LONDON:
R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
SHELLS AND PEBBLES.
Children who were born, and have lived all their lives, in an inland county, scarcely know what is meant by “the sea.”
Henry Miller was one of these; he was eight years old, and though he had been taken, when quite a baby, to the sea-shore, he could not recollect anything about it.
Now, if you live near the sea, I dare say you may think: “Well, I should not like to live in an inland county, so far away from the sea as never to be able to walk on the beach, or to climb the rocks, or to pick up curious things on the shore. I would not be Henry Miller for the world.”
You will laugh, perhaps, at the way that Henry found out that the sea was salt; but, after all, he may now know some things about it which you do not; and, though he was not many hours on the shore, he may have picked up some curious things which you never saw in your life. Some other things he saw, which, I doubt not, you have seen, but he may have learnt something even about these which you do not know, so that what was told to him may be new to you also.
But if you too, like Henry Miller, live inland, you will be pleased to hear what he saw, though nothing happened to him different from what any little boy may meet with when visiting the sea-side. I am not going to tell you an amusing story, but only to write about things which any one who has eyes, and knows how to use them, may see for himself, and which any one who wishes to learn may read of in useful books, or find out by asking those who know better than himself.
Henry Miller and his father, then, went last winter to spend two or three days in a town on the south coast of England. The day after they arrived, they walked to some high ground, from which they could see the water. Henry had seen rivers and ponds large enough for ships to sail on, but what now lay before him was very different. A broad sheet of water, shut in on both sides by high land, stretched out so far that nothing could be seen beyond it. Whether the water rose till it met the sky, or the sky came down till it met the water, or whether they met each other half way, he could not make out. This sheet of water, his father told him, was called a bay. There were many ships in it, most of them lying quite still, riding at anchor, that is, each fastened by strong chains to an iron anchor, which the sailors had thrown over into the water, and which lay fixed by one of its flukes, or large teeth, to the bottom. Some of them had their masts broken, for there had been a dreadful storm a few days before, and they had sailed into this bay for shelter.