46 THE CALL OF THE SEA 



scene of irretrievable barrenness, where scrubby 

 and stunted heath, intermixed with the long bent 

 or coarse grass, which first covers sandy soils, were 

 the only vegetables that could be seen. 



Sir Walter Scott. 



An Essex Sea-Marsh <:iy -q^ 



(From Mehalah) 



■DETWEEN the mouths of the Blackwater and 

 the Colne, on the east coast of Essex, lies an 

 extensive marshy tract veined and freckled in 

 every part with water. It is a wide waste of 

 debatable ground contested by sea and land, sub- 

 ject to incessant incursions from the former, but 

 stubbornly maintained by the latter. At high tide 

 the appearance is that of a vast surface of moss or 

 Sargasso weed floating on the sea, with rents and 

 patches of shining water traversing and dappling 

 it in all directions. The creeks, some of consider- 

 able length and breadth, extend many miles in- 

 land, and are arteries whence branches out a 

 fibrous tissue of smaller channels, flushed with 

 water twice in the twenty-four hours. At noon- 

 tides, and especially at the equinoxes, the sea 

 asserts it royalty over this vast region, and over- 

 flows the whole, leaving standing out of the flood 

 only the long island of Mersea, and the lesser 



