I walked partly by road, partly along the shore about 14 miles, a short distance, but the way was very heavy and the day hot. About half-way were some lovely pine woods with mossy floor and May-flowers, and I lay there for lunch. Violets of many kinds had been the chief, almost I might say the only, wild flower we had noted hitherto, but here were several others. Daisies, like our home ones, only bigger and _purple_; a lovely intense blue sedum, and a small shrub, with crimson flowers, the Japonica, were the most striking and beautiful of those I noticed.
The last 4 or 5 miles lay along a curious shore. A greater contrast to that of my last night’s lodging could not be imagined. The whole coast was flat for several miles inland, and the beach was a great stretch of dark grey sand with the small beginnings of dunes here and there, and must have been more than a mile in width. Along its desolate extent were dotted little houses, grey as the sand, and built with their roofs touching the ground on two sides!--these sides presumably being those of the prevailing winds. They looked as though the full tide should sweep over them, the beach behind them appeared so unreclaimed, but they seem to have stood there for long, some were almost buried under the piled-up sand. I can give no idea of the vastness and the desolation of this view. The houses seemed mere hummocks in the wilderness, for under the eaves a man can hardly stand upright, and the boats look almost as big as the houses. There is absolutely no vegetation near them, only, at the edge of the dunes, a few small pine trees venture farther out than anything, but the little ones run grave risks of being buried. I had intended to spend the night at Jehinomiya, but found it lies a mile from the coast, so when I found groves of pine trees, a broad river, with a tiny village and a lot of country houses of the summer-house type, I put up at the inn, which is not bad. The hamlet is called Sendocre, and the inn looks out over a broad river and into deep groves of pine. The frogs are all making as much noise as they can with their watchman’s rattle-like voices, but otherwise there is perfect peace; everything is in complete contrast to last night’s cliff-perched, spray-splashed, storm-tossed house.