Divides the isle of Grean from All-hallows, on the main land, and from the cliff marshes.
Who would believe while beholding these scenes of pleasure before us, that for six months in the year the shores of this hundred (Hoo) were only to be explored by the amphibious; that the sun is seldom seen for the fog, and that every creature in love with life, flies the swamps of Hoo, preferring any station to its ague dealing vapours, its fenny filth, and muddy flats; a station, that during the winter season is destitute of every comfort, but fine eels, luscious flounders, smuggled brandy, Holland’s gin, and sea-coal fire. We will here relate a whimsical circumstance that once took place in this neighbourhood while we were of the party.
It was at that time of the year when nature seems to sicken at her own infirmities, we think it was in the month of November, we were bound to Sheerness, but the fog coming on so gloomily that no man could discover his hand a yard before him, our waterman, whether by design or accident we cannot pretend to say, mistook the Thames, and rowed up the Yenlet creek. After a long, cold, and stubborn pull, protesting at the time he had never (man or boy) seen any thing so dismal, he landed us near Saint Mary’s, that church yonder, with the very lofty and white spire, and then led us to an alehouse, the sign of which he called the Red Cock and Cucumber, and the aleman he hailed by the merry name of
John Piper,
And a very pleasant fellow John turned out to be; if he was a little hyperbolical, his manner sufficiently atoned for the transgression. The gloom of the day was soon forgotten, and the stench arising from filthy swamps less regarded. At our entrance we complained heavily of the insupportable cloud with which we had been enveloped.
“Ha! ha! ha!” sang out the landlord, “to be sure it is too thick to be eaten with a spoon, and too thin to be cut with a knife, but it is not so intolerable as a scolding wife, or a hungry lawyer.”
“Curse the fog,” cried our waterman,
“Bless the fog,” answered our landlord, “for it has made a man of me for life.”
“How do you make that appear?” we requested to know.
“Set you down, sir, by a good sea-coal fire, for we pay no pool duties here, take your grog merrily, and I’ll tell you all about it presently,” rejoined the tapster, when drawing a wooden stool towards us, while his wife was preparing the bowl, John Piper thus began:—