S you step out of the railway carriage that has brought you at leisurely speed to Deal, you cannot help thinking of another arrival that, at the time, created even more attention on the part of the inhabitants. You, bent on a visit to the genial Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, arrive from landward.
Julius Cæsar
came by sea; And yet, so narrow is the world, and so recurrent its movements, you both arrive at the same town!
As you walk down Beach Street, reading the Commentaries, which you have brought down in your coat-tail pocket, you recognise the "plain and open shore" which Cæsar describes as being reached after passing the cliffs of Dover.
Here he landed, now many years ago, and your host who, eager for your coming, even now stands on the top of the great round tower that dominates his castle-home, can look upon the very spot on which the Conqueror stepped ashore. Presently he takes you to see the marks of the intrenchment, plainly visible to this day. With heightened colour and dramatic gesture the belted Earl tells how, on the fourth night after the arrival of the Roman fleet, that great storm which ever comes to Britain's aid in such emergencies, arose, wrecking J. Cæsar's galleys, and driving them far up the shingly beach.
"What's to be done now?" Cæsar's quartermaster asked.
"Done?" said J. Cæsar in the colloquial Latin of the day. "Why, haul the fleet up on to the beach."
So they brought the ships ashore; Cæsar intrenched them within a camp, and remained there till the weather improved. Your host presses upon your acceptance a handful of soil from the tumuli.
"Cæsar's foot may have pressed it," he says, as you, with a perhaps exaggerated appearance of pleasurable interest, pocket the dust, being careful to turn your pocket inside out as soon as you are beyond sight of the castle on your homeward way.