6 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



houseboat, and towering up conspicuously from any point of 

 view, is a good type of the old pump-mill ; but even this 

 works little when winds are lazy, for there is attached to it an 

 engine that will work more effectually when necessary. 

 Indeed, most of the mills in Broadland give way to steam 

 pumping when an excess of rain has fallen, while many have 

 entirely fallen into disuse ; for one good turbine pump will do 

 the work of a dozen windmills. 



The marshes have naturally settled through this system of 

 drainage. At one time they were part and parcel of the fast 

 diminishing " ronds " or saltings of Breydon ; but now they 

 have become shrunken and solidified to much below their 

 original level. A big tide on Breydon is sometimes some 

 feet above the level of the marshes on the inner side of the 

 wall. The wild birds have not appreciated this alteration, for 

 many of the lower forms of life which allured them have been 

 lost, or have been much reduced in numbers. Many long 

 stretches of the walls have been faced with huge flints to save 

 erosion ; a few, where the tides are sluggish, are fronted with 

 salt-loving herbage; but year by year the flints have been added 

 to, and these need replacing at intervals. Even these will all, 

 in time, be faced with concrete, and at recent mending times 

 long stretches have already been stuccoed by rough concrete 

 spread over the jagged flints, filling up interstices, and 

 making an enduring rampart. 



The walls are sufficiently wide at the apex to form a toler- 

 able footpath, muddy enough in wintry days, and wearisome 

 in summer and autumn, when the long wiry grasses close over 

 the footway. But a ramble along them is always an interest- 

 ing experience, except on ordinary November days, or any- 

 thing like them, for shelter is out of the question. After rain 

 or heavy dews the wet grasses soak the boots of the pedes- 

 trian. The Sea Milkwort (Glaux maritime?) grows in 

 abundance on the inner sides of the walls, and the Sea Aster 

 (Aster tripolium) shoots out of the clay that holds the huge 

 rough flints in place. The Sea Southern wood, the Scurvy Grass, 

 and the creeping Chenopodiums variegate the banks ; a few 

 stretches of stunted reeds, dwarfed by the salinity of the ditches, 

 struggle for existence, growing larger as one nears the Burgh 

 end, until a little way up the rivers, where fresh water runs 

 longest, they overshadow one's boat by their ten-foot-long stems. 



