SOUNDING SHORES 



161 



their way seaward. However it was, the land 

 gained on the sea, the old town with its Nor- 

 man church, its walls of flint and crumbled 

 moat, was deserted by its ally; and to-day it 

 stands two miles inland — a town without a har- 

 bor, a port without ships. Small craft still 

 creep along the muddy Stour and anchor at the 

 Fishers' Gate, but not since Plantagenet days 

 have the waves paced up and down by the an- 

 cient walls. 



From the village going down to the beach 

 one crosses meadows that look now as perhaps 

 did Goodwin Sands in the days of the Saxon. 

 After a mile or more across these flat lands the 

 dunes appear. They are tumbled-and-tossed 

 dunes that drift little to-day because held firm 

 by beach grasses ; but in form they roll and dip 

 and hollow like a cross-cut sea, and seem to 

 have been formed in some convulsion of the 

 coast. The convulsion, however, never took 

 place. The formation is due solely to the winds 

 that seem forever whirling and twisting along 

 this coast. It was possibly the very irregularity 

 of these dunes and their abundance of " haz- 

 ards " that led the St. George's Club to occupy 

 them as a golf course. It is known to-day 

 as the " champion course," and is often spoken 

 of as " the links by the sea." 



The old 

 town of 

 Sandwich. 



Across the 

 meadows. 



The St. 

 George's 

 golf course. 



