WINTRY WATERS. T HOSE who care to forego the attractions of
the dead and frozen surface of the London lakes, will find a strange contrast in the scene presented by the still living and moving surface of the London river. The tidal Thames has for the moment changed its nature. It is no longer the busiest of London highways, but a sub-arctic stream, deserted by man, whose place is taken by flights of wandering sea-fowl, and a weltering drift of ice. Day and night the ice-floes course up and down with the tide, joining and parting, touching and receding, eddying and swirling, always moving and ever in- creasing with a ceaseless sound of lapping water and whisper. ing, shivering ice ; while over the surface the sea-gulls flit in hundreds, sailing out of the fog and mist of London, skim- ming over the crowded bridges, or floating midway between the parapet and the stream. These children of the frost are fast becoming the pets of the river-side population, and bread cast from the bridges is the signal for a rush of white wings, and a dainty dipping of feet into the water as the birds gather up the food, fearful, like Kingsley's petrels, that the ice should nip their toes. Should a larger portion than common alight on an ice-floe, the birds settle on the floating mass, with wings beating backwards like white butterflies, and guests, feast, and table alike travel up the river with the tide.
The scene beneath the bridges is, perhaps, to be equalled in London alone. But it serves to remind us that it is not on the frozen pools, but upon the still open and running streams that the spell of the frost exerts its most pleasing powers. There it adds as much new life and novel form as on the still waters it destroys. It is hard to believe that the same powers have been at work on both. On the ponds and meres and slow streams the frost lays its hand and seals them like a tomb. As the ice-lips meet on the frozen bank, and nip the rushes fast, every creature that lived upon the surface is shut out and exiled. The moorhens and dabchicks are frozen into the ice, or leave for the running streams and ditches ; the water-rats desert the banks, the wild-ducks have long gone, and only the tiny wren creeps among the sedges, or shuffles miserably among the tall bulrush stems. Even the fish are fast frozen into the ice, in which their bright sides shine like the golden carp on a tray of Chinese lac. Motion has ceased, and, with motion, sound, except that which Sir Bedivere heard by the frozen lake, " among the mountains by the winter sea," the whispering of-- "The many-knotted water-flags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge."
But there are hundreds of streams in the South of England which no power of frost can either freeze or stay ; and it may be doubted whether even the glories of spring buds, or the richest growth of summer by their banks, can match the beauty of these wintry waters in a strong and lasting frost. Take, for instance, the lower reaches of the Itchen, one of the most beautiful of Hampshire streams, with clear, swift, translucent waters springing warm and bright from the deep chalk that lies beneath the frozen downs. The river is so mild and full, that it runs like a vein of warm life through the cold body of the hills. Its water-meadows are still green, though ribbed across with multitudinous channels of white and crackling ice; and to them crowd plovers and redwings, snipe and water-hens, seagulls, field-fares and missel-thrushes, pipits and larks, and all the soft-billed birds in search of food. On and around the stream itself there is more life than at any time since the swallows left and the gnats died. That, at least, was the impression left on the writer's mind, when standing on one of the main bridges over the river below St. Cross, in the bright sunlight of New Year's Day. Though the banks were frozen like iron, not a particle of ice appeared on the broad surface of the river. Two of the scarce eared-grebes were fishing and diving some fifty yards above the bridge, not altogether without fear of man, but apparently confident in their powers of concealment and escape. Coots and water- hens were feeding beneath the banks, or swimming, and returning from the sides to an osier-covered island in the centre. Exquisite grey wagtails, with canary-coloured breasts, and ashen and black backs, flirted their tails in the shallows or on the coping-stones which had fallen into the stream.. But the river itself was even more in contrast to its setting than the contentment of the river-birds to the pinched misery of the inhabitants of the garden or the fields. From bank to bank, and from its surface to its bed, the waters showed a wealth and richness of colour, rendered all the more striking by the cold and wintry monotony of the fringe of downs on either side. As it winds between the frozen hills, the bed of the Hellen is like a summer-garden set in an ice-house. However great the depth—and an 8-ft. rod would scarcely reach the bottom in mid-stream—every stone and every water- plant is to be seen as clearly as though it lay above the sur- face. For in midwinter this water-garden is in full growth. Exquisitely cut leaves like acanthus wave beneath the surface, tiny pea-like plants trail in the eddies, and masses of brilliant green feathery weed, like the train of a peacock's tail, stream out, in constant undulating motion, just beneath the surface. In other places the scour of the river has washed the bed bare, and the tiny globules of grey chalk may be seen gently rolling onward as the slow friction of the water detaches them from their bed. The low, bright sunbeams were still upon the water when, slowly and almost insensibly, from beneath the dark arches of the bridge, there glided out two mighty fish,— not the bright, sparkling troutlets of West Country streams, arrow-like and vivacious, or the brown and lusty denizens of Highland rivers, but the solemn and sagacious monsters which only such chosen waters as those of the Hamp- shire chalk-streams breed, fishes which would have done credit to the table of such prelates as William of Wyke- ham, trout that are known and familiar to every in- habitant, honoured and envied while they live, and destined, when caught at last, to be enshrined in glass coffins, with inscriptions, like embalmed bishops. Six pounds apiece was the least weight which we could assign to the pair as they slowly forged up stream and lay side by side, the tops of their broad tails curling, and their fat lips moving, looking from above like two gigantic spotted salamanders among the waving fronds of weed.
Clearly, in this water-world, the great change wrought on land by frost was still unfelt. The cold has no power beyond its surface; plants and fishes were unaffected. Yet on the bank, even at midday, the thermometer marked fifteen degrees below freezing-point, and at night a cold approaching that of Canada. The reason is not far to seek. The whole body of the river had maintained its temperature but little below that at which it issues from the chalk. Both at the surface and at the bottom, the quickly flowing water had a temperature of thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit; in the mill-race it was half a degree warmer ; and only where very shallow and still, did it fall as low as thirty-five and a half degrees. It is therefore possible for a chalk stream to maintain its heat after a week of one of the severest frosts on record, at some fifteen degrees above the midday temperature of the land, and four above freezing-point. No wonder that the birds seek its genial neighbourhood, and its own particular inhabitants feel neither discomfort nor dismay. We were curious to visit the famous salmon-pool at Swathling, some few miles lower down the river, and mark the effects of frost in a part where the river-waters are distributed in every form, from still frozen lakes and water-meadow channels to the mill-race, and the deep, swirling pool, in which a thirty-pound salmon may be caught, not two hours by rail from London. The Wood Mill pool is the crowing glory of the river. Two streams, one from the main mill-head, another from a tributary, rush into a wide horse-shoe basin faced with cam-shedding and concrete, where the waters whirl and spin in an ever- lasting eddy. Ice in powder, ice in blocks, and ice in sheets pouring in from the mill-head, followed the spin of the waters round, and showed the force of each minor whirlpool, clinking and shivering against the concrete walls, except where the long, thick strands of moss deadened its impact. At the back of the pool, a shallow beck was running below a covering of thin sheets made up of ice-stars, with upturned edges fringed with crystal spikes, shifting and straining with uneasy motion. Higher up, the runnel was fringed with ice so formed as to lie just above the surface; and we fancied that we could detect a regular pulse or beat in the stream, which now brought the water level with the ice-fringe, and sent the flattened bubbles coursing below it, now left it dry and white, and clear of the surface. But the strangest freak played by the frost around and above the salmon-pool, was the forma- tion of ground.ice —or "anchor ice," as it is sometimes called —deep below the unfrozen surface of the water.
The hanging mosses, at a depth of from three to four feet, were covered with thick and clinging ice; and in the deep but rapid waters at the inrush by the mill-head, rocks and stones far beneath were seen coated and crusted with a semi-opaque and rounded glaze of crystals. How it happens that ice, which should float on the surface, forms and remains below waters which are themselves apparently too warm to freeze, we are not prepared to explain. But in this case we forebore to test the stream, lest our operations with a thermometer at the end of a string should be mistaken for some new form of fish- poacbing,—a view clearly taken by one observer of our ex- periments at Winchester.
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