Mehalah : A Story of the Salt Marshes

Between the mouths of the Blackwater and the Colne, on the east coast of Essex, lies an extensive marshy tract veined and freckled in every part with water. It is a wide waste of debatable ground contested by sea and land, subject to incessant incursions from the former, but stubbornly maintained by the latter. At high tide the appearance is that of a vast surface of moss or Sargasso weed floating on the sea, with rents and patches of shining water traversing and dappling it in all directions. The creeks, some of considerable length and breadth, extend many miles inland, and are arteries whence branches out a fibrous tissue of smaller channels, flushed with water twice in the twenty-four hours. At noon-tides, and especially at the equinoxes, the sea asserts its royalty over this vast region, and overflows the whole, leaving standing out of the flood only the long island of Mersea, and the lesser islet, called the Ray. This latter is a hill of gravel rising from the heart of the Marshes, crowned with ancient thorntrees, and possessing, what is denied the mainland, an unfailing spring of purest water. At ebb, the Ray can only be reached from the old Roman causeway, called the Strood, over which runs the road from Colchester to Mersea Isle, connecting formerly the city of the Trinobantes with the station of the count of the Saxon shore. But even at ebb, the Ray is not approachable by land unless the sun or east wind has parched the ooze into brick; and then the way is long, tedious and tortuous, among bitter pools and over shining creeks. It was perhaps because this ridge of high ground was so inaccessible, so well protected by nature, that the ancient inhabitants had erected on it a rath, or fortified camp of wooden logs, which left its name to the place long after the timber defences had rotted away.

A more desolate region can scarce be conceived, and yet it is not without beauty.

Starta din 14 dagars kostnadsfria provperiod

  • Full tillgång till hundratusentals ljudböcker och e-böcker i vårt bibliotek
  • Skapa upp till 4 profiler—inkl. barnprofiler
  • Läs och lyssna offline
  • Prenumerationer från 139 kr per månad
Prova gratis nu

Avsluta när du vill

Mehalah : A Story of the Salt Marshes

Between the mouths of the Blackwater and the Colne, on the east coast of Essex, lies an extensive marshy tract veined and freckled in every part with water. It is a wide waste of debatable ground contested by sea and land, subject to incessant incursions from the former, but stubbornly maintained by the latter. At high tide the appearance is that of a vast surface of moss or Sargasso weed floating on the sea, with rents and patches of shining water traversing and dappling it in all directions. The creeks, some of considerable length and breadth, extend many miles inland, and are arteries whence branches out a fibrous tissue of smaller channels, flushed with water twice in the twenty-four hours. At noon-tides, and especially at the equinoxes, the sea asserts its royalty over this vast region, and overflows the whole, leaving standing out of the flood only the long island of Mersea, and the lesser islet, called the Ray. This latter is a hill of gravel rising from the heart of the Marshes, crowned with ancient thorntrees, and possessing, what is denied the mainland, an unfailing spring of purest water. At ebb, the Ray can only be reached from the old Roman causeway, called the Strood, over which runs the road from Colchester to Mersea Isle, connecting formerly the city of the Trinobantes with the station of the count of the Saxon shore. But even at ebb, the Ray is not approachable by land unless the sun or east wind has parched the ooze into brick; and then the way is long, tedious and tortuous, among bitter pools and over shining creeks. It was perhaps because this ridge of high ground was so inaccessible, so well protected by nature, that the ancient inhabitants had erected on it a rath, or fortified camp of wooden logs, which left its name to the place long after the timber defences had rotted away.

A more desolate region can scarce be conceived, and yet it is not without beauty.


Författare:

Format:

Längd:

  • 272 sidor

Språk:

Engelska


Relaterade kategorier


  1. Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

    H. and Heron, Sheridan Le Fanu, Charlotte Riddell, Flora Annie Steel, Amelia B. Edwards, Margaret Oliphant, Edward Bellamy, Arnold Bennett, S. Baring-Gould, Daniil Kharms, E F Benson, Ella D'Arcy, Jacques Futrelle, Frank Richard Stockton, John Kendrick Bangs, Kenneth Grahame, Julian Hawthorne, A. E. Mason, Richard Middleton, Pierre Louÿs, Sir Hugh Walpole, Ethel Richardson, Gertrude Stein, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Mór Jókai, Andy Adams, Bertha Sinclair, Fitz-James O’Brien, Eleanor H. Porter, Valery Bryusov, John Ulrich Giesy, Otis Adelbert Kline, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Barry Pain, Gertrude Bennett, Francis Marion Crawford, William Pett Ridge, Gilbert Parker, Harriet Elizabeth Spofford, Elizabeth Garver Jordan, Richard Austin Freeman, Alice Duer Miller, Leonard Merrick, Anthony Hope, Ethel Watts Mumford, Anne O'Hagan Shinn, B.M. Bower, August Nemo

    book
  2. Post-Mediæval Preachers : Some Account of the Most Celebrated Preachers of the 15th, 16th, & 17th Centuries; with outlines of their sermons, and specimens of their style

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  3. The Book of Were-Wolves

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  4. Conscience and Sin: Daily Meditations for Lent, Including Week-days and Sundays

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  5. An Old English Home and Its Dependencies

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  6. In the Roar of the Sea

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  7. Songs of the West : Folk Songs of Devon & Cornwall Collected from the Mouths of the People

    S. Baring-Gould, H. Fleetwood Sheppard, F. W. Bussell

    book
  8. Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  9. Domitia

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  10. Perpetua. A Tale of Nimes in A.D. 213

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  11. Cornwall

    S. Baring-Gould

    book
  12. The Lost and Hostile Gospels : An Essay on the Toledoth Jeschu, and the Petrine and Pauline Gospels of the First Three Centuries of Which Fragments Remain

    S. Baring-Gould

    book