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THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR,

EVANGELICAL MISCELLANY.

JUNE, 1848.

THE RIVER MEDWAY.

(With a view of Teston Bridge.)

THE gentle scenery of the Medway is perhaps not unknown to some of our readers. Our engraving represents a very pleasing specimen of its general character, taken from the meadows a few miles above Maidstone. The graphic description which follows, copied from a local almanack, is from the pen of Mr. W. H. Bensted, a gentleman not unknown in the literary world, and especially in those departments of it which relate to geology.

"By following the first trickling stream of our river Medway, we are led through a country abounding in hills, all rising with undulating sides, looking like a succession of mighty billows petrified by the fiat of a Great Power which arrested their rolling and upheaved bosoms, and converted them into monuments of the tremendous force that lifted them from the depths of the earth. And thus we may see, from ruin and desolation, the foundations of verdant fields, and lovely vales were formed. The hill of Crowboro', in Sussex, which is 800 feet above the level of the sea, is the apex of this upheaved sand stone, and the force which shattered its base into the many hills

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around, swept away the waters which burst through the distant hills, and thus gave its geological character to the surrounding country.

"From these small vales and hills the waters at length get free, and with lessened speed, wind through a tract of rich land. Shaded by oaks and other timber trees, it abounds in sequestered nooks, and quiet deeps, broken by murmuring shallows, formed by the debris of its swollen. floods. Here the water lily sits blooming in purity, and the yellow cowslip scents the meadows. Here the flyteased kine seek the shades, and love to stand mid-leg in the cool and grateful water.

"But the art of man soon applies the accumulated stream to his uses, and enhances its value a thousand fold. By the aid of locks, a navigable river is formed, and save where the artificial obstruction causes the sweet music of falling waters, the surface appears a succession of unbroken levels, reflecting in quiet repose the surrounding embellishments of tree, shrub, and gently rising hill, thus doubling the many beauties bedecking its flowery course.

"The valley through which the comparatively small stream of the Medway now flows, was once filled to a great extent by water of much greater volume and speed, as the banks to a considerable distance consist of red clay and loose rounded fragments of stones, hardly converted into pebbles, yet sufficiently water-worn to prove the action of strong currents upon them, and much of this debris is far removed from the reach of the waters in the highest floods of the present era, and there is good reason to believe that the whole of the site of Maidstone was once covered by an inland lake, or formed the boundary of a river far exceeding the present. The brick earth is a fluviatile deposit, and contains minute fresh water shells, very similar to the shells existing in the waters below; but the frequent occurrence of the bones and teeth of animals now extinct in these

latitudes, shews how great have been the changes upon the surface of the earth in this immediate neighbourhoodchanges which the ancient waters of the Medway have had great influence in producing.

"Written history tells us that salt pans were once used at Maidstone for the collection of salt, by evaporation of the water, and sea monsters are recorded as taken near to the town. The extent of the river appears therefore to have diminished in our own times, yet, great as has been the contraction of its banks, we have no hesitation in affirming the opinion before advanced of the much greater extent of the waters once covering the banks of the present channel.

"At a short distance below Maidstone, the Medway assumes a new dignity; that of tidal influence, with oozy banks, rapid shallows, and reed-covered flats: and it is only for a short space of time that a full river is seen with its waters level, and sometimes overflowing its banks. We now see the solitary heron, wary and shy, one foot immersed in the rippling flood, the other half-drawn up, as eyeing with suspicion the approaching vessel, with a hurried plunge at a luckless fish, the huge-winged bird springs upward and slowly flags its weary flight to distant waters. The pied plover wheels and darts, uttering its wild and piercing cry; and the little restless oxbird pipes its note of alarm, scaring the kingfisher from its solitary perch.

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"The waters of the Medway contain the common fresh water fish of the country, and are occasionally visited by the finny tribe from the ocean. Of the former may enumerated-roach, dace, bleak, gudgeon, perch, pike, tench, bream, trout, carp, eels, chub; and of the latter may be first named, the delicate smelt, the chad-mullett, and queenly salmon. The royal fish, the sturgeon, also is occasionally a visitor, and the porpoise has ventured up as high as Snodland, a few miles only below Maidstone, in

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