GORLESTON PIER.
These, with a few timber-laden steamers from Norway—their shifted cargoes, sloping decks, and fearfully-listed hulls attesting often to the fury of the Baltic gales—are the only link connecting us with the far distant world of commerce to which we once belonged. These, and—I must not forget the great morning and evening events of our drowsy days—the two big passenger steamers that set out before breakfast for Clacton and London, and the two that heavily swing into the narrow channel at dusk, with ever fresh wonder to our awakened and densely assembled holiday population.
When the wind is northerly we shift over to the south side of our pier and face the Gorleston bay and beach. Lo, what a transformation! No trace of the workaday world remains. A scene of pure enchantment, of sunny brightness and rest.
A semicircle of crumbling sandcliffs forms the background of the bay; and from the verge of a narrow streak of yellow sand, without a pebble, stretches the green, the blue, the yellow sea—nestling in its intimate nooks, splashing against the wooden promenade, or dashing with imposing affectation of fierceness over our promiscuously scattered breakwaters of granite.
We have one hotel, incongruously conspicuous on the neck of ground dividing sea from river at the pier's base; but we have no theatres, no music-halls, no punch-and-judy show, no niggers, no "amusements" (!!!) of any sort. We have a few bathing-machines upon the beach, and a vast picturesque camp of bathing-tents, but not any other sign of commercial enterprise. There is no esplanade to swagger on; no electric lights to set off our beauties by night; no illumination over all the "promenade" and mignonette gardens and pier after sunset, except the light of the moon and stars.
We can see the garish lights of Yahoo Yarmouth, flaunting through the night, two miles away; but, if we can help it, we don't.