THE ISLE OF RUIM. S31 



about Newport and Carisbrooke. For now the murder 

 indeed is out, and you have discovered already that Euim 

 —this dim, mysterious Ruim — is only just the common- 

 plaee, vulgarized Isle of Thanet. 



Still, it is not without cause that I have ventured to call 

 it by that strange and now almost forgotten old-world 

 uame. There is reason, we know, in the roasting of eggs, 

 and, if I have gone out of my way to introduce the 

 ancient isle to you by its title of Ruim, it is in order that 

 we might start clear of the odour of tea and shrimps, the 

 artificial niggers, and cheap excursionists, that the name 

 of Thanet brings up most prominently at the present day 

 before the travelled mind of the modern Londoner. I 

 want to carry you back to a time when Eamsgate was 

 still but a green gap in the long line of chalk cliff, and 

 Margate but the chine of a little trickling streamlet that 

 tumbled seaward over the undesecrated sands ; when a 

 l)road arm of the sea still cut off Westgate from the Recul- 

 ver cliffs, and when the tide swept unopposed four times a 

 day over the submerged sands of Minster Level. You 

 must think of Thanet as then greatly resembling Wight 

 in geographical features, and the Wantsum as the equiva- 

 lent of the Solent Sea. 



In the very earliest period of our history, before ever 

 the existing names had been given at all to the towns or 

 villages — nay, when the towns and villages themselves 

 were not — Ruim was already a noteworthy island. For 

 there is now very little doubt indeed that Thanet is the 

 Ictis or ' Channel Island ' to which Cornish tin was 

 conveyed across Britain for shipment to the continent. 

 The great harbour of Britain was then the Wantsum Sea, 



