CHAPTER XI
GREAT AMBITIONS CHEERFULLY RELINQUISHED. HARLESTON TO CROMER VIÂ BUNGAY, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, GREAT YARMOUTH, CAISTER-BY-YARMOUTH, AND NORWICH
Harleston—The "Magpie"—Typical East Anglian village—Flixton Park—Bungay—Mr. Rider Haggard as vates sacer—Antiquities of Bungay—Spa projected in eighteenth century—The vineyard—Derivations of Bungay—Chateaubriand at Bungay—A thatched church?—Beccles from the west—A vision—Towards Lowestoft—Glance at Oulton Broad—Lowestoft fails to please—Towards Yarmouth—Ambitious plans—Moonlight drive projected—Yarmouth pleases—Honest sea-faring industry—An acrostic and some ancient verse—Caister-by-Yarmouth—Sir John Falstolf—A precocious fifteenth-century Etonian—To Norwich and onwards—A moonlight drive—A sudden check—Grit in the petrol tank—An insoluble problem at night—Cheerful philosophy—To Cromer for refuge—The Links Hotel—Poppyland—Cromer no place for strangers—The haunt of a famous circle—Quotation from the Gurneys of Earlham—Seaside places are one-sided motoring centres—Scenery to westward strange rather than charming—A start in the morning—The grit still present—Labour of locating and removing—A stroll and survey of the country—Commonplace Runton—A taste of petrol—I break into jingle—Moral.
The "Magpie" at Harleston—you can hardly miss it, for the sign hangs well out—entertained us quite abundantly, if humbly, and it was agreed on all hands that this inconsiderable village of Norfolk responded better to a surprise visit than had the town of Hitchin. Harleston is not in itself an attractive village. Indeed candour compels the admission that few East Anglian villages can fairly be described as attractive by comparison with those of the southern Midlands. Berks, Bucks, Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire certainly can each show half a dozen delightful villages where East Anglia can show but one. In them the pretty village is normal, the plain hamlet exceptional; in East Anglia the contrary rule prevails. The typical East Anglian village, or collection of houses somewhere between a town and a village in point of size, is a long and double line of unpretentious dwellings running along either side of a main road for a mile or more. Harleston is just such a gathering of houses and little shops, and there are dozens of Harlestons under other names scattered about East Anglia. This may be the reason why some of the best of gossiping writers about this part of the country, Dr. Jessopp and Mr. Rider Haggard for example (and, may I add, the little-known Miss Wilson, author of the Friends of Yesterday, who is now working with her brother in the Orange River Colony?), tell us more of the ways of the people, and of the conditions of their lives, than they do of the aspects of the hamlets. When they talk to us of places it is, as a rule, either of great houses, or of towns, such as Bungay, possessed of a curious history.
From Harleston, then, we started nothing loth, having accomplished so far only some thirty miles in 3-1/2 hours, of which, however, only 1-1/2 had been spent in travelling. Plans we gave up for a bad job; we determined simply to go on as long as we could and, if trouble came, to grin and bear it. The first scene noted after Harleston was Flixton Park, a very noble deer park over which the eye can range from the car, for it is divided from the road only by thin but very high iron railings. The Hall was built by Sir Nicholas de Tasburgh in the time of bluff King Hal, and the church tower is said to be Saxon. But we were all for travel. Such was the mood in which we passed through Bungay, leaving Ditchingham a mile or two to the left. The reader, it is hoped, will not travel through Bungay quite so quickly, will not, be it hoped also, have suffered quite so many punctures and bursts, and will be in the mood to hear something of it and of Ditchingham. This district has its vates sacer in Mr. Rider Haggard, whose book, A Farmer's Year (Longmans, 1899), is, in its rare passages of topography and of old-time talk, exquisitely attractive to man or woman of taste. It appeals also, in its agricultural record, with infinite sadness and with much force to all who have been brought face to face with the realities of life in rural England. Let there be no shiver of apprehension here. There is no intention of raising here that question of the unnatural war between the cities and the country as part of the propaganda relating to which this book was written. Mr. Haggard, indeed, avows openly his desire to convert as many persons as possible to his way of thinking, and this, to put it shortly, is that to permit the cities to starve out rural England is a hideously mistaken policy. The subject is fertile; but it is not for me. What is of enthralling interest to all is that in Mr. Rider Haggard we have a gentleman of estate who, after much travel, after serving his country in diplomacy and in other ways in South Africa, and after being called to the Bar (which after all happens to a good many men without making much difference to them), retired to farm his own acres of heavy land, and some others in Norfolk, during the very worst period of agricultural depression. He had done, and he did, much more than this. When he settled down at Ditchingham to farm, and to do his duty as a country gentleman, he had written a round score of books of which the graphic power was, and is, universally admitted. Men have laughed at the impossibilities of She and of King Solomon's Mines, but very few have laid them down unfinished; they have spoiled many a hundred beauty sleeps; their absorbing interest and their skill of words is beyond question. All that power of words Mr. Haggard devoted to his propaganda and, perhaps, by way of make-weight for passages on "blown" cattle, bush drains, and the preparation of land for barley—things which interest me deeply, but are not alluring to those not to the manner born—he goes off from time to time into talk about places. It is talk which cannot be improved upon, certainly not by me.
First Mr. Haggard quotes a curious tract of 1738 by one John King, an apothecary of Bungay, and a letter by way of appendix, saying: "Those lovely hills which include the flowery Plain are variegated with all that can ravish the astonish'd Sight; they arise from the winding Mazes of the River Waveney, enrich'd with the utmost variety the watr'y Element is capable of producing. Upon the Neck of this Peninsula the Castle and Town of Bungay (now startled at its approaching Grandeur) is situated on a pleasing Ascent to view the Pride of Nature on the other Side, which the Goddesses have chose for their earthly Paradise, where the Sun at its first Appearance makes a kindly Visit to a steep and fertile Vineyard, richly stored with the choicest Plants from Burgundy, Champaigne, Provence and whatever the East can furnish us with. Near the Bottom of this is placed the Grotto or Bath itself, beautified on one side with Oziers, Groves and Meadows, on the other with Gardens, Fruits, shady Walks and all the Decorations of a rural Innocence.
"The Building is designedly plain and neat, because the least attempt of artful Magnificence would by alluring the Eyes of Strangers, deprive them of those profuse Pleasures which Nature has already provided.
"As to the Bathing there is a Mixture of all that England, Paris or Rome could ever boast of; no one's refused a kind Reception, Honour and Generosity reign throughout the whole, the Trophies of the Poor invite the Rich, and their more dazzling Assemblies compel the Former."
Since the spring was found by Mr. King, the apothecary, on his own land, the tract, although Mr. Haggard also suggests a more romantic alternative, was probably merely an advertisement. Mr. Haggard, who states that the spring still exists and is peculiarly delicious to drink (in which quality it is unlike any other medicinal water known to me), says also, "Was this vineyard, furnished with the fruits of the 'East,' an effort of the imagination suggested by the original name of the place (now oddly enough superseded by a new name taken from the tradition of Mr. King's bath), or did it, as the picture suggests, really exist in the year 1738? Quien sabe? as they say in Mexico. There have, in my time, been several old men in Ditchingham whose grandfathers may have been living in 1738, yet I never heard from them any tale of a vineyard on the Bath Hills. But this proves nothing."
Of course it proves nothing. Rural tradition commemorates the oddest things and omits the oddest things. It is past all calculation. The picture, a very quaint print, may suggest the vines. I should be sorry to say for certain to which part of it Mr. Haggard refers; it suggests swans and a wherry on the Waveney, a sportsman shooting at four-footed game, presumably stags (or perhaps it is a shepherd with a crook), a coach-and-four, and, I think, a quintain in the foreground; but Mr. Haggard says, "Pray observe the double gallows," as to which I say that there are riders close by, one of whom looks as if he had just run a course, and that the artist, if he desired to suggest double gallows, would probably have supplied them with their appropriate pendants. A little earlier Mr. Haggard cites clear evidence that a vineyard existed in Bungay in the time of the Bigods, who dominated Bungay, and continues: "Often have I wondered what kind of wine they made at this vineyard and who was bold enough to drink it; but since I have heard that some enterprising person has taken to the cultivation of the grape in Wales with such success that—so says the wondrous tale—he sells his home-made champagne at 84s. the dozen, it has occurred to me that the Bigods knew more than we imagine about the possibilities of viticulture in England. Or it may chance that the climate was more genial in those days, although this is very doubtful."
Is Mr. Haggard poking fun, or is it possible that he does not know the facts? The "enterprising person in Wales" was the late Marquess of Bute. The vineyard was, and is, at Castell Coch in South Wales, and, although the price was hardly a market price, and the position of the grower was not without its influence upon it, the wine was, and I expect still is, sound wine. Grapes good enough to make fair wine can be grown in the open in England, were grown, certainly until quite recently, in Swan Walk, Chelsea, and doubtless would grow, quite well, on a slope in Southern Norfolk, having such an aspect as the good Mr. King described. There is no reason to assume a deteriorated climate, no reason to doubt (in the absence of evidence to the contrary in individual cases) that all the "vineyards" to be found in Southern England, for the most part, as at Abingdon, in the vicinity of bygone abbeys, once grew grapes good enough to be trodden in the wine-press. This, however, is not to say that vine-growing, albeit possible, would be profitable in England to-day. It is a great deal cheaper and easier to grow rhubarb, and the wits who are sarcastic at the expense of "gooseberry champagne" would be a great deal nearer to the mark if they followed to their ultimate destination some of the huge crops of rhubarb grown a little further north than East Anglia.
"Bungay has bygone glories of its own. Its name has been supposed to be derived from Bon Gué or Good Ford, but as the town was called Bungay before ever a Norman set foot in England, this interpretation will not hold. More probable is that suggested to me by the Rev. J. Denny Gedge, that the origin of the name may be Bourne-gay or Boundary Ford. Or the prefix 'Bun' may, as he hazards, have been translated from 'placenta,' 'a sacred cake,' indicating, perhaps—but this is my suggestion—that in old times Bungay was the town that pre-eminently 'took the cake.' Mayhap, for in philology anything might chance; but if so, alas! it takes it no longer." For my part, if the reason against Bon Gué be conclusive, it seems to me equally conclusive against Bun (placenta) Gué; and Bun Gué is not merely an anachronism, but very far-fetched at that. If we are to come to funning, the derivation "Bung-ay" may be timidly submitted. "Ay" is just a termination, Danish if you will, as in Billericay, perhaps, and it seems from Mr. Haggard's own showing that "Mr. Bung the Brewer" rules in Bungay. He records (p. 110) that on a certain day in February, 1898, the last two "free houses" in the town were put up to auction, and he records elsewhere that there is a liquor-shop for every hundred of the population.
Bungay Castle, the castle of the Bigods, is quite gone; so is the Benedictine nunnery; so is the industry of giving copper sheathing to the bottoms of ships. But the Bath Hills are still there, and behind them, protected by barbed wire and the natural kindness of Mr. Haggard's heart, is a sanctuary for all wild things. He records also that Chateaubriand, a refugee from the Terror, drifted down to Bungay, where he taught French, was known as M. Shatterbrain, and made love to a sentimental young lady, to whose mother, when she took pity on him and offered to look over his poverty, he was compelled to reply, "Hélas! Madame, je suis désolé; mais je suis marié." In fact, Bungay is really a very interesting place to linger at in the spirit; but here we must go on to Barsham and Beccles, as, in the flesh, we did immediately and agreeably.
Spirits rose as we drew near to Beccles, noting on the way a curiously attractive church and parsonage on the left, and that, seen by the light of a strong sun sinking low in the west, the church seemed to have a thatched roof. That light, however, is exceeding deceptive. So, since thatched churches are unusual, to say the least of it, and I can find no allusion to thatched churches in Norfolk, I am content to believe this was a case of optical illusion. The two structures were of a rare charm in that golden glow, notwithstanding, and the probability is that they were at Barsham. Is this word "probability" too audacious? At least, it is candid and prudent. Motorists know full well that too many halts—and goodness knows we had stopped often enough that day—are a weariness of the flesh; that it is not practicable to consult a large scale map en voyage; that one must often be contented to think and to say, "That is a sweetly pretty place" (or a fine hall, or a striking church, as the case may be); "I wonder what it is," and to try to locate it afterwards. One must often be in the position of a visitor to a garden of roses, yet uncertain, rosarian although he may be, as to the exact name of this or that rose. It does not really matter. The rose is beautiful. The fatal error is to give it a name when one is in doubt. In the same way it would be suicidal to say that this pretty place was Barsham, because it may not have been, though Barsham is quite close in any case; and it has a round tower to its church, which seems to be imprinted on my memory in this instance. If Barsham it was, then the parsonage is a rectory, and it was the birthplace of Nelson's mother, Caroline Suckling, a daughter of a very famous Norfolk House.
Now the wide valley of the Waveney came again into full view on the left, a glorious prospect, and Beccles faced us. Approached from the westward on a glorious April afternoon, Beccles produced an impression absolutely and completely opposite to that which it left in January when we came to it from the southward in dull and chilly air. Shall an apology be tendered for the first mention of Beccles in these pages? Shall it be made needless by ruthless excision? Of a surety neither is the right course to take. The first impression was faithful, and it has been found impossible to convince those who shared it that a good word can be said truthfully for Beccles. The second is faithful also, and both are true. Fortunately it is possible to quote the opinion and the words of one who is a master of descriptive English. First of the view from the Bungay vineyard Mr. Rider Haggard says: "I have travelled a great way about the world in my time and studied much scenery, but I do not remember anything more quietly and consistently beautiful than this view over Bungay Common seen from the Earl's vineyard, or, indeed, from any point of vantage on its encircling hills. For the most part of the year the plain below is golden with gorse, but it is not on this alone that the sight depends for beauty, or on the green of the meadows and the winding river edged with lush marshes that in spring are spotted with yellow marigolds and purple with myriads of cuckoo flowers. They all contribute to it, as do the grazing cattle, the gabled distant roofs, and the church spires, but I think that the prospect owes its peculiar charm to the constant changes of light which sweep across its depths. At every season of the year, at every hour of the day, it is beautiful, but always with a different beauty. Of that view I do not think that any lover of Nature could tire, because it is never quite the same."
Mr. Haggard, therefore, is clearly not afraid to match Norfolk scenery against any of the restful kind on the face of the globe; but we see soon that even this view of Bungay Common and Waveney is not to his mind the best. "Had the builders of this house where I write (Ditchingham House), for instance, chosen to place it four hundred yards further back, as they might very easily have done, it would have commanded what I believe to be the finest view in Norfolk, since from that spot the eye travels not only over the expanse of Bungay Common and its opposing slopes, but down the valley of the Waveney to Beccles town and tower. But it would seem that in the time of the Georges the people who troubled their heads about beautiful prospects were not many. The country was lonely then, and the neighbourhood of the Norwich road had more attractions than any view. Along that road passed the coaches, bringing a breath of the outer world into the quiet village, and the last news of the wars; also, did any member of the household propose to travel by them, it was easy for the men-servants to wheel his luggage in a barrow to the gate."
For my own part I deprecate comparisons of scenery, for which there appears to be no true basis, believing that the real secret of its enjoyment is to possess a catholic taste and a receptive mind in these matters. It is enough to say, and to feel, that the scenery of these parts is exceeding lovely, that the distant view of Beccles and its church, on that proud brow dominating the placid plain of marsh and meadow and river is, in a single word, divine, and that Mr. Haggard has analysed the charms of all this landscape with Pre-Raphaelite accuracy. To admire, to be compelled to understand why one admires, are pleasant and profitable. To institute comparisons is unsatisfying and unnecessary.
From Beccles to Lowestoft is any easy run which we have taken before. This time we saw the eastern end of Oulton Broad more plainly than the last. It seemed tripper-haunted and bar-tainted, and it had the effect of rather setting us against the Broads. The preliminary prejudice was strengthened somewhat by reference to Mr. Walter Rye. "It is painful for one who has known and loved the Broads as long as I have, in common honesty, to say that their charms have been grossly exaggerated of late. To read some of the word-painting about them you would think that you had only to leave Yarmouth and sail up the North River to get at once into a paradise of ferns, flowers and fish, where you could not fail to fill your basket or bag; or to see, at all events, myriads of wild birds of the rarest sorts in the air, shoals of fishes in the water, and any quantity of rare water plants on the bank. The first few miles will effectually disillusionize any stranger who has been taking in the Swiss Family Robinson sort of rubbish referred to above, for he will be disgusted with the very muddy flint walls of a tediously winding river dragging itself along through a flat uninteresting marshy country, varied only by drainage mills in various stages of dilapidation, and by telegraph poles. Even when at last Yarmouth Church finally disappears, after having come into view about a dozen times through the windings, and the river wall with its rats and dirt changes into the regular river scenery, he will see nothing particularly pretty." Now Mr. Rye is a Norfolk man pur sang. The name has been known in East Anglia since Eudo de Rye came over with the Conqueror—he was the same Eudo Dapifer, or high steward, whom we met at Colchester. Mr. Rye has Norfolk lore and antiquities at his fingers' ends; he is most clearly and unquestionably a true lover of his native county. This douche of cold water coming so unexpectedly from him, quenched effectually for the moment the flickering flame of a desire to stretch a point by including a run or two on the Broads in a motor-boat among the little adventures legitimately within the scope of my title. But the flame of desire rose again later, especially when the car hove in sight of a better Broad than at Oulton, and with the view of that sheet of water came the thought that, luckily, the tastes of men are not identical—else every pleasure would be so crowded as to be deprived of most of its joy, and that many men have waxed exceeding rapturous over the very Broads of which Mr. Rye has not a good word to say. So later a little—not so much as I could wish—is said about this strange and peculiar district.
Now we were in Lowestoft a second time, in beautiful weather too, and we went slowly up all sorts of streets and a parade, and even on to some sand hills in order to see Lowestoft from a good many points of view. The result, it must be confessed, was the very opposite to a desire to revisit Lowestoft, especially South Lowestoft. True it was before the season, and Lowestoft, which lives on herrings and holiday-keepers, exporting the first and importing the second, doubtless presents a scene more gay when the esplanade is crowded with girls in pretty frocks and men in clean flannels, when the really splendid sands are thronged with happy children. Still most of the houses are so painfully modern and, so to speak, raw, most of them also built for so manifest a purpose that the legends "Furnished Lodgings," or "Apartments," or "Board and Residence," are surely superfluous, that it fails to attract a person of only moderately fastidious taste.
There were scores of houses there recalling my one and only experience of a boarding-house. In each of these houses I could conjure up the replica of that terrible evening meal of many years ago; could see the housewife, obese but anxious, cringing to the guests, but with the eye of a dragon for the delinquencies of the harassed handmaid; the daughters, in crushed white frocks and cheap bangles, pertly and persistently garrulous; the all too affable and white-bearded father of the family, assuming the airs of an open-handed host when all the time his wife was wondering secretly whether the flabby fish would "go round," and I, equally secretly, was trying to guess whether the white-bearded old loafer with the generous air, but the niggardly carving-knife, had ever tried to do any honest work in his life.
Leaving Lowestoft for Yarmouth by the same road as before, we felt a sense of relief and with it a glorious consciousness of well-being. An hour or two of daylight still remained; we had been so long without stopping, otherwise than by our own will, that we felt as if we could go on for ever; the sky was clear, and we had not had enough, nor half enough, of travelling. A moon was due early that evening. It was even visible in the sky already, giving faint white promise of silvern glory to come. We had not ordered beds for the night anywhere. How would it be to skip afternoon tea, push on through Yarmouth for Norwich, dine there at the "Maid's Head," and consult our inclination as to proceeding by moonlight, perhaps to Wells, perhaps even to Lynn? It would, indeed, be very well, and in this mood we glided easily on to Yarmouth. This ancient capital of the herring-trade pleased us more, as we poked our noses and the bonnet of our car into various byways, than we had been pleased at Lowestoft. (These "we's," by the way, represent no editorial assumption, no false modesty about speaking in the first person, but simply a fourfold consensus of opinion.) Yarmouth pleased the more because it was and is manifestly a port. The smell of the herring is there, of course; the serried rows of steam-trawlers along the quay suggest that this herring fishery is a long way from being so picturesque a business as it was. Still Yarmouth strikes one as an honest, workaday place doing a good trade, and not at all ashamed of it. Yarmouth combined with "Leistocke"—Lowestoft probably—to contribute "1 shippe and one pinnace" to the fleet which defeated the Armada; and surely there is something of an Elizabethan ring about an early acrostic of unknown date, addressed by somebody—the Nymph of Yarmouth, perhaps—to its people:
Y-ou, the inhabitants of Mee, [faire towne]
A-dorned with riches both from sea and land,
R-eason you have on knees for to fall downe
M-agnifying God, for all comes from his hand,
O-ver you all his works and mercies are,
U-nto his children doth he give to eate
T-he fyshe in sea, whatever the land doth beare,
H-ym therefore do yee praise as is right meete.
This is culled from the invaluable Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries, as is the following string of verses by Taylor, "the Water Poet"—the description is given just shortly like this, as one might say "Shakespere, the dramatist"—who visited the town in 1622 and found it:
A towne well fortifide
Well-governed, with all nature's wants supplied;
The situation in a wholesome ayre,
The building (for the most part) sumptuous and fayre,
The people content, and industrious, and
With labour makes the sea enrich the land.
A sound account of Yarmouth this is, and, by the quality of the versification, an ample justification for those persons who hear now for the first time of "Taylor, the Water Poet," and feel no inclination to ransack the British Museum for further examples of his poesy.
Hard by is Caister-by-Yarmouth, formerly supposed to have been a Roman fortress, but on quite insufficient evidence. At best, according to Mr. Haverfield, it was never more than a Roman village; and Mr. Haverfield knows. That red-brick tower of Caister Castle, however, reminds us of the Paston Letters, already mentioned and one of the most ancient collections of private letters ever given to the public to be a mirror of life in the days of long ago. The castle was built by "that renowned knight and valiant soldier" Sir John Falstolf, who died in 1459. Sir John was not only a hard fighter, but also clearly a man of extended property. He had land so far off as Dedham, close to the Suffolk boundary of Essex, the Dedham that Constable painted, and we find him complaining once, "Item, Sir John Buck parson of Stratford fished my stanks at Dedham and helped to break my dam, destroyed my new mill and was always against me at Dedham." This complaint was made to John Paston, afterwards Sir John Paston, then Sir John Falstolf's steward, agent as we should say now, and residing in his employer's castle. The employer died; the agent, upon what title the letters do not make it quite clear, continued to hold the castle, on which his wife Dame Paston lived while he followed the practice of the law in London even to the judicial bench. Something has been said of these letters before, but there are points to be added.
The early-printed volumes, stately and calf-bound, are a luxury to read, and in spite of Sir John Fenn's omissions they contain all manner of curiosities, the best of them perhaps being a letter written by one of the young Pastons in 1467, from Eton, where he was at school. In it he shows anxiety about a consignment of figs and raisins, promised but not arrived, discusses the fortune of a young lady recently met whom he thinks of marrying, and says to his brother: "And as for hyr bewte juge you that when ye see hyr yf so be that ye take ye laubore and specialy beolde hyr handys for and if it be as is tolde me sche is dysposyd to be thyke." (Here, by the way, is an example of Sir John Fenn's weakness as an editor, since, the original sentence being innocent of stops save at the end, he places a comma after "hands," and after "be" and another after "me," thus making his own unnecessary translation far more obscure than the original.) It is worth while to remember that Eton College had at this time been open for twenty-five years only, was in fact quite a new school, and that the headmaster was William Barber.
It was during this run by a circuitous route from Caister-by-Yarmouth to Acle and Norwich, and when the wide sheet of Filby Broad smiled on either hand, that the feeling of opposition to Mr. Rye's view of the Broads grew strong. That magnificent stretch of water appealed with a strength almost irresistible to one for whom sailing was, before motoring came into existence, the most perfect of pleasures; and although circumstances, and circumstances only, tendered resistance possible, it seems but right to glance at the Broads, to say what they and the country around them are like, and how, in the opinion of one fairly well versed in watermanship, they might best be enjoyed. There is a stock delimitation of the Broad District. Draw a line from Happisburgh to Norwich, another line from Lowestoft to Norwich, and the rough triangle formed by those lines and the sea shall be the Broads District. Really the southern side of the triangle is drawn much too low on the map. Except Oulton Broad and Lake Lothing, which are close to Lowestoft, and also a long way from the other Broads, all the Broads, including Breydon Water, would be included in a triangle having a line from Norwich to Gorleston for its southern boundary. They are Filby, Ormsby, Burgh, and Rollesby, all connected and covering no less than six hundred acres between them; Hickling, Heigham, Horsey, and Marlham Broads, Hickling the finest of them all; and Irstead and Barton; and each group is approached by its own river. Now, travel by motor-car is not recommended in this district, for it is much too flat to be enjoyable. Since that is not recommended, nothing is said about the churches, although they are of some interest; for so long as men and women remain what they are, they will not stop to study relics of antiquity, unless they are very exceptional indeed, when travelling by boat. Nor are they in the least more likely to linger in this way when voyaging by motor-boat than when using a sailing-boat. But shall we, voyaging in the spirit, use either sailing-boat or motor-boat, in the ordinary acceptation of the latter term. In truth, neither is suggested, but rather a compromise. Candour compels the admission that, knowing by sight, and in some cases from personal experience, most of the types of motor-boat built in Great Britain, I cannot recall one of them which, being roomy enough for comfort, would not draw too much water to be serviceable. In fact, if one could rely on the wind, a sailing vessel of one of the types which have been evolved in the district to meet its needs would really be preferable. Elsewhere than in these pages I should certainly take it, and enjoy it vastly. But what I might take in these pages, and what would be much better than either, would be one of those big flat-bottomed sailing craft with auxiliary motor-engines, of which one may see some at English exhibitions, but many more at the annual exhibition in Paris. With them you can really sail, when there is a wind; and, without a breeze, you are independent. As for the joy of it, so long as there is wind to fill the sails, the mere act of dashing through the water and gliding over it, the very sound of the water, the sense of absolute control that comes to him who holds the tiller and trims the sails to meet every need, are enough, without worrying over scenery. Moreover, the wide flatness of the Broads District, the rare buildings rising as from a lake, have a special charm of their own. As for the sport, from all that I can learn it is largely a thing of the past so far as duck and wildfowl are concerned. All the same, it is a bad mistake to omit the Broads, and one which, experto crede, the tourist in East Anglia regrets deeply when it is irretrievable. However, there is no doubt I made it, but happily hardly less doubt that, if I had not made it, the results could hardly have been relevant.