[Illustration: THE MEDWAY, MAIDSTONE, KENT]
world's orbit than the other; for the famous golf links with which Sandwich has again, in widely different fashion, made its name familiar throughout England, affect the old town itself but little. A walk now runs along the old walls within which the beautiful Norman tower of St. Clement's Church rises above the low roofs. Open spaces and gardens lie easily about in the little town which, as an unchanged survival from Tudor or Mediæval times, has no equal in England. Before the Norman Conquest it was the chief port of the nation. As late as 1446 its harbour, now dry land, is described by a German ambassador as "wonderful, the resort of ships of all sizes from all parts of Europe."
By the water-gate at the entrance to the old bridge over the Stour is the Barbican. But the behaviour of the Stour as it draws towards the sea under present conditions is the most remarkable; for when within half a mile of the south end of Pegwell Bay opposite Ramsgate it bends suddenly southward, runs for 3 or 4 miles parallel with the east coast to Sandwich, and then doubles back upon the same course to meet the sea at the spot where its original intention of ending its career seems obviously to have been. Close to its mouth upon the other side is the shingle spit of Ebbsfleet, where not merely St. Augustine, but more than a century earlier Hengist and Horsa, first planted their pagan feet upon British soil.
On the very banks of the river are the long embankments still strewn with tiles and pottery, marking the site of the Roman Rutupium, a station of sufficient importance to be the headquarters of the Second Legion in the third century, or, in other words, of a garrison of about 8000 men. And in scarcely any part of England has such a mass of coins been recovered, while on the rising ground the graves of the early Saxon settlers and invaders lie thick amid the chalk. But the mouth of the Stour, where the action of the sea alone during the long centuries since Roman times affords in itself a fascinating subject, is so rich besides in human memories that I should be in danger of slipping too deeply into the maritime aspect of English rivers, which I have described as having no immediate concern with the nature of this book. Still, it must be admitted, though less with the Kentish than the Sussex rivers, that their real interests and their physical attractions only begin with the first breath of the sea.