Sketch of the River Tamar

In this sketch [fig. 247], which I have supposed to represent the course of any river, two dotted lines [a a] shew a second track, which the water seems to mark out during floods, and which leaves, occasionally, swamps or pools of water [b], in summer, after the river has subsided. This sort of channel may be observed at Endsleigh, in the shape of the ground on the left bank of the river. Sometimes a river forsakes its bed entirely, and takes one of these new channels: and I have frequently had occasion to assist, or retard, this operation of nature, by an interference of art; but, in the present case, I shall only revert to the difference which I have endeavoured to establish betwixt the channel and the bed of the river Tamar, so far as it relates to the best means of crossing it without the sort of bridge aptly described by Cowper,- "That, with its wearisome but needful length, Bestrides the wintry flood."