may well have watery names, being to so large
an extent mere reclamations from the sea. Those
reclamations have gone on through successive
ages, and go on still. The sea recedes gradually
from this part of Norfolk, and as it recedes the
land becomes first of all covered with a growth
of samphire. Vegetation succeeds to this; and
when at length the roots of that vegetation have
formed a kind of web or network over the soil,
it becomes worth while to erect around the land
so reclaimed, a sea-wall or dyke which shall
protect the land behind it from the higher tides.
For, it must be remembered that the land even
while this vegetation is forming is free from the
influence of the low tides only, and that until the
sea-wall is erected, the spring-tides dash over it
and make cultivation of the soil impossible.
Doubtless, the sea relinquishes its hold on the
earth reluctantly, and every now and then will
make some mad grasp at its lost property, as
in the present case.

It was a dull grey afternoon when I visited that
extraordinary scene, and its peculiar dreariness
mingled with something of grandeur were the
more powerfully developed in consequence of that
fact. It was difficult, looking over those miles of
water (for at the time I visited it the sheet could
not have been less than six miles long by about
three wide), and to feel that underneath it were
corn-fields and bright-looking meadows, and
gravel-roads, and little orchards, and gardens,
such as one saw on the other and dry side of the
drain. As I looked longer, there were not wanting
plenty of indications of the real state of the case.
In one direction a row of telegraph-posts in a
straight line showed that the railroad passed
that way: a fact which was confirmed by the
appearance at intervals of the halves of some
wayside stations, the upper portions only showing.

Looking another way, I saw emerging from
the water the parapet of the bridges erected
over the water-courses by which (mockery that
it seemed) the land was drained. The trees
showed, too, here and there, and the upper
stories of certain small farms and labourers'
houses, and the straw-yards and outbuildings
near them; while farther off still, was an
ale-house standing in water enough to have satisfied
a Temperance League; beyond that again was
dimly discernible a church.

There was only, as far as I could see, one
boat to be had, and that was engaged in some
engineering operations connected with the safety
of the bank of the drain, at the point opposite
to the breach. I waited until this boat was
disengaged, and then made an offer to its
proprietor to take me out to visit the houses I had
a mind to see, and, above all things, the church.
My offer was accepted, and at about five o'clock
in the afternoon, we pushed off for a cruise over
the meadows.

I looked round me again before starting, and
was struck by the difference between the two
sides of the narrow drain. Everything looked
so prosperous on the one side! The gardens,
the cottages, the barns, the comfortable
meadows with the fat cattle grazing, all kinds of
operations of husbandry going on, labourers
singing at their work. And that other side—
now all desolation—a few days ago had been
gay and prosperous too, and there also the sheep
had browsed and the cattle had chewed the cud,
and the peasant had sung as he laboured
hopefully in the furrow.

We made but slow progress through the
waters. The tide was ebbing, and we had
it against us. Sometimes as we passed along,
the twigs of a submerged hedge would grate
against the bottom of the boat; sometimes as
we rowed across a little hillock, or a raised
portion of one of the roads which divided the
country, the boat would strike. Once we got
aground, and once we had to get out, that our
boat might be pushed over a dry bank which it
was necessary to cross.

How dreary the few scattered and deserted
houses looked as we approached them! It
is true that the inhabitants might, if they
had chosen, have continued to occupy the upper
floors, which were high and dry, but there
would have been risk in it. When the wind
rose, the waters of this great inland sea became
rough, and doubtless such a specimen as the
neighbours had lately seen of the power of the
tide made them mistrustful of the strength of
their submerged foundations, continuously
exposed to the action of the water. Most of
the windows were blocked up with closed
shutters, and some of the doors were carefully
padlocked; for, disgraceful to relate, before the
goods had all been removed from the houses,
there had been wretches who took advantage of
this miserable disaster to go out in boats in
search of any plunder they could lay their hands
upon. Here and there one would see some
agricultural implement left upon the thatch of a
shed or outhouse. Sometimes the handles of a
wheelbarrow would appear sticking up out of
the water; in one place the shafts of a cart that
had been abandoned to its fate, rose up above
the level of the flood.

At last we came to a cottage that seemed to
have been less carefully secured than the rest,
and, having found a gap in the fence of the little
orchard that surrounded it, we rowed through
the fence, the stakes of the hedge grating ever so
little as we passed. The little apple-trees in the
orchard were partly covered with blossom, and
on some of the branches the fruit had even set.
It was low water, as I have said, and we could
see on the trees the brown mark left by the
higher tides. All the portions of the foliage
which had come in contact with the brackish
water had turned brown. It gave one some idea
of what the aspect of things would be when the
land was drained after the flood was over. Passing
through the orchard, and by the mockery of
a pump which reared its head above the waters,
we drew quite near to the cottage door, and
paused. It was open, and the action of the water
was slowly waving it backwards and forwards as
if it were swayed by a ghostly hand. A noise,
too, of a sucking kind caine from the interior of
the building, made by the water as it sucked