I determined to strike inland and gain the high ground known as the Langdon Hills. I could not see this ridge on account of the low visibility. Knowing the difficulty of progress in a land of ditches, I did not take the most direct track, but one which at last brought me out to a road by Stanford-le-Hope. A sudden incline in the road, very noticeable in so level a country, took me into the midst of Horndon-on-the-Hill, and I found myself at the Bell, a coaching inn of long ago, still retaining in its quaint courtyard, which I have sketched for you here, the atmosphere of coaching days and coaching ways. Time was when mine host of the Bell drove his own coach daily to Aldgate and back. Two miles, and I am at the foot of Langdon Hills, as the mist suddenly disperses. After the level expanses of land, when the eye of the traveller is hungry for a hill, they do, indeed, appear as mountains. From the top, which is crowned with pine and larch, a glorious view spreads out. The steep, fern-carpeted woodlands fall away to marshland and the broad Thames, and beyond this, dimly seen, the blueness of the hills of Kent. Mountnessing, for all its brave name, is a summit 100 feet short of this hill, which tops 378. He who stands on the look-out on the roof of the Crown Inn is over 400 feet above the sea and on the highest point in Essex. Danbury, near Chelmsford, however, claims the same height. The southern slopes of the hills abound in badgers, and the introduction of two of these animals, the English equivalent of the bear, into my picture is not merely an artist's licence. By the way, the length of a full-grown badger is 2 feet 6 inches without its tail. On a clear day there is a wonderful prospect from here— the sea towards the east, and south and west the busy river, like a great glittering snake, stretching its sinuous length to London. There go the ships liners and tramps, barges and schooners, wood-boats from the frozen north, orange-boats from the torrid south, colliers, fish-carriers, barques and sailormen from the roaring forties, mostly flying the red ensign, ambassadors of our far-flung lines of commerce. and fro, to and fro upon the earth, between London and the world and between the world and London-the warp and woof of an Empire's weaving. To |