SHORE "POPPING" 141 



From the sea-wall, which had to be crossed before the 

 saltings were reached, a grand, albeit wild and desolate- 

 looking scene lay before me. To south, east, and west 

 rolled away the North Sea, its white-crested waves 

 breaking with a thunder upon the serrated edges of what 

 form, when uncovered by the tide, a vast expanse of 

 ooze -flats and black-grounds, flanked inshore by many 

 hundreds of acres of saltwort and sea -lavender clothed 

 salt-marshes. Looking inland, a perfectly level Dutch- 

 like landscape of dyke and fleet intersected levels stretched 

 away before one's eyes, and, with the exception of the 

 reed-thatched roofs of a sleepy little fishing village, an 

 old-time Uchen-walled homestead, standing amidst its 

 barns and hayricks, in the very centre of the marshes, 

 and a few sheep and cattle grazing upon the rich pasture 

 of the same, there was nothing to break the wearying 

 monotony of the scene. 



I had scarcely crossed the sea-wall before the report 

 of a heavy shoulder gun reached me from the saltings 

 lying to my left, and looking in the direction whence the 

 sound came I saw a bunch of some ten or twelve mallard 

 flying low and heading apparently straight for me. 

 Dropping on my knees into a patch of bents growing at 

 the base of the sea-wall, I anxiously waited for them. 

 Unfortunately, the duck either sighted or scented me, 

 and swinging round right-handed, while still well out of 

 shot of the 12-bore, they winged their way over the ooze- 

 flats and finally dropped into a small and well-sheltered 

 bay Ipng about a mile farther along the shore, in which. 



