Nature Near London Part 9

The beaver is gone, but the otter remains, and comes so near the mighty City as just the other side of the well-known Lock, the portal through which a thousand boats at holiday time convey men and women to breathe pure air. The porpoise, and even the seal, it is said, ventures to Westminster sometimes; the otter to Kingston. Thus, the sea sends its denizens past the vast mult.i.tude that surges over the City bridges, and the last link with the olden time, the otter, still endeavours to live near.

Perhaps the river is sweetest to look on in spring time or early summer.

Seen from a distance the water seems at first sight, when the broad stream fills the vision as a whole, to flow with smooth, even current between meadow and cornfield. But, coming to the brink, that silvery surface now appears exquisitely chased with ever-changing lines. The light airs, wandering to and fro where high banks exclude the direct influence of the breeze, flutter the ripples. .h.i.ther and thither, so that, instead of rolling upon one lee sh.o.r.e, they meet and expend their little force upon each other. A continuous rising and falling, without a line of direction, thus breaks up the light, not with sparkle or glitter, but with endless silvery facets.

There is no pattern. The apparently intertangled tracing on a work of art presently resolves itself into a design, which once seen is always the same. These wavelets form no design; watch the sheeny maze as long as one will, the eye cannot get at the clue, and so unwind the pattern.

Each seems for a second exactly like its fellow, but varies while you say "These two are the same," and the white reflected light upon the wide stream is now strongest here, and instantly afterwards flickers yonder.

Where a gap in the willows admits a current of air a ripple starts to rush straight across, but is met by another returning, which has been repulsed from the bluff bow of a moored boat, and the two cross and run through each other. As the level of the stream now slightly rises and again falls, the jagged top of a large stone by the sh.o.r.e alternately appears above, or is covered by the surface. The water as it retires leaves for a moment a hollow in itself by the stone, and then swings back to fill the vacuum.

Long roots of willows and projecting branches cast their shadow upon the shallow sandy bottom; the shadow of a branch can be traced slanting downwards with the shelve of the sand till lost in the deeper water. Are those little circlets of light enclosing a round umbra or slightly darker spot, that move along the bottom as the bubbles drift above on the surface, shadows or reflections?

In still, dark places of the stream, where there seems no current, a dust gathers on the water, falling from the trees, or borne thither by the wind and dropping where its impulse ceases. Shadows of branches lie here upon the surface itself, received by the greenish water dust. Round the curve on the concave and lee side of the river, where the wind drives the wavelets direct upon the strand, there are little beaches formed by the undermining and fall of the bank.

The tiny surge rolls up the incline; each wave differing in the height to which it reaches, and none of them alike, washing with it minute fragments of stone and gravel, mere specks which vibrate to and fro with the ripple and even drift with the current. Will these fragments, after a process of trituration, ultimately become sand? A groove runs athwart the bottom, left recently by the keel of a skiff, recently only, for in a few hours these specks of gravel, sand, and particles that sweep along the bottom, fill up such depressions. The motion of these atoms is not continuous, but intermittent; now they rise and are carried a few inches and there sink, in a minute or two to rise again and proceed.

Looking to windward there is a dark tint upon the water; but down the stream, turning the other way, intensely brilliant points of light appear and disappear. Behind a boat rowed against the current two widening lines of wavelets, in the shape of an elongated V, stretch apart and glitter, and every dip of the oars and the slippery oar-blades themselves, as they rise out of the water, reflect the sunshine. The boat appears but to touch the surface, instead of sinking into it, for the water is transparent, and the eye can see underneath the keel.

Here, by some decaying piles, a deep eddy whirls slowly round and round; they stand apart from the sh.o.r.e, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough of the water. Before a glance can define its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, too, in flood time, the hurrying current seems to respond more sensitively to the shape of the shallows and the banks beneath, there boils up from below a ceaseless succession of irregular circles as if the water there expanded from a centre, marking the verge of its outflow with bubbles and raised lines upon the surface.

By the side float tiny whirlpools, some rotating this way and some that, sucking down and boring tubes into the stream. Longer lines wander past, and as they go, curve round, till when about to make a spiral they lengthen out and drift, and thus, perpetually coiling and uncoiling, glide with the current. They somewhat resemble the conventional curved strokes which, upon an a.s.syrian bas-relief, indicate water.

Under the spring sunshine, the idle stream flows easily onward, yet every part of the apparently even surface varies; and so, too, in a larger way, the aspects of the succeeding reaches change. Upon one broad bend the tints are green, for the river moves softly in a hollow, with its back, as it were, to the wind.

The green lawn sloping to the sh.o.r.e, and the dark cedar's storeys of flattened foliage, tier above tier; the green osiers of two eyots: the light-leaved aspen; the tall elms, fresh and green; and the green hawthorn bushes give their colour to the water, smooth as if polished, in which they are reflected. A white swan floats in the still narrow channel between the eyots, and there is a punt painted green moored in a little inlet by the lawn, and scarce visible under drooping boughs.

Roofs of red tile and dormer windows rise behind the trees, the dull yellow of the walls is almost hidden, and deep shadows lurk about the sh.o.r.e.

Opposite, across the stream, a wide green sward stretches beside the towing-path, lit up with sunshine which touches the dandelions till they glow in the gra.s.s. From time to time a nightingale sings in a hawthorn unregarded, and in the elms of the park hard by a crowd of jackdaws chatter. But a little way round a curve the whole stream opens to the sunlight and becomes blue, reflecting the sky. Again, sweeping round another curve with bounteous flow, the current meets the wind direct, a cloud comes up, the breeze freshens, and the watery green waves are tipped with foam.

Rolling upon the strand, they leave a line like a tide marked by twigs and fragments of dead wood, leaves, and the hop-like flowers of Chichester elms which have been floated up and left. Over the stormy waters a band of brown bank-martins wheel hastily to and fro, and from the osiers the loud chirp of the sedge-reedling rises above the buffet of the wind against the ear, and the splashing of the waves.

Once more a change, where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The sh.o.r.e rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting for hire by the bridge; the waterman cleaning them with a parti-coloured mop spies me eyeing his vessels, and before I know exactly what is going on, and whether I have yet made up my mind, the sculls are ready, the cushions in; I take my seat, and am shoved gently forth upon the stream.

After I have gone under the arch, and am clear of all obstructions, I lay the sculls aside, and reclining let the boat drift past a ballast punt moored over the shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel.

One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while his mate turns a windla.s.s the chain from which drags it along the bottom, filling the bag with pebbles, and finally hauls it to the surface, when the contents are shot out in the punt.

It is a floating box rather than a boat, square at each end, and built for capacity instead of progress. There are others moored in various places, and all hard at work. The men in this one, scarcely glancing at my idle skiff, go steadily on, dropping the scoop, steadying the pole, turning the crank, and emptying the pebbles with a rattle.

Where do these pebbles come from? Like the stream itself there seems a continual supply; if a bank be scooped away and punted to the sh.o.r.e presently another bank forms. If a hollow be deepened, by-and-by it fills up; if a channel be opened, after a while it shallows again. The stony current flows along below, as the liquid current above. Yet in so many centuries the strand has not been cleared of its gravel, nor has it all been washed out from the banks.

The skiff drifts again, at first slowly, till the current takes hold of it and bears it onward. Soon it is evident that a barge-port is near--a haven where barges discharge their cargoes. A by-way leads down to the river where boats are lying for hire--a dozen narrow punts, waiting at this anchorage till groundbait be lawful. The ends of varnished skiffs, high and dry, are visible in a shed carefully covered with canvas; while sheaves of oars and sculls lean against the wooden wall.

Through the open doors of another shed there may be had a glimpse of shavings and tools, and slight battens crossing the workshop in apparent confusion, forming a curious framework. These are the boatbuilder's struts and stays, and contrivances to keep the boat in rigid position, that her lines may be true and delicate, strake upon strake of dull red mahogany rising from the beechen keel, for the craftsman strings his boat almost as a violinist strings his violin, with the greatest care and heed, and with a right adjustment of curve and due proportion. There is not much clinking, or sawing, or thumping; little noise, but much skill.

Gradually the scene opens. Far down a white bridge spans the river: on the sh.o.r.e red-tiled and gabled houses crowd to the very edge; and behind them a church tower stands out clear against the sky. There are barges everywhere. By the towing-path colliers are waiting to be drawn up stream, black as their freight, by the horses that are nibbling the hawthorn hedge; while by the wharf, labourers are wheeling barrows over bending planks from the barges to the carts upon the sh.o.r.e. A tug comes under the bridge, panting, every puff re-echoed from the arches, dragging by sheer force deeply laden flats behind it. The water in front of their bluff bows rises in a wave nearly to the deck, and then swoops in a sweeping curve to the rear.

The current by the port runs back on the wharf side towards its source, and the foam drifts up the river instead of down. Green flags on a sandbank far out in the stream, their roots covered and their bent tips only visible, now swing with the water and now heel over with the breeze. The _Edwin and Angelina_ lies at anchor, waiting to be warped into her berth, her sails furled, her green painted water-barrel lashed by the stern, her tiller idle after the long and toilsome voyage from Rochester.

For there are perils of the deep even to those who only go down to it in barges. Barge as she is, she is not without a certain beauty, and a certain interest, inseparable from all that has received the buffet of the salt water, and over which the salt spray has flown. Barge too, as she is, she bears her part in the commerce of the world. The very architecture on the sh.o.r.e is old-fashioned where these bluff-bowed vessels come, narrow streets and overhanging houses, boat anchors in the windows, sails and tarry ropes; and is there not a Row Barge Inn somewhere?

"Hoy, ahoy!"

The sudden shout startles me, and, glancing round, I find an empty black barge, high out of the water, floating helplessly down upon me with the stream. Noiselessly the great hulk had drifted upon me; as it came the light glinted on the wavelets before the bow, quick points of brilliant light. But two strokes with the sculls carried me out of the way.

NUTTY AUTUMN

There is some honeysuckle still flowering at the tops of the hedges, where in the morning gossamer lies like a dewy net. The gossamer is a sign both of approaching autumn and, exactly at the opposite season of the year, of approaching spring. It stretches from pole to pole, and bough to bough, in the copses in February, as the lark sings. It covers the furze, and lies along the hedge-tops in September, as the lark, after a short or partial silence, occasionally sings again.

But the honeysuckle does not flower so finely as the first time; there is more red (the unopened petal) than white, and beneath, lower down the stalk, are the red berries, the fruit of the former bloom. Yellow weed, or ragwort, covers some fields almost as thickly as b.u.t.tercups in summer, but it lacks the rich colour of the b.u.t.tercup. Some knotty knapweeds stay in out-of-the-way places, where the scythe has not been; some bunches of mayweed, too, are visible in the corners of the stubble.

Silverweed lays its golden flower--like a b.u.t.tercup without a stalk--level on the ground; it has no protection, and any pa.s.sing foot may press it into the dust. A few white or pink flowers appear on the brambles, and in waste places a little St. John's wort remains open, but the seed vessels are for the most part forming. St. John's wort is the flower of the harvest; the yellow petals appear as the wheat ripens, and there are some to be found till the sheaves are carted. Once now and then a blue and slender bell-flower is lighted on; in Suss.e.x the larger varieties bloom till much later.

By still ponds, to which the moorhens have now returned, tall spikes of purple loosestrife rise in bunches. In the furze there is still much yellow, and wherever heath grows it spreads in shimmering gleams of purple between the birches; for these three, furze, heath, and birch are usually together. The fields, therefore, are not yet flowerless, nor yet without colour here and there, and the leaves, which stay on the trees till late in the autumn, are more interesting now than they have been since they lost their first fresh green.

Oak, elm, beech, and birch, all have yellow spots, while retaining their groundwork of green. Oaks are often much browner, but the moisture in the atmosphere keeps the saps in the leaves. Even the birches are only tinted in a few places, the elms very little, and the beeches not much more: so it would seem that their hues will not be gone altogether till November. Frosts have not yet bronzed the dogwood in the hedges, and the hazel leaves are fairly firm. The hazel generally drops its leaves at a touch about this time, and while you are nutting, if you shake a bough, they come down all around.

The rushes are but faintly yellow, and the slender tips still point upwards. Dull purple burrs cover the burdock; the broad limes are withering, but the leaves are thick, and the teazles are still flowering. Looking upwards, the trees are tinted; lower, the hedges are not without colour, and the field itself is speckled with blue and yellow. The stubble is almost hidden in many fields by the growth of weeds brought up by the rain; still the tops appear above and do not allow it to be green. The stubble has a colour--white if barley, yellow if wheat or oats. The meads are as verdant, even more so, than in the spring, because of the rain, and the brooks crowded with green flags.

Haws are very plentiful this year (1881), and exceptionally large, many fully double the size commonly seen. So heavily are the branches laden with bunches of the red fruit that they droop as apple trees do with a more edible burden. Though so big, and to all appearance tempting to birds, none have yet been eaten; and, indeed, haws seem to be resorted to only as a change unless severe weather compels.

Just as we vary our diet, so birds eat haws, and not many of them till driven by frost and snow. If any stay on till the early months of next year, wood-pigeons and missel-thrushes will then eat them; but at this season they are untouched. Blackbirds will peck open the hips directly the frost comes; the hips go long before the haws. There was a large crop of mountain-ash berries, every one of which has been taken by blackbirds and thrushes, which are almost as fond of them as of garden fruit.

Blackberries are thick, too--it is a berry year--and up in the horse-chestnut the p.r.i.c.kly-coated nuts hang up in bunches, as many as eight in a stalk. Acorns are large, but not so singularly numerous as the berries, nor are hazel-nuts. This provision of hedge fruit no more indicates a severe winter than a damaged wheat harvest indicates a mild one.

There is something wrong with elm trees. In the early part of this summer, not long after the leaves were fairly out upon them, here and there a branch appeared as if it had been touched with red-hot iron and burnt up, all the leaves withered and browned on the boughs. First one tree was thus affected, then another, then a third, till, looking round the fields, it seemed as if every fourth or fifth tree had thus been burnt.

It began with the leaves losing colour, much as they do in autumn, on the particular bough; gradually they faded, and finally became brown and of course dead. As they did not appear to shrivel up, it looked as if the grub or insect, or whatever did the mischief, had attacked, not the leaves, but the bough itself. Upon mentioning this I found that it had been noticed in elm avenues and groups a hundred miles distant, so that it is not a local circ.u.mstance.

As far as yet appears, the elms do not seem materially injured, the damage being outwardly confined to the bough attacked. These brown spots looked very remarkable just after the trees had become green. They were quite distinct from the damage caused by the snow of October 1880. The boughs broken by the snow had leaves upon them which at once turned brown, and in the case of the oak were visible, the following spring, as brown spots among the green. These snapped boughs never bore leaf again.

It was the young fresh green leaves of the elms, those that appeared in the spring of 1881, that withered as if scorched. The boughs upon which they grew had not been injured; they were small boughs at the outside of the tree. I hear that this scorching up of elm leaves has been noticed in other districts for several seasons.

The dewdrops of the morning, preserved by the mist, which the sun does not disperse for some hours, linger on late in shaded corners, as under trees, on drooping blades of gra.s.s and on the petals of flowers. Wild bees and wasps may often be noticed on these blades of gra.s.s that are still wet, as if they could suck some sustenance from the dew. Wasps fight hard for their existence as the nights grow cold. Desperate and ravenous, they will eat anything, but perish by hundreds as the warmth declines.

Dragon-flies of the larger size are now very busy rushing to and fro on their double wings; those who go blackberrying or nutting cannot fail to see them. Only a very few days since--it does not seem a week--there was a chiffchaff calling in a copse as merrily as in the spring. This little bird is the first, or very nearly the first, to come in the spring, and one of the last to go as autumn approaches. It is curious that, though singled out as a first sign of spring, the chiffchaff has never entered into the home life of the people like the robin, the swallow, or even the sparrow.

There is nothing about it in the nursery rhymes or stories, no one goes out to listen to it, children are not taught to recognise it, and grown-up persons are often quite unaware of it. I never once heard a countryman, a labourer, a farmer, or any one who was always out of doors, so much as allude to it. They never noticed it, so much is every one the product of habit.

The first swallow they looked for, and never missed; but they neither heard nor saw the chiffchaff. To those who make any study at all of birds it is, of course, perfectly familiar; but to the bulk of people it is unknown. Yet it is one of the commonest of migratory birds, and sings in every copse and hedgerow, using loud, unmistakable notes. At last, in the middle of September, the chiffchaff, too, is silent. The swallow remains; but for the rest, the birds have flocked together, finches, starlings, sparrows, and gone forth into the midst of the stubble far from the place where their nests were built, and where they sang, and chirped, and whistled so long.

The swallows, too, are not without thought of going. They may be seen twenty in a row, one above the other, or on the slanting ropes or guys which hold up the masts of the rickcloths over the still unfinished corn-ricks. They gather in rows on the ridges of the tiles, and wisely take counsel of each other. Rooks are up at the acorns; they take them from the bough, while the pheasants come underneath and pick up those that have fallen.

The partridge coveys are more numerous and larger than they have been for several seasons, and though shooting has now been practised for more than a fortnight, as many as twelve and seventeen are still to be counted together. They have more cover than usual at this season, not only because the harvest is still about, but because where cut the stubble is so full of weeds that when crouching they are hidden. In some fields the weeds are so thick that even a pheasant can hide.

South of London the harvest commenced in the last week of July. The stubble that was first cut still remains unploughed; it is difficult to find a fresh furrow, and I have only once or twice heard the quick strong puffing of the steam-plough. While the wheat was in shock it was a sight to see the wood-pigeons at it. Flocks of hundreds came perching on the sheaves, and visiting the same field day after day. The sparrows have never had such a feast of grain as this year. Whole corners of wheatfields--they work more at corners--were cleared out as clean by them as if the wheat had been threshed as it stood.