THE QUARRIES 63 



been for many years, the chief places of a great export 

 trade in flints, chalk, and lime. The flints are sent 

 into Derbyshire, and even to China, where they are 

 used in the making of porcelain ; and many thousands 

 of tons are shipped annually. The excavation of chalk 

 and flints during so long a period has left its mark — a 

 very deep and ineffaceable mark, too — upon this part 

 of the road, and, to a stranger, the appearance presented 

 by the scarred and deeply quarried countryside is wild 

 and wonderful. Spaces of many acres have been 

 quarried to a depth, in some places, of over a hundred 

 and fifty feet, and many of these great pits have been 

 abandoned for centuries, accumulating in that time a 

 large and luxuriant growth of trees and bushes. 

 Others are still being extended, and present a busy 

 scene with men in white duck, corduroy, or canvas 

 working clothes cutting away the chalk or loading it 

 into the long lines of trucks that run on tramAvays down 

 to the water's edge. Not the least remarkable things 

 in these busy places are the great bluffs of chalk left 

 islanded amid the deepest quarries, and reaching to 

 the original level of the land. They rise abruptly 

 from the quarry floors, are generally quite inaccessible, 

 and have been left thus by the quarrymen, as con- 

 taining an inferior quality of chalk, mixed with sand 

 and gravel, which is not worth their while to remove. 

 In midst of scenery of this description, and sur- 

 rounded by shops and modern houses, stands Northfleet 

 Church, beside the highway. It is a large Gothic 

 building of the Decorated period, and has been much 

 patched and repaired at different times without 

 having been actually " restored." There are some 

 mildly interesting brasses in the chancel ; but the 

 massive western embattled tower is of greatest interest 

 to the student of other times, for it was built, like 

 many of the church towers in the Welsh marches and 

 along the Scots borders, chiefly as a means of defence. 

 The enemies who were thus to be guarded against at 

 Northfleet were firstly Saxon pirates, then the fierce 



