16 LLANDDWYN 



vulgarity, which has done so much to make hideous 

 the modest villages of our coasts, may set toward 

 Newborough also. But the half of Newborough's 

 lands are already beneath the sea; the other half is 

 buried in sand; and the sea, they say, will have its 

 own. 



In the shrub-growth with which Newborough 

 sedulously hides her nakedness, the birds made a 

 last rally. But, long before reaching this point, the 

 Willow-wren had found the limit of his hardiness, 

 whilst the Linnet still kept abreast with the gorse; 

 Greenfinch and Yellow-hammer fell behind ere the 

 hedgerows ceased, although the Corn-bunting followed 

 the grass. At last the Skylark only remained, until 

 in passing through Newborough, we found a sudden 

 congestion of bird-life, almost all the birds that had 

 fallen out by the way reappearing suddenly here, 

 rallying, as it were, in the last ditch; and, as we 

 swung the gate that shut upon Newborough and 

 opened on the Warren, a solitary Whitethroat gave 

 us a churlish God-speed from the last sand-smitten 

 bush. 



Encumbered with bicycles that now all but rode 

 their former riders, with a broiling sun above, and 

 four miles of piled-up sand dunes before us at last 

 we were free. We had closed the gate on the 

 world. There must still linger something of the 

 nomad and savage in a man that he should feel this 

 fierce exultancy in detachment, to look on unpeopled 

 prospects, and to wander laboriously over pathless 

 sands where the footprint vanishes with the lifting 

 of the foot. 



From the top of one of the higher sandhills 



