34 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



ever way they please to look seawards ? There 

 are, as objects of interest, two churches, Established 

 and Primitive Methodist, a liberal supply of hotels 

 and fresh, clean inns, a beach pebbled almost 

 exclusively with white stones, a roomy tin 

 refreshment room, boasting for only signs of 

 civilisation and occupancy a draught-board lined 

 out on a table with a knife, and played on with 

 clinkers for the black men and the aforesaid 

 white pebbles to represent the white warriors ; 

 a lakelet tenanted by a sunken canoe, and a 

 receding foreshore in places sought to be pro- 

 tected by V-outlined groynes that on a cursory 

 glance looked more likely to help the sea in its 

 encroachments than stay depredations. A lovely 

 air was on, and a little lively breeze, making the 

 sea popply, ideal water for swimming. Along 

 the coast ran a wisp of spray, rising from the 

 waves' gentle fall between breadths of bright clear 

 sunshine. Overhead was a sky of blue deep 

 enough to satisfy a captious Australian dis- 

 contented with the English climate. The 

 dowdiest old tan sails, grateful to the eye, 

 showed by this light well-to-do in the distance 

 as the whitest of the ''white wings," convention- 

 ally reckoned a proprietary article for the Solent. 

 Selsey's little fleet a-lying at anchor, backed by 

 a salvage galley ashore, made quite an imposing 

 show for numbers, not tonnage, and the railway 

 carriage bungalows came out absolutely smart, 

 though, of course, not to compare with the best 

 of all the collection of low houses artistically 

 thatched in style to make you cast eyes over 

 the water to where Shanklin would be in the 

 Island according to your reckoning and its 

 thatched cottages. To the East along the 



