THE GREAT TIDE OF NOVEMBER, 1897. 357
numbers and variety of sea birds to be seen disporting themselves
thereon was quite remarkable.
We may confidently assert that this island is now irretriev-
ably lost. In time, when the proper feed has returned, we may
expect to see it filled with birds instead of cattle, and perhaps
become again, if protection is afforded, a breeding-place of our
precious Essex Black-headed Gulls. Such it originally was, as
the name implies.
Opposite to Pewit Island and across a deep and wide channel,
part of the mainland has suffered in the same way. This, too, I
well remember in 1895 as a very rich level of luxuriant pasturage.
An appalling sight now meets the eye. A great tidal current at
present flows in and out and over the marshes through a deep
fissure in the sea-wall, and the whole expanse is at low water
an enormous waste of black rotting mud and weeds.
Here, however, a new agency is at work. It appears that
this land, being remote and inaccessible, has been bought quite
recently by an Explosive and Gunpowder Company, as a suitable
locality for their works. Being a rich corporation, they are now
endeavouring to build a dam across the tidal rent in the walls ;
but whether their exertions will be permanently successful remains
to be seen. In the last week of August, 1898, when I visited the
spot, they had not yet accomplished the first step of filling in the
breach, and thus stemming the immense volume of water, which
at every tide surges through by the newly-formed channel.
While here I made the discovery that it was only 30 years
ago (apparently just before the slump in agricultural land) that
Pewit Island and the adjoining tracts of extensive saltings had
been reclaimed. Very few of those reclamations remain now.
The sea has resumed its supremacy over nearly all of them, and
if it was not for the Explosive Company, it would have been
allowed unhindered to devour another great portion which I have
just described.
All the other islands and marshes in and around Hamford
Waters have suffered in the same way, and the farm on Horsey
Island for the time being has been almost ruined. The embank-
ments there, however, and on Skippers or Holmes Island, have
by this time been made good again, and only the spoilt crops give
evidence of the recent severe floods.
The next spot of desolation, I visited, was the island of
Northey in the Blackwater. This was exactly in the same state as
the explosives company's land we have just left. Breaches in the