The Wash

“ Restricting ourselves to the vast plain west and south-west of the Wash, the silted-up estuary, rather than the river delta of the Welland, Nen, and Ouse, it may suffice to say that, while works were executed so far back as Roman times, the first great effort for the reclamation of the land dates from the seventeenth century. ”

“ An old Dorset labourer who helped with the removal of the pig-wash, and did other small jobs for successive tenants of mine at a furnished cottage on my land in Hampshire, invariably estimated the social status and resources of each new tenant by the consistency of the wash. When some rather extravagant occupiers were in possession, he reported them as, "Quite the right sort; their wash is real good, thick stuff." ”

“ The low lands adjoining the tidal reaches of the Trent and Humber, and part of those around the Wash have been raised above the natural level and enriched by the process of warping, which consists in letting the tide run over the land, and retaining it there a sufficient time to permit the deposit of the sand and mud held in solution by the waters. ”

“ The land rises from these second alluvial bottoms in the character of extensive slopes, which, when exhausted by careless cultivation, are inclined to wash, the washing exposing a sterile earth at the depth of three or four inches. ”

“ The wash of the hills and mountain-sides carries with it into the streams tons and tons of silt to fill up the dams and beds of the streams, as well as working irreparable injury to the comparatively thin soil covering the mountains. ”

“ As a rule these remains are found on and generally near the edge of a low mesa or hill overlooking some area of tillable land, but they are by no means confined to such locations, being often found directly on the bottom land, still more frequently on the banks of dry washes at the points where they emerge from the hills, and sometimes on little islands or raised areas within the wash where every spring they must have been threatened with overflow or perhaps even overflowed. ”

“ The washer-women were among the happiest of these happy souls, and nowhere were seen prettier pictures than they made, clustered round the fountains or tanks by the way, scrubbing, slapping, singing, and gossiping, as they washed or spread their linen on the green hedges and daisied grass in the bright spring weather. ”

“ What d'you say to a wash and that down in the sea—a plunge in the cove and then out and dry yourself? Why, it'd be half your life. Do you all the good in the world. Can't offer you fresh water; there's next to none down below here. ”

“ The air taken from above a dung-heap, as has been scientifically proved, is purer than the air taken from above Paris. In a given time, with the aid of progress, mechanisms become perfected, and as light increases, the sheet of water will be employed to purify the sheet of air; that is to say, to wash the sewer. The reader knows, that by “washing the sewer” we mean: the restitution of the filth to the earth; the return to the soil of dung and of manure to the fields. Through this simple act, the entire social community will experience a diminution of misery and an augmentation of health. ”

“ The Marsh country is far the most interesting, and it is clear both from the nature of the land and from the names of the places that the Wash used to come several miles further inland than it does now, running up between Algarkirk and Gosberton as far as Bicker, and penetrating up the Welland estuary to “Surfleet seas end,” and up the Moulton river to “Moulton seas end,” to Holbeach Clough, to Lutton Gowt, which is north of Long Sutton on the Leam, and to the Roman bank which is still visible at Fleet and again further east between Cross-Keys and Walpole. ”

“ Before we had washed them, they had been very, very dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable. After we had washed them—well, the river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. All the dirt contained in the river between Reading and Henley, we collected, during that wash, and worked it into our clothes. ”

“ Wash-day in the Seventeenth Century The women soak the clothes in hot water dipped from the nearby kettle heated over the open fire, beat out the grime with paddles, rinse the articles in the shallow stream and hang them out to dry. ”

“ It seemed as though the entire population had been seized with a desire to wash. Negro nurses were bringing children of all ages and colors down to the beach, and washing them; infants in arms, and those who could just go alone; while men were washing horses, asses, and mules. ”

“ Probably the abundant supply of water accounts for the universal washing, for, not content with washing everything inside a house, they wash the outside too, and even the bark of any trees which happen to lie within the zone of operations. ”

“ WASH, THE, a shallow bay of the North Sea, on the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coast of England. It is roughly square in shape, penetrating the land for 22m., and being 20 m. wide at the head and 12 at the mouth. ”

“ How they attain the snowy whiteness required by their unaffectionate masters by paddling their garments at the edge 12of any mud-hole or trickle of sewage is one of the mysteries of the East; yet not a roadside puddle or a hollowed rock but is turned into a wash-tub, and never is the visible result outwardly anything but spotless purity. In contrast to the dull plump-a-plump of washing paddles is this falsetto tone of ironing, prolonged far into every night. ”

“ But that island is one of the Washers, and is covered at high tide with ten foot of roarin’ green water. They was all pretty nigh drownded already; and while they clung to the rocks two more of the men were swept away by big waves. They didn’t guess it, but full tide was bound to get ’em all.
“Now, I was lookin’ out of this front window with my spyglass, same as I always did in a storm, when I was ashore. And I sighted through the rain somethin’ black out on the Washers. ‘Gorry! It’s men!’ I says to Anna. ‘There’s men out on the Washers! ”

“ In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will not—and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk—bathe in cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam ”

“ The friendship here made him enemies elsewhere. Such is human nature.
CHAPTER V. WASHEE—WASHEE.
Two days after the Widow had arrived, Washee-Washee, as the "boys" had named him, stood out on the steps of his cabin all the afternoon, looking up the Forks and down the Forks, and wondering what in the world was the reason the "boys" did not come creaking along and screeching their great gum boots together, with their extra shirt for wash wadded down in one of the spacious legs. ”

“ The Country of Dry Washes lies between the Cinoave on the south and the People of the Bow who possessed the Salmon Rivers, a great gray land cut across by deep gullies where the wild waters come down from the Wall-of-Shining-Rocks and worry the bone-white boulders. The People of the Dry Washes live meanly, and are meanly spoken of by the People of the Coast who drove them inland from the sea borders. ”

“ And, once in a while, when the weather is clear, When the work is all over, and even is near, ⁠They walk in the garden and gaze down below ⁠On the Valley of Gosh, where the young rivers go; Where the houses of Gosh seem so paltry and vain, Like a handful of pebbles strewn over the plain; ⁠Where tiny black forms crawl about in the vale, ⁠And stare at the mountain they fear them to scale. ”

“ We passed two or three villages landward and brown-black women and children came and stared at us and gesticulated, and once a man came out in a boat from a creek and hailed us in an unknown tongue; and so at last we came to a great open place, a broad lake rimmed with a desolation of mud and bleached refuse and dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound of any living thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of the deserted station and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued rubbish under a great rib of rock, the quap! ”

“ You are so pestered with these wasps, that you are compelled at length, in self-defence, to return them some saucy answer, which, being well accustomed to, they receive with the most philosophical indifference. Next you take a stroll along the wharves, where goods of every description are lying piled in immense heaps, and completely exposed to the destructive influence of the weather. The wharves are, if possible, more crowded than the streets, and if not particularly alive to your own safety, you stand every chance of taking a cold bath in the Yarra. ”

“ Incidentally I was admiring the swamp under the sunset. All black and blood red it was, in streaks—a beautiful sight. And up beyond, the land rose grey and hazy to the hills, and the sky behind them red, like a furnace mouth. And fifty yards behind the back of me was these blessed heathen—quite regardless of the tranquil air of things—plotting to cut off with the boat and leave me all alone with three days’ provisions and a canvas tent, and nothing to drink whatsoever, beyond a little keg of water. ”

“ How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river, there it runs and flows;—draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest glass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small. Labour is life! ”

“ Washing-day—A long march—Kiang and antelope—Benighted—The purchase of a goat—Ramifications of the Brahmaputra—A détour—Through a swamp—Mansing again lost and found. THE next was for us a great washing-day. The water of the stream was so pleasant and clear that we could not resist the temptation of having a regular cleaning up, washing first our clothing and spreading it to dry in the sun, and then cleansing our faces and bodies thoroughly with soap, a luxury unknown to us for ever so long. ”

“ They found a pleasant country of windmills, snuggling woods, villages with tall, clear spires, nests of embowered greenness upheld by hills against the sky, and they trampled it with shells into dust and mixed the dust with tire blood of men, till as far as eye could stretch it was a putrescent sea of mud. ”

“ A cross between a ditch and a river flows—or rather, lies—through the length of the town, and in this stagnant sewage the inhabitants not only attempt to swim when the whim comes upon them, but dip up water for cooking purposes. ”

“ For the first three hundred and sixty-five mornings after peace had been declared I was to be wakened by the sound of my bath being filled; water was to be so plentiful that I could tumble off to sleep again without even troubling to turn off the tap. In France one has to go dirty so often that the dream of being always clean seems as unrealisable as romance. Our drinking-water is frequently brought up to us at the risk of men's lives, carried through the mud in petrol-cans strapped on to packhorses. ”

“ Wherever the mud had lain thick on broad leaf or grass, it had, as I have said, cracked and fallen off, or been washed away by the heavy rains and dews, and our grounds and the country round were as beautiful as ever—more beautiful, I ought to say, for everything was fresher and greener, and where the swamps had been muddy and parched, and overhung with dry growth, all was bright and glorious, with the pools full up, and the water-ways overhung with mossy drapery, glittering and flashing back the sun’s rays wherever the sun pierced the trees. ”

“ A bluish or gray vapor is constantly rising from the canals, the rivers, the sea, and from the saturated soil: a universal haze forms a soft gauze over objects, even in the finest weather. Flying scuds, like thin, half-torn white drapery, float over the meadows night and morning. ”

“ The tide flows up the river many miles past the waterworks, carrying up with it the filth from the sewers. The supply of water was, to be sure, obtained when the tide was down, but as the banks of the river are clothed with sedges in many parts, and its bottom deep with mud, the water can never be free from sewage. ”

“ The house therefore must be dug in ground with a very loose surface, in fine dry sand, which will at once yield to the slightest effort on the mother’s part and, as it slides down, will close the door of its own accord, like a curtain which, when you thrust it aside with your hand, lets you pass through and then falls back again. There you have the series of actions as deduced by man’s reason and as practised by the Wasp’s sagacity. ”

“ The treetops, rising steeply into the bright air, keep tossing and trembling in the wind, but the stream itself is entirely still. Along the bank, where the great bleached trunks climb out of the water, there hangs the peculiar moist, earthy, pungent smell of a river that runs among woods. Every freshwater bather must know that smell. ”

“ The marble floor and whitewashed walls breathe freshness, the water in the stone reservoir is limpid and cold as that of a pool that gleams in rocky hollows. And, as the bather dips in his bucket, and send the frigid stream pouring over him, he washes away, not heat and dust alone, but weariness and vexatious thought in a purification of both body and soul, and he understands why all Eastern creeds have exalted the bath into a religious observance. ”

“ Particularly the people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off which the soft white coating had slid; their contours were as painful to see. And the mud—oh, God, the mud! It spread itself over every inch of the way; the roads were rivers of filth, which spattered and splashed; at the sides of the streets, the slush was being swept into beds. ”