London is a low river valley, sloping gently towards the Thames as it runs east towards the sea.
I remember reading (I forget where) about Oxford Street which, when you ride the bus, you’ll notice rises up, dips down, rises up, dips down, as you travel from west to east.
You’re north of the Thames, and every time you dip down you’re crossing an old tributary to the river, now buried.
How London’s Rivers Got Their Names (Londonist) – there’s a map of the old rivers here. And some photographs too… of tunnels, or metal pipes bridging over canals, the ancient stream encased.
It is poignant reading their names.
Tributary rivers to the Thames, from the north, west to east:
Stamford Brook
Counters Creek
Westbourne
Tyburn
Fleet
Walbrook
Hackney Brook
Lea
And from the south:
Beverley Brook
Wandle
Falcon
Effra
Neckinger
Earl’s Sluice
Peck
Ravensbourne
Quaggy
I recognise some of these names for when they’ve been used as neighbourhood names (I live near the head of the Peck in Peckham). Some I’ve found while walking. You follow an path between houses off a street and realise that you’re tracing a slow trickle of a street. Then you find a sign and it’s what is left of the Quaggy, or whatever.
Otherwise it’s like hearing magic spells spoken in an almost forgotten language. I don’t recognise the name but at the same time they are intensely familiar – I’ve heard them whispered from the rocks while I sleep.
The Thames is also known as River Gulu.
A Ugandan ‘explorer’ has joined the vaunted list of European adventurers such as Johannes Rebmann and Johann Ludwig Krapf who are credited with discovering Mt Kenya in 1849.
Milton Allimadi last week on April 23 [2019] made a nature discovery in London, UK and wasted no time in giving it a ‘proper’ name.
Cheeky Allimadi said he had discovered a river in the heart of the Queen’s Land and named it River Gulu. That river is the famous River Thames.
The Gulu runs into an area of the North Sea that until 8 thousand years ago was dry land: Doggerland (Wikipedia).
Some of it was low-lying, some at the north end was hills: The Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, remained an island until at least 5000 BCE.
If you have 54 minutes, listen to this episode of In Our Time about Doggerland.
(More maps and speculation here: If Doggerland Had Not Drowned.)
Doggerland was populated. Since the 1990s, undersea archeology has been learning about the area from millions of years ago to the comparatively more recent Mesolithic.
The Thames came into Doggerland in the south of the region, flowing west to east, joining up with another great European river, the Rhine, then turning south and joining what is now the English Channel but then a giant estuary betwixt Surrey and Normandy flowing into the Atlantic.
From In Our Time the impression I get is that Doggerland was the economic centre of Northern Europe. I have a picture of rich, fertile land; green rolling hills and forests and lakes and rivers, a wealthy population – sophisticated, creative, vibrant. A hunter-gatherer equivalent of New York, Lagos, London, Atlantis, drawing in the bright-eyed and ambitious. Sunken these past thousands of years. And we’re gazing inward now from the shore at the grey water which holds its own counsel regarding the gone world beneath, living out our lives on this desolate, impoverished periphery of a heart now gone.
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‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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London is a low river valley, sloping gently towards the Thames as it runs east towards the sea.
I remember reading (I forget where) about Oxford Street which, when you ride the bus, you’ll notice rises up, dips down, rises up, dips down, as you travel from west to east.
You’re north of the Thames, and every time you dip down you’re crossing an old tributary to the river, now buried.
How London’s Rivers Got Their Names (Londonist) – there’s a map of the old rivers here. And some photographs too… of tunnels, or metal pipes bridging over canals, the ancient stream encased.
It is poignant reading their names.
Tributary rivers to the Thames, from the north, west to east:
And from the south:
I recognise some of these names for when they’ve been used as neighbourhood names (I live near the head of the Peck in Peckham). Some I’ve found while walking. You follow an path between houses off a street and realise that you’re tracing a slow trickle of a street. Then you find a sign and it’s what is left of the Quaggy, or whatever.
Otherwise it’s like hearing magic spells spoken in an almost forgotten language. I don’t recognise the name but at the same time they are intensely familiar – I’ve heard them whispered from the rocks while I sleep.
The Thames is also known as River Gulu.
The Gulu runs into an area of the North Sea that until 8 thousand years ago was dry land: Doggerland (Wikipedia).
Some of it was low-lying, some at the north end was hills:
If you have 54 minutes, listen to this episode of In Our Time about Doggerland.
(More maps and speculation here: If Doggerland Had Not Drowned.)
Doggerland was populated. Since the 1990s, undersea archeology has been learning about the area from millions of years ago to the comparatively more recent Mesolithic.
The Thames came into Doggerland in the south of the region, flowing west to east, joining up with another great European river, the Rhine, then turning south and joining what is now the English Channel but then a giant estuary betwixt Surrey and Normandy flowing into the Atlantic.
From In Our Time the impression I get is that Doggerland was the economic centre of Northern Europe. I have a picture of rich, fertile land; green rolling hills and forests and lakes and rivers, a wealthy population – sophisticated, creative, vibrant. A hunter-gatherer equivalent of New York, Lagos, London, Atlantis, drawing in the bright-eyed and ambitious. Sunken these past thousands of years. And we’re gazing inward now from the shore at the grey water which holds its own counsel regarding the gone world beneath, living out our lives on this desolate, impoverished periphery of a heart now gone.