CHAPTER II 

 THE FLATS 



THE north and north-east coast of Norfolk is like 

 a padded shoulder thrust out into the sea to 

 beguile many a wind-worn, feathered navigator, blown 

 out of its course, to strike sail and rest upon it. Norfolk, 

 Cockaigne of the collector, glory of gunners, is my 

 native place, but to pay a filial visit was not the reason 

 which took me to the mud flats and saltings of the coast 

 between Cromer and Hunstanton in the autumn, for 

 the dwellers therein are a rude people and inhospitable 

 alike to bird and traveller. 



The flats themselves cover an immense district, and 

 though partly marsh and partly mud, and varied with 

 broad sandy expanses, low turf walls running seawards, 

 sandhills tufted with coarse marram-grass, saltings car- 

 peted with the fleshy, glaucous foliage of sea-aster, sam- 

 phire, sea-lavender, and sea-purslane, rushy pools and 

 narrow streams, present a uniform stretch indescribable 

 both in feature and beauty. On the plain there is nothing 

 between you and the horizon ; earth and sky seem inter- 

 changeable, and so boundless is the adventure of the 

 mind that you might as well be walking upon the one 

 as the other. The business of this water-wedded land 

 is other than to rear a multiformity of shapes and 

 contours for eyes to climb and wind among ; it becomes 

 what the white sheet is to the film camera, a surface 

 for colours to come tumbling out of the paint-box and 

 run and play and wheel upon like schoolboys out of 

 class. Come unto these yellow sands and there take hands. 



I remember one evening on the flats, washed in a clear, 

 mirage-like transparency nothing on land, sea or sky 

 was thick or muddy so that the effect was that of a 



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