OF THE BEARDED TIT 165 



spread out into side-waters and back-waters, wherever 

 the law of levels, the only law to which it owns allegi- 

 ance, has admitted a right of way. 



The result is a triangle of some fifteen or twenty 

 thousand acres or more in which, as in the abyss 

 through which Satan winged his way in search of the 

 newly- created world, 



' Where hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, 

 Strove for the inast'ry,' 



land and water hold divided empire. In places the 

 water seems at the first glance to be carrying all before 

 it. Broad sheets (some of them a hundred acres or 

 more) spread almost unbroken surfaces over unfathom- 

 able depths of mud. But the encircling rings of 

 rushes, dwarf alders, and other multitudinous marsh 

 plants, creep in insidiously, each generation growing 

 rank and dying to make soil on which the next may 

 find a footing for another step inwards. 



The water revenges the encroachment by flooding 

 the land wherever it finds a chance, and undermining 

 when it cannot overflow, till it is impossible to say 

 where the one begins and the other ends. One walks 

 almost dry-shod across what had seemed a dangerous 

 pool, and the next moment sinks over one's fishing- 

 stockings in what anywhere else would have been dry 

 land. The confusion of ideas as to the relative solidity 

 of earth and water which results from an hour or two 

 spent in exploring a soft ' Broad ' marsh is not lessened 

 as one sees the huge brown sail of a 'Wherry' the 

 craft which is said to go closer to the wind than any 



