NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



Besides the graziers about the Marsh, a number 

 of men, known locally as "lookers," are employed 

 by distant farmers who hire or possess grazing on the 

 Level. One or two of these live on the Marsh itself; 

 others dwell in the villages or hamlets near. The 

 " lookers " are a kind of bailiff who keep an eye on the 

 cattle put under their charge. They and the sturdy 

 labourers who keep the dykes clean know more about 

 the Marsh and its nature than any others. Where the 

 wild duck lie, where the snipe are plentiful, the nests 

 of partridge and green plover, the seats of hares — all 

 these things are to them as an open book. It is natural 

 enough that followers of the harriers should wish to be, 

 as they usually are, on terms of friendship and amity 

 with these people, important personalities as they are 

 of the Marsh and its vicinity. 



Marsh floods are not so frequent or so great as they 

 used to be. The sluices at Pevensey and elsewhere 

 were carefully improved and repaired in 1804, when 

 troops were encamped all along this coast, and 

 Napoleon's invasion was momentarily expected. These 

 enable an excess of water to be passed away seaward. 

 If the French had landed, the whole level would have 

 been at once flooded, and the difficulties of the enemy 

 would have been added to by water as well as fire. 

 Yet occasionally an abnormal and sudden rainfall will 

 still flood the Level, farms are cut off, and their inmates 

 have to reach the mainland in boats. Three or four 

 years ago such a thing happened, and Horse-eye, 

 Chilley, and one or two other homesteads were isolated. 

 It is not difficult to understand how places like Horse- 

 eye and Chilley gained their titles. They are little 

 eminences in the Marsh, which in the pre-Norman 

 days, and probably long after, were more often than 

 not mere eyots or islands in the waste of flooded 



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