NORFOLK BROADS AND RIVERS.
To many, the wild solitudes of marsh and mere, the rivers and ‘broads’ of Norfolk, are almost as entirely unknown as the arid solitudes of the unexplored Australian deserts. Yet there are few spots where the holiday-seeker can find more easily and cheaply relaxation and enjoyment than in these vast reedy wildernesses of East Anglia. Mr G. Christopher Davies, in his interesting book, Norfolk Broads and Rivers (Blackwood and Sons), paints in a graphic manner the engrossing charm of these placid inland seas, with their reedy margins shimmering softly green in the gray morning mists, or flushing into warm tints of beauty beneath the smile of sunset. A stranger is apt to fancy that marsh scenery is uninteresting; but the very reverse is the case; it has a beauty of its own, which is seldom even monotonous, so incessant is the play of sunshine and shadow over the wide sedgy flats and shallows. The marsh vegetation is luxuriant, even tropical in some of the more sheltered nooks among the reeds; grasses are abundant, and so are flowers, which often grow in broad patches, and warm with vivid gleams of colour the low-toned landscape. In May and June, the banks are gay with the vivid gold of the yellow iris and marsh buttercup; then come the crimson glow of the ragged-robin, the delicate blue of the forget-me-not, the deep purple flush of the loosestrife, and the creamy white of the water-lilies, which spread till they almost cover the shallow bays with their broad glossy leaves and shining cups of white and gold.
The reedy capes and bays, the sedgy islets, with the green park lands and wooded glades beyond, give an irresistible charm to these broads, which is enhanced by the soft stillness of their utter solitude and loneliness. The passing clouds and rising wind give a certain motion and variety to the great marsh plain; but nothing speaks of the busy world beyond save the white sail of a solitary yacht, or the rich red-brown canvas of a gliding wherry; and not a sound falls on the listening ear except the monotonous measured plash of the oars or the wild scream of the startled waterfowl. These wide watery plains, interesting at all seasons, are often extremely beautiful at sunrise and sunset. Then gorgeous sky-tints of gold and crimson are flashed back from the wide mirror-like expanse of the still lagoons with a vivid glow of colouring which is almost painful in its intensity. The great forests of reeds gleam like bundles of spears tipped with lambent flame, and the patches of feathery grasses and flowers are lit up with weird glimmers of rose-red and gold, glorious but evanescent. Light gray mists float up from the marshy hollows, mellowing the sunset glow with an indistinct quivering haze, which, mirage-like, cheats the wondering gazer with visions of ships and islands and wooded knolls, which he will search for in vain on the morrow.
A ‘broad’ is a term peculiar to Norfolk; it means the broadening out of the rivers into lakes, which is very common all over the marsh district. These broads abound in fish, and afford capital sport to the angler. Bream and roach are abundant; and carp, although not so plentiful, are to be found, and grow to a large size. The rudd, or red-eye, a beautiful active fish, is very abundant; and few things are more enjoyable, when the weather is good and the fish rise easily, than a day’s rudd-fishing on the broads. The paying fish of these marsh meres are, however, the pike and eel; and a great number of fishermen live by eel-fishing. Eels are netted, speared, and caught in eel-pots; and after a flood, when eels are what is called ‘on the move,’ a single fisherman will often catch as many as four or five stone-weight in a night.
The pike is, however, Mr Davies says, ‘the monarch of the Norfolk waters, and at one time was supremely abundant; but the natives harried him to their utmost.’ The best way to enjoy pike-fishing and the scenery of the broads is to take an excursion for a few days in a small yacht, either alone or with a companion. Human habitations are few and far between on the banks of the sluggish rivers; but every now and then one comes upon a cluster of picturesque old-world buildings, or an ancient primitive village, with small houses furnished with quaint dormer windows and fantastic gables, and here and there a gray old church, finely set down on a rising ground amid a clump of ancient spreading elms. Beyond the broad belt of reeds that fringe the water are green meadows, dotted with red-and-white cattle, whose effect from an artistic point of view is very good, but from an angler’s standpoint is sometimes rather trying, as there is generally a bull, and as often as not he is a vicious and combative specimen of the bovine tribe. On this red-letter day, however, even the inevitable bull was quiet, and our author was left undisturbed to thread his way, on a soft warm afternoon, through the glowing beauties of an October landscape. In the marshes, all the seasons have their peculiar glory; but the autumnal colouring stands out with a vivid distinctness unknown elsewhere. Beyond the screen of reeds, a belt of wood fringes the river-bank—beech, alder, and elm, each tree glowing with its own autumnal tint of red or yellow or russet brown.
Mr Davies, who had seldom the luck to go a-fishing when pike were on the move, had two special pools in view, on one or both of which he relied to fill his basket. Around the first of these the margin was very soft and wet, and he was daintily picking his steps from one tussock of grass to another, when whiz went a wild-duck from the sedges, and in a moment he was floundering up to the knees in mud. There were, however, pike in the pool when he reached it—great sluggish beauties, lazily lying under the gleaming, swaying leaves of the water-lilies. For once, he was in luck, to use his own words: ‘As our bait traversed the deep back-water, we felt the indescribable thrill, or rather shock, which proceeds from a decided run, and a three-pound pike fights as gamely as a ten-pounder.’ The small fish caught, he trudged on in the waning afternoon sunshine to the second pool; startling a kingfisher, which flashed out of the reeds behind him like a veritable gem of living colour. The second pool was closely fringed with trees and bushes, the dusk-red gold of whose leaves was mirrored in its placid depths; while every few minutes a crisp leaf-hail dropped in the level sunshine like Danaë’s fabled showers of gold. Pike, however, and not artistic effects, were for the moment in our author’s eye, and pike he was sure there were, lurking under the mass of leaves which covered the gleaming waters of the pool. ‘Seizing the exact moment when there was a clear track across the leaf-strewn water, we cast our bait, and worked it with every sense agog with expectation. Ah! there is a welcome check at last. We strike hard, and find that we are fast in a good-sized fish.’ Up and down, round and round, he goes, floundering wildly about, now in one direction, now in another. There is a pause of excited uncertainty, during which the line becomes heavily clogged with leaves. To have, or not to have, the scaly monarch of the silent pool? that is the question. It was ticklish work for a few minutes; but at last he turned suddenly on his side, and was towed into the shallow below, and landed in triumph.
Pike in these broads sometimes attain a great size, and have been taken weighing between thirty and forty pounds. The reeds, which with their bright green and purple fringes form such a prominent feature in the marsh scenery, are yearly cut and gathered, and are a really valuable crop. They are used for thatching, making fences, and supporting plaster-work. Whittlesea Mere, before it was drained, produced annually a thousand bundles of reeds, which were sold at one pound per bundle. The men forsake all their other avocations to join in the reed-harvest, which yields them while it lasts very good wages.
On some of the broads there is still to be seen an industry fast falling into decay—decoys with decoy ducks and dogs. These require to be worked with the utmost silence and caution. One winter-night in 1881 Mr Davies inspected in company with the keeper the decoy at Fritton Broad. The night was cold and dark, and each of the men had to carry a piece of smouldering turf in his hand to destroy the human scent, which would otherwise have alarmed the wary ducks. This made their eyes water; and the decoy-dog, a large red retriever, being in high spirits, insisted on tripping them up repeatedly, as they crawled along in the darkness bent almost double. The interest of the sight, however, when at length they reached the decoy, fully made up for these petty discomforts. Peeping through an eyehole, a flock of teal were to be seen paddling about quite close to them; while beyond these were several decoy-ducks, and beyond these again a large flock of mallards. The decoy-ducks are trained to come for food whenever they see the dog or hear a whistle from the decoy-man. The dog now showed himself obedient to a sign from his master, and in an instant every head among the teal was up, and every bright shy eye twinkling with pleased curiosity. Impelled by curiosity, they slowly swim towards the dog, which, slowly retiring, leads them towards the mouth of the decoy-pipe, showing himself at intervals till they were well within it. The keeper then ran silently to the mouth of the pipe, and waving his handkerchief, forced them, frightened and reluctant, to flutter forward into the tunnel. He then detached a hoop from the grooves, gave it a twist, and secured them by cutting off their return. This seemed the last act of the drama, and Mr Davies took the opportunity to straighten his back, which was aching dreadfully, ‘immediately there was a rush of wings, and the flock of mallards left the decoy. “There, now, you ha’ done it!” exclaimed the keeper excitedly. “All them mallards were following the dog into the pipe, and we could ha’ got a second lot.” We expressed our sorrow in becoming terms, and watched the very expeditious way in which he extracted the birds from the tunnel net, wrung their necks, and flung them into a heap.’ Few places now are suitable for decoys, for even life in the marshes is not so quiet as it used to be.
In all these broads and meres and the rivers which intersect them, bird-life abounds, and an almost incredible number of eggs are collected for the market, every egg which resembles a plover’s being collected and sold as such. Of the bird-dwellers in the marshes, herons are the most conspicuous; bitterns were also once common, but there are now few of them, and their singular booming cry is but seldom heard. The great crested grebe is still plentiful; but the ruff, which was once very abundant, is now seldom seen. Of the smaller birds, the graceful bearded tit has become very rare; but willow-wrens and reed-buntings, jays, and cuckoos and king-fishers find their respective habitats.
There are swans to be found all over the broads, particularly on the river Yare; but they are not plentiful anywhere. A pair take possession of a particular portion of the river, and defend their proprietary rights in it with the utmost fierceness. They will not suffer the intrusion of any other swans, and will very often attack human beings, if they see any reasonable prospect of success. ‘A swan will not exactly attack a wherry or even a pleasure-boat; but a canoe comes within his capacity; and once while rowing down the river Yare in our small canvas jolly-boat, a cock-swan chased us for half a mile, and threatened every moment to drive his beak through the canvas.’
The appearance of the country around these broads has changed very much during the last half-century, and this change is still going on. Wherever it seems possible, drainage-works are attempted and carried out; and acres upon acres of valuable meadow-land have been and are in process of being reclaimed from the marsh. Some of these flat green meadows, which a century back were sodden quagmires covered with stagnant water, now pasture large herds of cattle, and are let at four pounds an acre for grazing purposes. At the outlet of the drains into the river, drainage windmills are erected of every size and shape, from the brick tower to the skeleton wooden erection painted a brilliant red or green. These windmills form a striking and picturesque addition to the background of a marsh picture, but, like the decoys, they will soon be a thing of the past, as they are now beginning to be superseded by steam, which does the work required much more efficiently and quickly.
Otters abound in the pathless forests of reeds which fringe the meres, and are often bold and familiar. One night while sleeping on board his yacht at Cantley, Mr Davies was awakened by the noise of something heavy jumping on board. The boat rocked violently, and the disturbance was so sudden and inexplicable, that he got up just in time to see a large dark object plunge overboard and disappear. On striking a light, the broad and unmistakable track of an otter, was visible, imprinted wherever his moist feet had been, and that seemed to be everywhere, for he had evidently made a round in search of something eatable.
The whole marsh district is subject to destructive floods and high tides, which rush up the rivers, driving back the fresh water and destroying vast quantities of fish. The whole coast also suffers much from sea-breaches. ‘Between Winterton and Waxham, hard by Hornsea Mere, the only barrier between sea and lake is a line of what are called “miel” banks, which are simply banks of sand held together by marum grasses. Upon this marum grass, which grows in the loosest sand, the welfare of a wide district depends. In 1781, there were many breaches of the sea between Waxham and Winterton, so that every tide the salt water and sands destroyed the marshes and the fish in the broads and river; and if the wind blew briskly from the north-west, by which the quantity of water in the North Sea was largely increased from the Atlantic, the salt water drowned all the low country even as far as Norwich.’ In the following eight years, the breaches were seriously widened, the largest being two hundred yards in width, through which a vast body of water poured.
In a country so open, wind-storms are very frequent; and what are called ‘Rodges blasts,’ rotatory whirlwinds, often occasion great damage, wrecking the windmills, uprooting trees, convulsing the grasses, and lifting the reed-stacks high into the air. Will-o’-the-wisps, once very common, are now comparatively rare, having been exorcised by drainage. Mr Davies only once saw one at Hickling over a wet bit of meadow. ‘The sportive fiend that haunts the mead’ appeared to him as a small flickering phosphorescent light faintly visible in the darkness.
Another peculiar and uncomfortable phenomenon of the marshes is the water-eynd or sea-smoke, which, rolling up from the ocean, covers the whole landscape with a dense watery vapour, shutting out the placid beauty of lagoon and mere, and reed-bed and coppice, and putting an end to all pleasure, till the sun shines out again in a blaze of glory, bathing the drenched flats in a warm flush of colour. The reeds on the wide margins of the meres then quiver in the sunlight, which shimmers down into their dark-green recesses; the still water gleams in the shallow bays, where the cattle stand knee deep; and the warm air is redolent of the odour of meadow-sweet and thyme: all is motion and colour and fragrance, as if Nature were visibly rejoicing at having got quit of the uncomfortable bath of the water-eynd.