THAMES, a celebrated river of England, being the largest in the island. The sources of this river are four rivulets, that rise in different parts of Cotswold hill in Gloucestershire, viz. the Lech, the Churne, and the Isis; these having touched Wiltshire, and joined their waters in one channel a little below Lechlade, a town on the borders of Oxfordshire, form a deep and copious stream, which there becomes navigable for very large barges, and is constantly, after it leaves this place, whatever poetical writers may pretend, called the Thames. Thence it proceeds into Oxfordshire; and having visited the city of Oxford, continues to divide that county from Berkshire; rolling by Abingdon, Wallingford, Reading, Henley, Maidenhead, Windsor,
Thamyris. Windsor, and so to Staines, becoming there the boundary of the two counties of Middlesex and Surrey; and having passed by Chertsey and Kingston in the latter, and Brentford in the former, it comes to the capital of the British monarchy, London; and having traversed that imperial city, and her sister city of Westminster, pursues its course towards the sea: in its future progress it divides Essex from Kent, visiting in its passage Deptford, Greenwich, Woolwich, Grays, and Gravesend: at length it opens into the sea with a mouth between the Naze and the North Foreland, near sixty miles broad. In its passage it receives no fewer than six considerable rivers that are not navigable, and eleven that are, which affords a vast communication within land; its course has been computed about 140 miles, of which it is navigable near 100 from its mouth. In what is called the Pool, and which is properly the port of London, though, in the custom-house language, that is extended to the whole river below London bridge, has been known to lie upwards of 1000 ships commodiously; and it is universally allowed, that in no haven in Europe vessels lie more safely, take in their loadings with greater ease, or are delivered with superior dexterity and dispatch; so that an immense commerce is carried on with such order and facility as most astonishes those to whom it is most thoroughly known and by whom it is best understood.