the hill above the village a short
column put up by M. de Caumont, commemorates the site upon which William is
believed to have inspected his forces previous to their embarkation.

It is a difficult matter to form any clear idea of the size of this army
for the estimates vary from 67,000 to 14,000, and there is also much
uncertainty as to the number of ships employed in transporting the host
across the channel. The lowest estimates suggest 696 vessels, and there is
every reason to believe that they were quite small. The building of so
large a fleet of even small boats between the winter and summer of 1066
must have employed an enormous crowd of men, and we may be justified in
picturing a very busy scene on the shores of this portion of the coast of
Normandy. Duke William's ship, which was named the _Mora_, had been
presented to him by his wife Mathilda, and most of the vessels had been
built and manned by the Norman barons and prelates, the Bishop of Bayeux
preparing no less than a hundred ships. The Conquest of England must have
almost been regarded as a holy crusade!

When the fleet left the mouth of the river Dives it did not make at once
for Pevensey Bay. The ships instead worked along the coast eastwards to the
Somme, where they waited until a south wind blew, then the vessels all left
the estuary each carrying a light, for it was almost dark. By the next
morning the white chalk of Beachy Head was in sight, and at nine o'clock
William had landed on English soil.

Close to Dives and in sight of the hill on which the Normans were
mustered, there is a small watering-place known as Houlgate-sur-mer. The
houses are charmingly situated among trees, and the place has in recent
years become known as one of those quiet resorts where princes and
princesses with their families may be seen enjoying the simple pleasures
of the seaside, _incognito_. This fact, of course, gets known to
enterprising journalists who come down and photograph these members of the
European royal families wherever they can get them in particularly
unconventional surroundings.

From Houlgate all the way to Trouville the country is wooded and hilly, and
in the hollows, where the timber-framed farms with their thatched roofs are
picturesquely arranged, there is much to attract the visitor who, wearying
of the gaiety of Trouville and its imitators along the coast, wishes to
find solitudes and natural surroundings.

CHAPTER XI

Some Notes on t