The Little River by Hilaire Belloc — Read

Men forget too easily how much the things they see around them in the landscapes of Britain are the work of men. Most of our trees were planted and carefully nurtured by man's hand. Our ploughs for countless centuries have made even the soil of the plains the lines of a great view; its groups of hedge and of building, of ridge and of road are very largely the creation of that curious and active breed which was set upon this dull round of the earth to enliven it -- which, alone of creatures, speaks and has foreknowledge of death and wonders concerning its origin and its end. It is man that has transformed the surface and the outline of the old countries, and even the rivers carry his handiwork.

There is a little river on my land which very singularly shows the historical truth of what I am here saying. As God made it, it was but a drain rambling through the marshy clay of tangled underwood, sluggishly feeling its way through the hollows in general weathers, scouring in a shapeless flood after the winter rains, dried up and stagnant in isolated pools in our hot summers. Then, no one will ever know how many centuries ago, man came, busy and curious, and doing with his hands. He took my little river; he began to use it, to make it, and to transform it, and to erect of it a human thing. He gave to it its ancient name, which is the ancient name for water, and which you will find scattered upon streams large and small from the Pyrenees up to the Northern Sea and from the West of Germany to the Atlantic. He called it the Adur; therefore pedants pretend that the name is new and not old, for pedants hate the fruitful humour of antiquity.