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A SUNDAY ON BEEYDON. 



By A. H. Patterson, A.M.B.A. 



The spell of a quiet Sabbath evening is upon rne. The 

 faint clamour of the church bells to the eastward has died 

 away, and the evening service has begun. The tide is out, and 

 as I sit in the "well" of the old houseboat 'Moorhen' — now 

 high and dry at her last moorings on a Breydon " rond " — a 

 wide area of mud-flats, bare of water save in the shallowest of 

 pools, in which the Dunlins can run thigh-deep, lie spread before 

 me right away to the long monotonous bank of houses that, 

 broken here and there by a steeple or a more ambitious chimney, 

 represents the town of Yarmouth, whose only appearance of life, 

 although teeming with Bank Holiday anticipating crowds, is 

 exhibited in the smoke of an ice-factory, and the whiter output 

 of a distant locomotive. The flats, richly coloured with the 

 varying greens and browns of the prostrate " wigeon-grass " (the 

 Zostera marina of botanists), and the "raw" (Chcetomorpha 

 linum), and the " cabbage " (Viva lactuca), remind one somewhat 

 of a sloppy hay-field. An hour hence and the distant lights 

 will twinkle in the gloaming, and the glare of a holiday resort 

 will make one thankful that there is one little isolated freehold 

 conveniently far away from it, where restfulness and quietude 

 are assured — where the tremulous notes of the Whimbrel and 

 the mellow cry of a Curlew only break the stillness. In the 

 middle distance runs a silvery liquid thread ; it is the " chan- 

 nel," along which glide two or three white-sailed yachts, and an 

 occasional wherry, the skipper of the latter, in these hard times, 

 gladly enough throwing in a seventh day's passage to make up a 

 poor six days' earnings. Such is Breydon, a salt-water broad so 

 often described, and yet always so fascinating — to me, at least. 



7 p.m. — At this moment there are a few blotches of cloud 

 overhead, yellowing, reddening, purpling as they glide down- 



