NOVEMBER ON THE NORFOLK FLATS.
FROM Hunstanton at the eastern entrance of the Wash, to Foulness beyond Cromer, the Norfolk coast lies in a straight line of forty miles, running from west to east. This great jut of land faces due north ; no land or island lies between it and the Polar ice; it is the natural alighting ground of the Arctic wild-fowl, and the place of impact of all the forces of the Northern Sea, when the north wind rolls its waters westward from beyond Spitzbergen to the "Boston deeps." There is no part of the English coast more strange or more attractive than this line of shore, with its triple fringe of sandbanks and sandhills, and within them the limitless levels of what we venture to term the "Norfolk Flats ; " " Meshes " and " Meal-Meshes " are the local names. Marshes they may have been, marshes they may be again. But at present they are like nothing in Nature but them- selves, and the most general title is the least misleading. Wells —" Wells next the sea," to be accurate—is the central point of this great level fringe of the Norfolk coast. Its estuary, after running parallel with the old coast-line, like most other East-Anglian streams, cuts its way through the flats to the sand-banks and the sea. So much can be seen in the map— or chart—for the district is in that transition state which makes it optional to treat it either as land or water. To the left lies Lord Leicester's great estate of Holkham Hall, the paradise of game, with its line of marshes fully reclaimed; to the right lie the "flats," in the state to which Nature has brought them,—nine miles of level plain, between shore and sandhills, stretching further than the eye can see, beyond Sir Nicholas Bacon's ancient hall at StifEkey, to where the Tower of Blakeney is dimly seen in the misty, mellow November sky. This vast plain is "land in making,"—so nearly made that parts of it are only covered by the tide twelve times in the twelve months. The scene, to one emerging from the narrow street of Wells Town, through the screen of ware- houses on to the quay, is as surprising in colour as in form. Instead of sea or mud-flats, in front and to the right there stretches a brown, golden, and purple plain, bounded seawards by low sandhills, but stretching for ever east- wards, apparently as limitless as the Kirghiz steppe, cut only by the shining river, along whose channel— but there only, and not upon the plains—the tide carries banks and beds of bright and golden sand. But above the level of the river and of the sea, stretch everywhere the purple flats,—lovely, unique ; the moorlands of the sea. We say "moorlands" because the vegetation on this newly created land is among the most beautiful and most complete instances of natural mimicry and natural adaptation. It is
not submarine, like the ribbon-grass in the sea-lakes and sea- meadows, where the lobsters burrow. Nor is it the vegetation of the shore, or of the reclamation, with fine grass, thrift, and cup-moss. Neither has it the flora and grasses of the sand- hills,—sea-holly, marram-grass, and rushes. It has developed for itself an equivalent for each plant which blossoms on the moor-side. The place of the purple heather on the moors is taken on the flats by the sea-lavender. Its pale-mauve feathery blossoms cover thousands of acres, and, like the heather, it grows at all heights, from an inch in the wettest and lowest ground, to two feet on the higher and firmer soil. In winter the flowers turn purple-brown, like the heather-bells ; the leaves, grey above and pink below, are less in evidence, and the effect is that of old heather, in sheet beyond sheet of misty purple. Amongst the sea-lavender is another plant— called 'crab-grass" by the natives, which corresponds to the whortleberries of the moor. In autumn its deciduous leaves fall, and are washed up by the tide in lines and layers along the sides of the creeks and streams. In place of furze or juniper, a third plant, with dark-green fleshy leaves, grows oa every knoll or bank above the level of the high spring- t cies. It can change its habit of growth to suit the soil, ert:ping like a stonecrop on barren grounds, or rising into a bushy shrub, with deep roots and tough branches, where it escapes the visitation of the tide ; its seeds have floated across the river and covered the tide-line of a new embank- ment with its welcome growth. Thus Nature is covering the new-made land with vegetable soil, filling its alluvial surface with plant, leaf, and fibre, and knitting the whole together in resistance to the ever-decreasing tides. Here is no weltering mud or slimy marsh, but new land, reclaimed on the largest scale by natural forces. The explorer of the flats finds there two waters,—the waters of the creeks, which ebb and flaw with the tide, and the surface waters, left by the highest "springs" or by rain. The latter are a feature peculiar to these fiats; neat pools set in the lavender jangle, of a uniform depth of from 6 in. to 9 in., with banks neatly edged with grass. The grass borders are always cropped short by the flocks of sheep driven on to feed when the low- tides begin, and are also patted fiat by the feet of ducks, gulls, and plovers, which wash in the half-fresh pools. These lakelets are almost bare of marine life. In summer they are dried up, and after the autumn tides and rains the sun-cracks still score the bottom.
The characteristic bird of the wetter tracts of flats is the hooded crow. In the first easterly gales of autumn, they flock across the North Sea in hundreds and thousands, from Norway and the Baltic. "Denchmen " (Danish men) is their local name ; and everywhere on the shore, sand-hills, and inner flats, their heavy forms and hoarse voices are seen and heard. They haunt especially the bridges across the creeks; these are guarded by low rails, high enough to prevent the crowding sheep from pushing each other into the stream below, but never laid at a much greater height than a man's knee. On these the " Denchmen " sit, cracking mussels on the posts, or croaking to companions on a neighbouring bridge. Partly from the arrangement of the grey hood, partly from their " bunched-up " attitudes, they have then a curious likeness to vultures when sitting at rest, with no other bird near as a standard of size, on the wide expanse.
Towards evening, the wild-fowl swarm down from their sanctuary in the Holkham fields, lakes, and marshes, on to this great stretch of flats. Flocks of peewits come floating in from the plough-lands, curlews and redshanks from the outer sands and mud, golden-plovers, ringed-plovers, ducks, teal, widgeon, are all on the move for late dinner in the splashes and creeks and lavender-beds of this nine-mile table of food. Only the wild-geese, which have been feeding on Lord Leicester's seed, corn, and clover all day, fly out to their sand- bank in the sea ; and if they are not caught in the " goose- nets " there set up, sleep like Christians till sunrise.
Waiting for the " flight " on the seaward side of the fiats is the natural sequence to a November day at Wells. The way lies across the river, over acres of shining sand, and over miles of sand-hills, held together by the " marram " grass,—a waste of rabbit-warren, pebble-banks, and rushes. There, creeping among the shingles, and hardly visible on the parti- ,eoloured ground, were a flock of snow-buntings, tame and confiding, the pets and song-birds of explorers in the Polar isms, and newly arrived from their nesting-ground beyond the Arctic circle. The whole flock rose at once, and wheeled, twist.- jag like dunlins or plovers, rather than first-cousins of the buntings and yellow-hammers of the English lanes. On the left, out at sea, stretching for miles parallel to the dunes, lies an enormous sandbank, the work of centuries of North Sea gales, and the main protection of the low coast from the ocean. On it the wild-geese were just alighting from the inland fields, and from the sea beyond a peregrine falcon on passage came flying inland, bound for Holkham woods. Partridges breed in this isolated tract of sand-hills, and as the writer and an attendant " gunner " trod through the scrub and shingle, the coveys rose and flew calling, to feedi with the snipe and plover in the lavender-beds on the drier parts of the plain. As night fell, the flats were alive with fowl, the plovers, curlews, and redshanks flicking through the. gloom, ever and again crossing the line of dull, red sky to the west, while the lights of the town kindled and shone far away across the plain. In the open weather the wild-ducks prefer to remain in the fresh-water marshes of Holkham ; but though none came to their best-known haunts, the croak of the mallards could be heard as they paddled and fed in the creeks by the main body of the estuary waters. Then as the stars came out, the journey home began, the native fowler leading the way with unerring tread across the darkness of the marsh. When the wet, firm sands were reached, in each footprint shone phosphorous sparks, leaving trails of pale fire, and even the waters of the pools standing in the sand flickered with light when the surface was ruffled by the hand. The last bird seen upon the flats was a short-eared owl,. hunting in the gloom, by the piles and jetties of the harbour. quay.
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