WITH THE WADERS 95 



Up the steep, grassy hill I started out of 

 the road ; but I soon halted again, this time 

 to gaze into the sky. Straight above me 

 were numbers of herring gulls, some far, far 

 up under the fleecy cirrus clouds, others 

 much lower. All were resting upon the air, 

 sailing in broad circles. Round and round 

 they went, a kind of stationary motion, 

 a spectator might have called it; but in a 

 minute or two they had disappeared. They 

 were progressing in circles, circle cutting 

 circle. It is the sea-gull's way of taking a 

 long flight. I remember it of old, and have 

 never seen anything to surpass it for grace- 

 fulness. If there were only words to de- 

 scribe such things ! But language is a 

 clumsy tool. 



The hilltop offered beauty of another 

 kind : the blue ocean, the broad, brown 

 marshes, dotted with haycocks innumerable, 

 the hills landward, a distant town, with its 

 spires showing, the inlet yonder, whitened 

 with swimming gulls. Crickets chirped in 

 the grass, herds of cattle and sheep grazed 

 peacefully on all sides, and when I turned 

 my head, there behind me, a mile away, 



