I know not if it be a natural hill, or one of those old Roman or British remains, plentiful enough hereabouts, but it was always called the Mythe.

Close below it, at the foot of a precipitous slope, ran the Severn, there broad and deep enough, gradually growing broader and deeper as it flowed on, through a wide plain of level country, towards the line of hills that bounded the horizon.

Severn looked beautiful here; neither grand nor striking, but certainly beautiful; a calm, gracious, generous river, bearing strength in its tide and plenty in its bosom, rolling on through the land slowly and surely, like a good man's life, and fertilising wherever it flows.
"Do you like Severn still, John ?" "I love it." I wondered if his thoughts had been anything like mine.
"What is that ?" he cried, suddenly, pointing to a new sight, which even I had not often seen on our river.

It was a mass of water, three or four feet high, which came surging along the midstream, upright as a wall.
"It is the eger; I've often seen it on Severn, where the swift seaward current meets the spring-tide.

Look what a crest of foam it has, like a wild boar's mane.