i8 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



as the knots. A poor little guillemot, blown to the marshes, 

 had been discovered and mutilated by a rat. 



On the further side of Breydon I could see the waves 

 breaking furiously on the walls where they ran broadside to 

 the wind, and great sheets of water, with frothy borders, were 

 flung over on to the grassy levels behind. Houseboats, float- 

 ing high above the level of their protecting saltings, tossed 

 like ships at anchor ; the eel-fishers and smelters were safe in 

 port at the quayside taverns, or in sheltered corners near their 

 beloved Breydon, discussing bygone gales and floods, com- 

 paring notes and figures of past hauls, " cursing their luck " at 

 being kept ashore, whilst they "blessed their lucky stars" 

 that they were not afloat in cockleshell punt and smelt-boat. 

 Were they given to reading Dickens, these men would can- 

 onise Mark Tapley. 



The wind howled when it rushed among the telegraph wires 

 on the railway, flinging here and there a pole and a signal 

 post across the metals. One post went down as a train came 

 along and the engine cut clean through it. The houses of the 

 marsh farmers lost many a tile, and tops of many haystacks 

 were roughly shorn off, and the hay scattered like feathers. It 

 took me an hour to plough through the blast to the Moorhen. 



We oftener get high tides and floods up-river now, for the 

 wasting of the cliffs lying north of Yarmouth allows a 

 sharper set-in of the North Sea currents, and, as I pointed 

 out in a local paper, " Our Commissioners are playing a 

 dangerous game in so eagerly (and constantly) deepening the 

 Harbour mouth." To this lament and others of mine, a well- 

 known county man and an ardent angler replied : 



" On the gale and high tide I beg to say I am entirely of 

 your opinion. The cupidity of your townsmen will in time 

 swamp your now flourishing watering-place. The continual 

 deepening of Yarmouth Bar lets the tide run up with such a 

 force that any gale from the N.W., with the water low in the 

 river, is bound to swamp everything. For the sake of 

 increased harbour dues the place will in time be wiped out. 

 The salt water comes up the river now so far with every N.W. 

 wind that fishing (angling) in the lower reaches, as at Cantley 

 and at Reedham, is now quite a failure. . . ." 



The pressure of a huge influx of water found out a weak 

 place in the walls at the Berney Arms end of Breydon, on 



