 In "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, the serenity of the contemporary Thames is contrasted with the savagery of the Congo River, and with the wilderness of the Thames as it would have appeared to a Roman soldier posted to Britannia two thousand years before.Conrad also gives a description of the approach to London from the Thames Estuary in his essays "" (1906).Upriver, Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" uses a large riverside mansion on the Thames as one of its key settings.