the lower river were flooded. Yet it is remarkable that in this
alluvium, more disturbed and dug than any other in Europe, little or
nothing of human relics, of boats, or of piles has been discovered,
and this absence of testimony also points to the remoteness of date
from which we should reckon the human control of the river.

Here, as in many other conjectures concerning early history or
pre-history, one is convinced of that safe rule which, in Europe at
least, bids us never exaggerate the changes achieved by the last few
centuries or the contrast between recorded and unrecorded things.

The tendency of most modern history in this country has been to
exaggerate such changes and such contrasts. In the greater part of
modern popular history care is taken to emphasise the difference
between the Middle and Dark Ages and the last few centuries. The
forests of England are represented as impassable, or nearly so; the
numbers of the population are grossly underestimated; the towns which
have had a continuous municipal existence of 1500 years are
represented as villages.

The same spirit would tend to make of the Thames Valley in the Dark
and Middle Ages a very different landscape from that which we see
to-day. The floods were indeed more common and the passage of the
river somewhat more difficult; cultivation did not everywhere approach
the banks as it does now; and in two or three spots where there has
been a great development of modern building, notably at Reading, and,
of course, in London, the banks have been artificially strengthened.
But with these exceptions it may be confidently asserted that no belt
of densely inhabited landscape in England has changed so little in its
natural features as the Thames Valley.