The tributaries are inconsiderable; but it is a land of innumerable watercourses, and of carriers, kept in action for the flooding of the pastures. Hence the meads are found in a perpetual freshness of "living green," and the verdant pastures in the late spring are magnificent with their marsh-marigolds and cuckoo flowers marking the lines of the meadow trenches, while the hedges and coppices are a dream of May blossom. Noble country houses are set back on the slopes, real old-fashioned farmhouses and thatched cottages are embowered in every variety of foliage, and the background is frequently filled in by gently ranging upland clothed with the softest herbage. Here a village with its mill, and there a hamlet with its homely old church, mark the stages of the crystal clear river, every foot of which is the treasured preserve of some wealthy angler. There are golden trout upon the gravel, and in the deeps, while the shallows, many of which have been fords from time immemorial, are open to the eye of the wayfarer who quietly pauses on the rustic bridges to watch the spotted denizens as they cruise and poise. At Cheriton the Royalists received a crushing blow on the March day when Lords Hopton and Forth led their army of 10,000 men against an equal force of Waller's Roundheads. The engagement was fatal to the Royal cause, and it gave Winchester and its fort to the Parliamentarians. Of Tichborne this generation heard somewhat in the seventies, and the notorious trials brought for many years an increase of visitors, who would interrupt the discourse upon Sir Roger de Tychborne, and the Tychborne Dole founded by the Lady Mabell (whose monument is in the church on the hill), with questions about the Claimant and the lost Sir Roger. Martyr's Worthy, King's Worthy, and Abbot's Worthy are within sound of the sonorous Cathedral bells; and after these villages are the loved Winnal reaches of the stream, one of them sadly marred by the Didcot and Newbury Railway, which, within the last few years, has been opened with a station south of the town. The Nun's Walk is to the right as you follow the Itchen downwards, often over planks half-hidden in sedges. Sleek cattle graze in the water-meads; beyond them is the clustering city and its Cathedral, which at a distance resembles nothing so much as a long low-lying building that has yet to be finished, the squat tower seeming a mere commencement. The bye-streams, of which there are several, meet at the bottom of the town, and the strong, rapid, concentrated current has much mill work to do before it recovers perfect freedom. [Illustration: A NEW FOREST STREAM (_p. 20_).]