THE LAKE VILLAGE 197 



feeling is partly due to early associations, to boyhood, 

 when I used to ride into the vast marshes of the pampas 

 in places where, sitting on my horse, the tufted tops 

 of the bulrushes were on a level with my face. I 

 sought for birds' nests, above all for that of the strange 

 little bittern. It was a great prize, that small plat- 

 form of yellow sedge leaves, a foot or two above the 

 water, with three oval eggs no bigger than pigeon's eggs 

 resting on it, of a green so soft, brilliant, indescribably 

 lovely, that the sight of them would thrill me like some 

 shining supernatural thing or some heavenly melody. 



Or on a windy day when I would sit by the margin 

 to listen to the sound unlike any other made by the 

 wind in the green world. It was not continuous, 

 nor one, like the sea-like sound of the pines, but in gusts 

 from this part or that all round you, now startlingly 

 loud, then quickly falling to low murmurings, always 

 with something human in it, but wilder, sadder, more 

 airy than a human voice, as of ghost-like beings, invisible 

 to me, haunting the bulrushes, conversing together 

 and calling to one another in their unearthly tones. 



And the birds ! Ah, to be back in the Somerset of 

 that far time — the paradise of birds in its reedy inland 

 sea, its lake of Athelney ! 



I have often wished to be back in the old undrained 

 Lincolnshire for the sake of its multitudinous wild bird 

 life in far more recent times, as described by eye- 

 witnesses — Michael Drayton for example, no longer 

 ago than the time of Elizabeth. Does any bird-loving 

 reader know the passage ? I doubt it, for is there any 



