settlers a good supply of water and natural means of protection were
necessary to life, and both these were offered by this narrow tongue
of land.

For a long period the river was of little use for traffic, and not
until the seventeenth century was it made properly navigable. Now,
through the neglect of the owners of the navigation rights, it is once
more reverting in places to its primitive character. From Evesham to
Tewkesbury the stream is still in good order, but for a short
distance only towards Stratford-on-Avon.

Apart from the fascination exercised on the mind by the ever changing
surface of water, varied and rippled by motion and by wind, the beauty
of this river is mainly due to the delicate and varied foliage of the
willows and other trees which grow freely beside it, the luxuriant
growth of flowers along its banks--"of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies,
and long purples"--and the variety of blossoming water plants. Few
trees are more graceful than the willow when a slight breeze fans its
branches, mingling the "hoar leaves" with the grey green of the upper
side of the foliage; and many, before and since Shakespeare, have
preserved in the "inward eye" such a vision, reflected in "the glassy
stream" or more usually in the slightly ruffled surface below. The
level meadows, or sloping banks, which skirt the stream have a quiet
charm, and beautiful indeed are they in June, when thickly carpetted
with buttercups and ox-eye daisies. At almost every turn rise the blue
hills, completing the landscape and throwing the sunny meadows into
relief.

We can hardly realise to ourselves the protective value of the river
in old times without rowing both up and down the stream for a mile or