Book I Chapter 4: A Shortcut to Mushrooms

I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back. It isn't to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want [...] but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire.

~ Samwise Gamgee, Book I Chapter 4: A Shortcut to Mushrooms

On the morning of September 25, Frodo, Sam, and Pippin scrambled down from the heights of the Woody End into a tangled, thicket-filled valley cut by the Stock-brook. [1] They followed the course of the small river, staying on the north bank as it was too wide to cross, until it brought them out into the wide flat-lands of the Marish under overcast skies threatening rain. Here they found that the Stock-brook became wider and shallower, and they were able to wade across to a "wide space, rush-grown and treeless on the further side."

Frodo's plan had been to make straight toward the Bucklebury Ferry over the fields of the Marish, but as they traveled through the rainy morning, they inadvertently had begun to veer south. By the afternoon, the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared, and the hobbits found that indeed they had gone somewhat astray; in the distance "they could now glimpse the low hill of Bucklebury across the [Brandywine] River, but it was now to their left."

Correcting their course, they made for the river, and crossing a turnip field, came to a gate and a lane. Pippin recognized that they had wandered onto old Farmer Maggot's land, Bamfurlong. Although Frodo was reluctant to see Maggot (he had been caught stealing mushrooms as a youth), Pippin insisted that if Frodo was going to be living in Buckland he ought to make it up with the farmer.

They reached Maggot's farmhouse shortly before sundown. From the lane, they saw

the thatched roofs of a large house and farm buildings peeping out among the trees ahead. The Maggots, [...] and most of the inhabitants of the Marish, were house-dwellers; and his farm was stoutly built of brick and had a high wall all round it. [2]

After a satisfying supper with the farmer and his family, the three travelers accepted Maggot's offer to drive them to the ferry landing. By the time they reached the entrance to the ferry, marked by two tall white posts, the night had grown very foggy, and thus when a mounted figure loomed out of the mist ahead of them they feared the worst; but it turned out to be only Merry, who had come across the river on the ferry to look for Frodo.

Bidding farewell to Farmer Maggot, the hobbits boarded the ferry and pushed out into the Brandywine, heading for what they hoped was the safety of the far shore.

Notes

1. The traveler to the Marish who visits the Stock-brook will indeed note this steep, deep-cut valley. At its head is a waterfall, beyond which is the spring at Wellbridge where the three hobbits camped.
2. Farmer Maggot was known for his mushrooms, and the wet, marshy terrain of the Marish seems an ideal place for growing these hobbit-loved delicacies. Indeed, at Bamfurlong the traveler will find three mushroom-growing enclosures. Behind them is a small pond, mentioned by Merry at the Bucklebury Ferry when he asked if Farmer Maggot had found his friends in his duck-pond.