The current which nearly overwhelmed General Fairfax in Bridgwater's stirring days of 1645 is said to advance with such rapidity and boldness on the Parret as to rise no less than two fathoms on one wave. But, judging from the statement of another authority, this must be but a moderate estimate of the dimensions to which the bore occasionally attains, since it is asserted that the upright wave-phenomenon of the Parret has repeatedly reached nine feet in height! This much, however, is positively ascertained--that spring-tides in the Bristol Channel rise a full 36 feet at the mouth of the Parret. King John gave Bridgwater its charter in 1200, but the Briwere family, one of whom began the building of the great bridge over the Parret, were the real founders of the town and the actual authors of its commercial prosperity. The most striking landmark in the birthplace of Admiral Blake, the great Republican commander, whose glorious achievement it was to defeat the "invincible" Van Tromp, is the tall tower and fine spire of the parish church of St. Mary, 174 feet in height, and, therefore, one of the loftiest in England. A splendid altar-piece, said to have been taken from a Spanish privateer, is one of the features of the church. Six miles from the sea at Bridgwater, the Parret, as if loth to lose its individuality, lingers in the rich valley, doubling the distance by its circuitous course to the Bristol Channel. At Burnham, just before the Severn Sea claims them, its waters are still further swollen by those of the Brue, a considerable stream, which, like the Parret, has a wealth of historical association, and is of some commercial significance. To the wharves at Highbridge, above Burnham, vessels of many tons burthen are borne by the tide; here also are the gates and sluice-locks of the Glastonbury canal navigation. Then the united streams fall into that part of the Bristol Channel which is known as Bridgwater Bay. A few miles to the north the Axe indolently pours into Uphill Bay the waters which it has brought from the flanks of the Mendips, where it runs a subterranean course some two miles long before issuing forth in a copious flood from Wookey Hole--a cavern famous for the prehistoric treasures which it has yielded to the explorer--to flow through a picturesque glen, and presently to drain the level plains of West Somerset. * * * * * Watering three counties, to the scenic interest and beauty of each of which it lends an infinitude of charms, the /Lower Avon/ is not to be measured for its importance by its length (seventy-five miles), since there are far longer streams that one would willingly exchange for half the romantic valleys and the rich country of this river, which has its source in a piece of ornamental water at Escourt Park, in the neighbourhood of Great Thurston, where the boundaries of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire almost meet.