We left the fly, and wandered down towards the old gabled court,
nestling amid huge walnuts in its southward glen; while before us
spread a panorama, half sea, half land, than which, perhaps, our
England owns few lovelier.
At our feet was a sea of sand--for the half-mile to the right smooth
as a floor, bounded by a broad band of curling waves, which crept
slowly shorewards with the advancing tide. Right underneath us the
sand was drifted for miles into fantastic hills, which quivered in
the heat, the glaring yellow of its lights chequered by delicate pink
shadows and sheets of grey-green bent. To the left were rich
alluvial marshes, covered with red cattle sleeping in the sun, and
laced with creeks and flowery dykes; and here and there a scarlet
line, which gladdened Claude's eye as being a 'bit of positive colour
in the foreground,' and mine, because they were draining tiles.
Beyond again, two broad tide-rivers, spotted with white and red-brown
sails, gleamed like avenues of silver, past knots of gay dwellings,
and tall lighthouses, and church-towers, and wandered each on its own
road, till they vanished among the wooded hills.
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