Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/471

Rh and Mautby were celebrated Duck Decoys, now no longer worked, and earlier still the Cormorants nested at Reedham.

"How changed is all this in the present day! From Acle to Yarmouth an excellent road runs straight across the marshes, whilst a railroad takes much the same course; and a second line of railway follows very nearly the same route as the old riverside track I spoke of earlier. Large sums are expended annually on drainage, and all through the summer, and often far into the autumn, the flat rich marshes are dotted over with cattle and sheep innumerable, luxuriating in the rich herbage."

From an ethnological point of view the men of North and East Norfolk are a vastly superior race to the mixed inhabitants of the Fens; they are silent, and, as might be expected from their lonely life on the sea or in the solitude of the marshes, very superstitious; but they are honest, brave as lions, quarrelsome over their cups like their Viking progenitors, but otherwise gentle as lambs. Not easy of approach, but once their confidence gained they are full of information, and with an abundance of ready wit expressed in a dialect peculiar to themselves. Many a time have I looked with admiration on these stalwart giants, and been struck with the easy grace of their bearing, their finely-cut features, crisp, curly, tawny-coloured hair and beards, the picture of manly beauty—the stuff that our Shovells, Minns, and Nelsons are made of—but such as are never bred in the "Fens."