AUTHOR'S NOTE 



AiHORT preface seems to me necessary in order to 

 explain my reasons for adding to the list of volumes 

 relating to my beloved county. 



From my earliest boyhood Breydon, that most interesting 

 tidal water lying to the west of Great Yarmouth, has had an 

 unspeakable charm for me. My father hired an allotment 

 garden at Runham Vauxhall, now built upon by the council 

 schools. The gardens were separated from Breydon by a 

 reedy ditch (wherein I first studied the habits of sticklebacks 

 and ditch prawns), the New Road, the railway, a wide marsh, 

 and the " walls." When I was sufficiently big to climb the 

 tool shed, I used to do so to catch a glimpse of a silver 

 streak that edged the apex of the walls at high water that 

 was Breydon / The boom of a distant punt-gun and the 

 sharper crack of a fowling-piece conjured up in my mind 

 strange fancies, which were heightened by the scream of the 

 startled wildfowl, and the passing to and fro overhead of 

 great flocks of gulls. 



I caught my first real glimpse of Breydon one day when, 

 armed with a fish-head and a length of knotted twine, I 

 slipped down, with other muddy urchins, unknown to my 

 father, to the riverside, in quest of a "sea-sammy" (crab), 

 which I dared not take home. 



My father's inveterate abhorrence, not lessened in this his 

 eighty-ninth year, of "the muddy, dangerous place," only 

 served to increase my interest in it, and as I became still 

 keener to explore it, I would skulk at the heels of any 

 tolerant gunner to get on to the "walls," or ramble to its 

 vicinity whenever opportunity offered. I shall never forget 



