ENGLISH LAGOONS. * IN this daily record of a year spent
on a house-boat, Mr. P. H. Emerson has given us another of his " impressionist " pic- ture-galleries of life on the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads. He invites his readers to join him in his roamings on " English lagoons ; " but the word " lagoon " does not seem to fit our sluggish East Anglian rivers widening into " broads " and " dykes " (why does Mr. Emerson always write of dikes ?), among fiat meadows and reedy marshes, noisy mills and locks, sleepy riverside villages and towns; it rather conjures up Venice as Ruskin hia painted her, "A ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak,—so quiet,—so bereft of all but her love-
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* On English Lagoons. By P. H. Ewerson, London: David Nutt. liness, that we might well doubt, as we. watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow." And yet East Anglia has a peculiar charm of its own, and quite an army of authors, naturalists, and artists have chronicled its charms.
In the present volume Mr. Emerson introduces us to the Maid of the Mist,' an ancient twelve-ton wherry that had endured many vicissitudes ; she had been sunk and fished up again, used for " marling " and "icing," and finally had settled down to a "respectable career" as a house-boat. " The Maid's' sole tirewoman was Jim, a light-haired, blue- eyed, unconventional waterman." Jim and his master and an occasional shadowy friend spent from September 15th, 1890, to August 31st, 1891, on board "this trim-built wherry." It is difficult to say for what exact purpose. Jim suspected his master of being a notorious smuggler; the natives had several theories to account for his prolonged stay. One thought that he was doing " summat for the engineers," another that he was "land-measuring," a third " arter something, but he didn't know what," a fourth that he was a bird-collector. This last was a natural guess ; but Mr. Emerson takes care to tell us that he would as soon have to do with stuffed men and women as with stuffed birds. The bucolic mind cannot imagine an existence apart from some definite object of gain. Mr. R. L. Stevenson notes in his Inland Voyage that he and his companion were supposed to be canoeing for a wager. It is only to be expected that the weather plays a large part in these daily jottings. The little party started with early October frosts, then came a cold, stormy November, followed by the great snowstorms of December and the long frost that set the ' Maid of the Mist' fast in Oulton Broad from Decem- ber 11th to February 2nd, 1891. February was remarkable for the "regularity of its rime frosts with mists, beautiful hot mornings, followed by misty evenings—mild and calm, scarce a drop of rain." March was stormy and snowy, April he calls a "sad month," and notes : "It was indeed a wonder- ful year. The rivers seemed always either empty of water or full of ice." Mr. Emerson is evidently a great bird- lover ; he tells us of the tragedy of a robin and the domestic joys and sorrows of a sedge-warbler. Even at night, the birds are seldom quiet, the least atmospheric change seems to awaken them. As he sat all through one June night " eel-babbing," he noted that the night was filled with the cries of birds ; decoy-ducks called far away, geese cackled and cocks crowed, reed and sedge warblers sang in chorus. At earliest dawn snipe began drumming, red-legs whistling, and little reed-buntings called to each other over the marshes ; a =vie joined in soon after 2 o'clock, and ten minutes later a cuckoo called. The birds were very restless before the first snowfall in November; a kingfisher moped on the rudder-post, a mallard passed overhead, and flocks of Kentish crows, golden plover, and peewits flew about rest- lessly. An old poacher said he " smelt something a-coming." Then came hail-squalls, followed by snow, and "in half-an- hour the marshes were white, the landscape hushed, and the river running a silver thread through the glittering snow- carpet—for the moon bad risen, discovering flocks of snipe, field-fares, starlings, and peewits, feeding greedily in the newly-fallen snow." In spite of Arctic weather, none of the party suffered ; and when, at the beginning of the long frost, Mr. Emerson visited London, he found the houses "cold and stuffy," and promptly catching cold, returned to his more airy quarters in Oulton Broad, passing the rivers at Ipswich and Woodbridge frozen and piled with blocks of ice and snowdrifts. By day there were merry skating-parties ; by night the roar of the ice crashing and cracking at the far end of the broad sounded like thunder. Except a few hungry rooks and star- lings, they saw few birds during the long frost, rats came down to drink at the water round the boat, for the ice was 17 in. thick. At last the wind veered to the south-west, rain fell ; even the swans knew a change was coming ; "at bed-time the ice was resonant with a curious low music, the music of the thaw." The air grew warm, the sun shone, and the ice cleared away; and on February 2nd, "the reeds at the mouth of the broad were broken down and crushed, their tassels very black, and their stems bright yellow. On the marshes the larks were soaring as they do in spring, and the soft brown marshland was alive with the fittest birds that had survived this terrible winter." At length came spring, which Mr. Emerson calls the " decorative season of the year; " birds, insects, and frogs were its sure harbingers, the trees donned green veils, the river-banks and meadows were golden with gorse and silver with blackthorn.
The author aims at picturesque descriptions of the charac- teristic scenery about him, in the minute Dutch style. " No painter," he says, "has yet given us the faintest idea of the delicate colour of this district, nor ever will, for the effects are so evanescent and ethereal." He describes sunsets and sunrises, storms and spring days, a village wedding and a midnight funeral. The following is a good example of his word-painting :—" On July 4th we sailed to Hickling Staitbe. It was a marvellous morning; the broad appeared immense, and the sky a vast, silent, grey dome, with gleaming windows, through which streamed shafts of sunlight, burnishing thousands of swallows and swifts that chattered and hawked for flies so far above us that they were scarcely visible. This mighty dome seemed to be resting on a big grey border of trees, and the floor of this aerial palace was paved with calm opalescent water, upon which flocks of swans floated." Occa- sionally, he is less happy, and losing, as it were, his sense of perspective, transfers his similes from Nature to Art, painting effects that irresistibly recall the cheap paper-screens that represent Japanese art to a large part of the British public. For instance, we read of spring-time :—" Everywhere are to be found natural decorative panels, such as Hokusai might have composed; " and again, " we rowed round Hemaby Broad, and returned home, passing a large oak-tree on which we counted sixty wood-pigeons sitting moping in the misty air, and with their feathers spread out they formed a beautifully decorative picture from which Hokusai would have produced a gem." But even this is better than his chromo-lithographic style. "The sun went down behind the floods a blazing yellow ball, wrapping the black church and cottage in fiery splendour ; the whole sky was ablaze ; the foreground trees black as char- coal—Nature yelled in colour."
There are no adventures in the book ; the illustrations are so small and shadowy as to be almost unintelligible ; the con- versations recorded are pointless ; no one can accuse Jim of playing the part of " comic servant." An old man pointing to the smoke coming from the funnel, remarks :—" You're blowing.off steam, then.'—' Yes,' replied Jim, solemnly.— 'You've got a nice little ship here, then.'—' Yes,' repeated Jim ; ' she ain't a big 'un.'—' No." Our interest is reserved for the birds that flit incessantly backwards and forwards across the pages—ospreys, marsh-harriers, reed and sedge warblers—and for the broadsmen who quant slowly past the wherry, bait the pulks with liggers for pike, or bail-out great, catches of silver eels by the noisy weir in the dead of night. (For the benefit of the uninitiated, we will explain that " quanting" is punting or poling, and that a " pulk " is a puddle.) There is plenty of sport to be bad in those marshy lands in winter,—there are roach' and tench and pike in the broads and dykes, and snipe and wild-fowl on the banks. You may watch the first snowdrop lift her pale head, see the first swallow, and hear the first cuckoo. "Food is much more generally entertaining than scenery," says Mr. R. L. Steven- son ; and accordingly we learn how to fry pike a la juive, and to discriminate between plovers' and snipes' eggs. But every- thing depends upon the weather; according to Mr. Emerson : —" A really fine day is the greatest refiner I know. Far more culture is to be gained on such a day than touring through the picture-galleries of Europe." Unfortunately, such refine- ment and culture is not always to be had in this uncertain climate, and after a lamentably wet and cold summer, the cruise finally ended, in torrents of rain, on August 31st,—the last sound, as the whilom captain rode off, being the familiar note of the little sedge-warbler.
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