84 KENTISH BOTAVY. {Mavch, 



considerable bigness, that is, according to the English way of 

 reckoning, consisting of 600 families, which the River Wantsume 

 divides from the continent, which is about 3 furlongs broad, and 

 passable over only in two places, viz. the Sarre and Sandwich, 

 and goes into the sea at both its heads," — Bede, H. E., 1-25. 



The river now called the Stour discharges all its waters into the 

 sea at Pegwell Bay. Of this fact anybody may have ocular proof 

 if he will take the trouble of walking along the bank of the river 

 fiora Monkton Marshes to Grove Ferry : the distance between 

 Monkton Marshes and Sarre, where the ancient ferry vv^as, is not 

 above a couple of miles. Grove Ferry derived its name from this 

 portage. Here it will be observed, that the river is so securely 

 confined between high banks, river-walls, or bulwarks of earth, 

 that only in excessive floods any water of the Stour can escape, 

 and so flow into the northern marshes between Chislet and 

 St. Nicholas. On the left bank of the Stour there is a hill or 

 rising ground, and, though of small elevation, an effectual barrier 

 to this river on the northern or Reculver side. 



But to clear up this point, viz. the non-continuity of the Stour 

 in the direction of Reculver or its non-identity with the Want- 

 sume, we went to Grove Ferry, and from Grove Ferry to Re- 

 culver. The whole tract through which both rivers flow is so 

 level, that the Stour might easily be forced to flow either to the 

 south or to the north, or both ways, by the division of its water. 

 This is not the case, for, except in great floods, none of the water 

 in the Stour flows into the marshes at Sarre. 



The Wautsume, which joins the sea at Reculver, rises in a 

 rather flat boggy tract of land lying between the eminence on 

 the north side of the Stour and the parish of (/hislet, a village on 

 the Canterbury side of the marshes, and between Reculver and 

 Grove Ferry. This insignificant rivulet was described by the 

 Rev. John Lewis one hundred and forty years ago as a river with 

 more mouths than the Nile : — 



"The Wantsume is now no continued stream^ but dispersed 

 among the lands for the convenience of watering the cattel 

 (cattle) kept on them." — Rev. John Lewis, 'History and Anti- 

 quities of the Isle of Thanet. (Second Edition. London. 

 4to, 1736.) 



In the whole course of our walk from Grove Ferry to Re- 

 culver — the distance is about five miles — no traces of an ancient 



