e. For my paternal forbears are
really of Cornish extraction--a corner of our little Island to which
attaches all the romantic aroma of the men, who, in defence of
England, "swept the Spanish Main," and so long successfully singed the
Bang of Spain's beard, men whose exploits never fail to stir the best
blood of Englishmen, and among whom my direct ancestors had the
privilege of playing no undistinguished part. On the other hand, my
visits thither have--romance aside--convinced me that the restricted
foreshore and the precipitous cliffs are a handicap to the development
of youth, compared with the broad expanses of tempting sands, which
are after all associated with another kinsman, whose songs have helped
to make them famous, Charles Kingsley.

My mother was born in India, her father being a colonel of many
campaigns, and her brother an engineer officer in charge during the
siege of Lucknow till relieved by Sir Henry Havelock. At the first
Delhi Durbar no less than forty-eight of my cousins met, all being
officers either of the Indian military or civil service.

To the modern progressive mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block.
Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation,
and converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy,
second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New
World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds its
clearing-house under the eternal, assertive smoke clouds which
camouflage the miles of throbbing docks and slums called
Liverpool--little more than a dozen miles distant. But the
heather-clad hills of Heswall, and the old red sandstone ridge, which
form the ancient borough of the "Hundred of Wirral," afford an
efficient shelter from the insistent taint of out-of-the-worldness.

Every inch of the Sands of Dee were dear to me. I learned to know
their every bank and gutter. Away beyond them there was a mystery in
the blue hills of the Welsh shore, only cut off from us children in
reality by the narrow, rapid water of the channel we called the Deep.
Yet they seemed so high and so far away. The people there spoke a
different language from ours, and all their instincts seemed
diverse. Our humble neighbours lived by the seafaring genius which we
ourselves loved so much. They made their living from the fisheries of
the river mouth; and scores of times we children would slip away, and
spend the day and night with them in their boats.

[I