i6o IN NORFOLK BY THE SEA 



It is not at every tide that the Httle vessels which 

 venture here can get in or out of the harbour. And 

 often a grain-bearing Danish schooner will be a 

 month or more just off the point, tried by the local tug 

 from time to time, for even at the spring tides there 

 is little more than twelve feet of water by the quay. 

 And a mile or so out seawards round the point 

 stretches a long sand and shingle bar on which many 

 a good craft has gone to pieces. But if there must 

 be wrecks, then wrecks are very welcome here, for 

 they brmg a little easy money to the town. Inside 

 the bar at low water is a fine expanse of ooze, then 

 the long line of the sandhills, and closer in the 

 marsh. 



The marshes are never so dreary even in wild 

 winter-time but that they have one great abiding charm, 

 their beauty of bird-life. For in winter the place is 

 alive with wildfowl, with casual small parties of bean 

 and white-fronted geese, and with pink-footed geese in 

 thousands from the polar seas, while Iceland sends a 

 contingent of snow-white hooper swans, moving away 

 down south. By March the scene is changed. Only 

 some belated widgeon or shoveller and the home pro- 

 portion of mallards remain, but from then on till the 

 middle of May there are daily arrivals of birds moving 





