OLD RECOLLECTIONS 285 



in my mind as I now write, I could not repeat 

 them if I wished ; those narrow beds of salt- 

 ooze stripes, with the deep cuts on either side, 

 through which the tide rushed like the waters 

 from a sluice, have been solid grazing grounds 

 for years past. Those long, grey mud-flats, 

 patched and chequered by the wiry growth 

 of the salts, were not very cheering sights, 

 with screeds and drifts of cold drizzling rain 

 moving about as they were caught by the 

 cats-paws of wind. Something about it all 

 chills and deadens you, producing a most 

 weird and uncanny feeling, which even the 

 best "ague mixture," pure and undiluted, will 

 not move. The birds one came to see their 

 nests possibly also ; but the chance of seeing 

 the birds, even through the cold, mist-like 

 rain, is small enough. Under conditions such 

 as these it chanced that, on a dismal walk 

 home through the rain, from a bent tussock 

 about the size of a footstool, against which I 

 kicked my foot, not ten yards from the spot 

 on which I had been standing for some time, 

 up rose one of the very birds I had come 

 so far to see, and from a clutch of unset 

 eggs. 



Tons of the best and freshest fish were 



