantage to trade and commerce, since hereby two cities, and several great towns are therein served; as Peterborough, Ely, Stamford, Bedford, St. Ives, Huntingdon, St. Neots, Northampton, Cambridge, Bury St. Edmunds, Thetford, &c. with all sorts of heavy commodities from Lynn, as Coals, Salt, Deals, Fir-timber, Iron, Pitch, Tar, and Wine, thither imported; and from these parts great quantities of Wheat, Rye, Coleseed, Barley, &c. are brought down these rivers, whereby a great foreign and inland trade is carried on, and the breed of seamen is increased. The Port of Lynn supplies _six_ counties wholly, and _three_ in part.” But of the Ouse and the other Lynn rivers, no one, perhaps, has given so full and so good an account as Mr. _Skrine_, in his general account of the British rivers. “The Ouse (he says,) traverses a very considerable part of the Midland counties of England, rising in two branches, not far from Brackley and Towcester on the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, from whence its course is eastward, a little inclined to the north, through Buckinghamshire, joined at Newport Pagnel by a small stream from Ivinghoe in the south; to reach Bedford it descends by many windings toward the south, and then joined by the _Hyee_ from Woburn, and the _Ivel_ from Biggleswade, it pursues its original direction to Huntingdon, where a combination of streams from the south-west contributes to its increase. From thence it passes nearly eastward through the centre of the Fens of Cambridgeshire, where it receives the _Cam_ near Ely from the south-west, and afterwards the _lesser Ouse_ from Woolpit and Ixworth in the south-east, joined by the _Larke_ from Bury St. Edmunds; it then inclines more and more to the north, till it falls into the great Gulph of the sea between the projecting coasts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, beneath the walls of Lynn Regis.