Off the old and obliterated3 south-eastern promontory4 of our island, where the land of Kent shelved almost imperceptibly into the Wantsum Strait, Ruim Island—the Holm of the Headland—stood out with its white wall of broken cliffs into the German Sea. The greater part of it consisted of gorse-clad chalk down, the last subsiding5 spur of that great upland range which, starting from the central boss of Salisbury Plain, runs right across the face of Surrey and Kent, and, bifurcating6 near Canterbury, falls sheer into the sea at the end of either fork by Ramsgate or Dover. But in earlier days Ruim Isle was not joined as now by flats and marshes7 to the adjacent mainland; the chalk dipped under the open Wantsum Strait, much as the chalk of Hampshire dips to-day under the Solent Sea, and reappeared again on the other side in the Thanet Downs, as it reappears in the Isle of Wight at the ridge9 of St. Boniface and the central hills about Newport and Carisbrooke. For now the murder indeed is out, and you have discovered already that Ruim—his dim, mysterious Ruim—is only just the commonplace, vulgarized Isle of Thanet.
Still, it is not without cause that I have ventured to call it by that strange and now almost forgotten old-world name. There is reason, we know, in the roasting of eggs, and, if I have gone out of my way to introduce the ancient isle to you by its title of Ruim, it is in order that we might start clear of the odour of tea and shrimps11, the artificial niggers, and cheap excursionists, that the name of Thanet brings up most prominently at the present day before the travelled mind of the modern Londoner. I want to carry you back to a time when Ramsgate was still but a green gap in the long line of chalk cliff, and Margate but the chine of a little trickling12 streamlet that tumbled seaward over the undesecrated sands; when a broad arm of the sea still cut off Westgate from the Reculver cliffs, and when the tide swept unopposed four times a day over the submerged sands of Minster Level. You must think of Thanet as then greatly resembling Wight in geographical13 features, and the Wantsum as the equivalent of the Solent Sea.
In the very earliest period of our history, before ever the existing names had been given at all to the towns or villages—nay, when the towns and villages themselves were not—Ruim was already a noteworthy island. For there is now very little doubt indeed that Thanet is the Ictis or 'Channel Island' to which Cornish tin was conveyed across Britain for shipment to the continent. The great harbour of Britain was then the Wantsum Sea, known afterwards as the Rutupine Port, and later still as Sandwich Haven14. To that port came Gaulish and Phoenician vessels15, or possibly even at times some belated Phoc?an galley16 from Massilia. But the trade in tin was one of immense antiquity17, long antedating18 these almost modern commercial nations: for tin is a necessary component19 of bronze, and the bronze age of Europe was entirely20 dependent for its supply of that all-important metal upon the Cornish mines. From a very early date, therefore, we may be sure that ingots of tin were exported by this route to the continent, and then transported overland by the Rhone valley to the shores of the Mediterranean21.
The tin road, to give it its more proper name, followed the crest22 of the Hog's Back and the Guildford downs, crossing the various rivers at spots whose very names still attest23 the ancient passages—the Wey at Shalford, the Mole24 at Burford, the Medway at Aylesford, and the Wantsum Strait at Wade25, in which last I seem to hear the dim echo to this day of the Roman Vada. Ruim itself, as less liable to attack than an inland place, formed the dep?t for the tin trade, and the ingots were no doubt shipped near the site of Richborough. We may regard it, in fact, as a sort of prehistoric Hong-Kong or Zanzibar, a trading island, where merchants might traffic at ease with the shy and suspicious islanders.
Ruim at that time must have consisted almost entirely of open down, sloping upward from the tidal Wantsum, and extending a little farther out to sea than at the present moment. Pegwell Bay was then a wide sea-mouth; Sandwich flats did not yet exist; and the Stour itself fell into the Wantsum Strait at the place which still bears the historic name of Stourmouth. Round the outer coast only a few houseless gaps marked the spots where 'long lines of cliff, breaking, had left a chasm'—the gaps that afterwards bore the familiar names of Ramsgate, that is to say Ruim's Gate, or 'the Door of Thanet;' Margate, that is to say, Mere27 Gate, the gap of the mere (Kentish for a brook), Broadstairs, Kingsgate, Newgate, and Westgate. The present condition of Dumpton Gap (minus the telegraph) will give some idea of what these Gates looked like in their earliest days; only, instead of seeing the cultivated down, we must imagine it wildly clad with prim28?val undergrowth of yew29 and juniper, like the beautiful tangled30 district near Guildford, still known as Fairyland. Thanet is now all sea-front—it turns its face, freckled31 with summer resorts, towards the open German Ocean. Ruim had then no sea-front at all, save the bare and inaccessible32 white cliffs; it turned, such as it was, not toward the sea, but toward the navigable Wantsum. Even until late in the middle ages Minster was the most important place in the whole island; and after it ranked Monkton, St. Nicholas, and Birchington—villages, all of them, on the flat western slope. The growth in importance of the seaward escarpment dates only from the days when Thanet became practically a London suburb.
With the Roman invasion Ruim saw a new epoch34 begin. A great organization took hold of Britain. Roads were made and colonies established. Verulam and Camulodun gave place in part as centres of life and trade to York and London. Even in the native days, I believe, the Thames must always have been a great commercial focus, and the Pool by Tower Hill must always have been what Bede called it many centuries later, 'a mart of many nations.' But under the Romans London grew into a considerable city; and as the regular sea highway to the Thames lay through the Wantsum, in the rear of Thanet, that strip of estuary35 became of immense importance. In those days of coasting navigation, indeed, the habit was to avoid headlands, and take advantage everywhere of shallow short cuts. Ships from the continent, therefore, avoided the North Foreland by running through the Wantsum at the back of Thanet; as they avoided Shellness and Warden36 Point by running through the Swale, at the back of Sheppey.
To protect this main navigable channel, accordingly, the Romans built the two great guardian37 fortresses38 of the coast, Rutupi?, or Richborough, at the southern entrance, and Regulbium, or Reculver, at the northern exit. Under the walls of these powerful strongholds, whose grim ruins still frown upon the dry channel at their feet, ships were safe from piracy39, while Ruim itself sheltered them from the heavy sea that now beats with north-east winds upon the Foreland beyond. In fact, the Wantsum was an early Spithead: it stood to Rutupi? as the Solent stands to Portsmouth and Southampton. But Thanet Isle hardly shared at all in this increased civilisation40; on the contrary, Rutupi? (the precursor41 of Sandwich Haven) seems to have diverted all its early commerce. For Rutupi? became clearly the naval42 capital of our island, the seat of that vir spectabilis, the Count of Saxon Shore, and the rendezvous43 of the fleets of those British 'usurpers' Maximus and Carausius. It was also the Dover of its own day, the favourite landing place for continental44 travellers; while its famous oysters45, the true natives, now driven by the silting47 up of their ancient beds to Whitstable, were as much in repute with Roman epicures48 as their descendants are to-day with the young Luculluses of the Gaiety and the Criterion.
I have ventured by this time to speak of Ruim as Thanet; and indeed that was already one of the names by which the island was known to its own inhabitants. The ordinary history books, to be sure, will tell you in their glib49 way that Thanet is 'Saxon' for Ruim; but, when they say so, believe not the fond thing, vainly imagined. The name is every day as old as the Roman occupation. Solinus, writing in the third century, calls it Thanaton, and in the torn British fragment of the Peutinger Tables—that curious old map of the later empire—it is marked as Tenet. Indeed, it is a matter of demonstration50 that every spot which had a known name in Roman Britain retained that name after the English conquest. Kent itself is a case in point, and every one of its towns bears out the law, from Dover and Lymne to Reculver and Richborough, which last is spelt 'Ratesburg' by Leland, Henry the Eighth's commissioner51.
In some ways, however, Thanet, under the Romans, must have shared in the general advance of the country. Solinus says it was 'glad with corn-fields'—felix frumentariis campis—but this could only have been on the tertiary slope facing Kent, as agriculture had not yet attempted to scale the flanks of the chalk downs. As lying so near Rutupi?, too, villas52 must certainly have occupied the soil in places, as we know they did in the Isle of Wight; while the immense number of Roman coins picked up in the island appears to betoken53 a somewhat dense54 provincial55 population.
The advent56 of the English brings Thanet itself, as distinct from its ancient port, the Wantsum, into the full glare of legendary57 history. According to tradition, it was at Ebb's Fleet, a little side creek58 near Minster, that Hengest and Horsa first disembarked in Britain. As a matter of fact, there is reason to suppose that at a very early time an English colony did really settle down in peace in Thanet. On Osengal Hill, not far from Ebb's Fleet, the cemetery59 of these earliest English pioneers in England was laid bare by the building of the South Eastern Railway. The graves are dug very shallow in the chalk, seldom as deep as four feet; and in them lie the remains60 of the old heathen pirates, buried with their arms and personal ornaments61, their amber62 beads63 and strings64 of glass, and the coins that were to pay their way in the other world. But, what is oddest of all, a few of the graves in this earliest English cemetery are Roman in character, and in them the interment is made in the Roman fashion. The inference is almost irresistible65 that the first settlement of Thanet by the English was a purely66 friendly one, and that Roman and Jute lived on side by side as neighbours and allies on the Kentish island.
I don't doubt, myself, that the whole settlement of Kent was equally friendly, and that the population of the county contains throughout an almost balanced mixture of Celtic and Teutonic elements.
However, the century and a half that succeeded the English colonization67 of south-eastern Britain were, no doubt, a time of great retrogression towards barbarism, as everywhere else in Romanised Europe. The villas that must have covered the gentle slopes towards the Wantsum fell into decay; the fortresses were destroyed; the roads ran wild; and the sea and river began slowly to slit68 up the central part of the great navigable backwater. A hundred and fifty years after Hengest and Horsa, if those excellent gentlemen ever really existed, another famous landing took place in Thanet. Augustine and his companions disembarked at Ebb's Fleet, and held close by (on the hill behind Prospect70 House) their first interview with ?thelberht. But though this epoch-making event happened to occur in Thanet, it has no special connection with the history of the island, any further than as a component of England generally. And indeed, even through the garbled71 version of Bede, it is plain enough to see that British Christendom was not yet wholly wiped out in eastern Britain. The conversion72 of Kent was essentially73 a conversion of the king and nobles to the Roman communion; it brought back once more the part of Britain most in connection with the continent into the broad fold of continental Christendom. It is quite clear, in fact, that Rutupi? and Durovernum, Richborough and Canterbury, had never ceased to hold close intercourse74 with the opposite shore, whose cliffs still shine so distinctly from the hills about Ramsgate. For ?thelberht himself was married to a Christian75 Frankish princess of the house of the Merwings; and coins of the Frankish kings and of the Byzantine emperors have been found on the surface or in contemporary Jutish graves in Kent.
It is interesting to observe, too, that of the monks76 whom Gregory chose to accompany Augustine on his easy mission, one was Lawrence, who succeeded his leader as second Archbishop of Canterbury, and another was Peter, the first Abbot of St. Augustine's monastery77. Out of compliment to these pioneer missionaries78, or to their Roman house of St. Andrew's, almost every old church in that part of Kent is dedicated79 accordingly, either to St. Augustine, St. Lawrence, St. Peter, St. Gregory, St. Andrew, or St. Martin (patron of Bertha's first church at Canterbury). Thus, as we shall see hereafter, St. Lawrence was the mother church of Ramsgate, and St. Peter's of Broadstairs, while the entire lathe80 bears the name of St. Augustine.
In Thanet, too, the first evidence of the new order of things was the foundation in the island of that great civilizing81 agency of medi?val England, a monastery. The site chosen for its home was still, however, characteristic of the old point of view of Thanet. It was the place that yet bears the name of Minster, situated82 on a little creek of the Wantsum sea, where some slight remains of an ancient pier83 may even now be traced among the silt46 of the marshes. The island still looked towards the narrow seas and the port of Rutupi?, not, as now, towards the tall cliffs and the German Ocean. Ecgberht, fourth Christian king of Kent, by the advice of Theodore, the monk33 of Tarsus who became Archbishop of Canterbury, made over to the lady whose name is conveniently Latinised as Dompneva, first abbess, some forty-eight plough-lands in the Isle of Thanet. This cultivated district, bounded by the ancient earthwork known (from the name of the second abbess) as St. Mildred's Lynch, lay almost entirely within the westward-sloping and mainly tertiary lands; the higher chalk country was as yet apparently84 considered unfit for tillage. The existing remains of Minster Abbey are, of course, of comparatively late Plantagenet date; but as parts of a great grange, whose still larger granary was burnt down only in the last century, they serve well to show the importance of the monastic system as a civilizing agency in the country districts of England.
Already in Bede's time the Wantsum was beginning to get silted85 up, mainly by the muddy deposits brought down by the Stour. It was then only three furlongs wide, and could be forded at two points, near Sarr and at Wade. The seaward mouth was also beginning to be encumbered86 with sand, and the first indication we get of this important impending87 change is the fact that we now hear less of Richborough, and more of Sandwich, the new port a little nearer the sea, whose very name of the Wick or haven on the Sand, in itself sufficiently88 tells the history of its origin. As the older port got progressively silted up, the newer one grew into ever greater importance, exactly as Norwich ousted89 Caister, or as Portsmouth has taken the place of Porchester. Nevertheless, the central channel still remained navigable for the vessels of that age—they can only have drawn90 a very few feet of water—and this made the Wantsum in time the great highway for the Danish pirates on their way to London, and exposed Thanet exceptionally to their relentless91 incursions.
In fact, the Danes and Northmen were just what they loved to call themselves, vik-ings or wickings, men of the viks, wicks, bays, or estuaries92. What they loved was a fiord, a strait, a peninsula, an island. Everywhere round the coast of Britain they seized and fortified93 the projecting headlands. But in the neighbourhood of the Thames, the high road to the great commercial port of London, the mementoes of their presence are particularly frequent. The whole nomenclature of the lower Thames navigation, as Canon Isaac Taylor has pointed94 out, is Scandinavian to this day. Deptford (the deep fiord), Greenwich (the green reach), and Woolwich (the hill reach) all bear good Norse names. So do the Foreness, the Whiteness, Shellness, Sheerness, Shoeburyness, Foulness95, Wrabness, and Orfordness. Walton-on-the-Naze near Harwich in like manner still recalls the time when a Danish 'wall'—that is to say, a vallum, or earthwork—ran across the isthmus96 to defend the Scandinavian peninsula from its English enemies.
At such a time Sandwich, with its shallow fiord, was sure to afford good shelter to the northern long ships; and isolated97 Thanet, overlooking the navigable strait, was a predestined dep?t for the northern pirates, as four centuries earlier it had been for the followers98 of those mythical99 personifications, Hengest and Horsa. Long before the unification of England under a single West Saxon overlordship the Danes used to land in the island every year, to plunder100 the crops, and in 851, when ?thelwulf was lord of Wessex at Winchester, 'heathen men,' says the Winchester Chronicle, with its usual charming conciseness101, 'first sat over winter in Tenet.' From that time forward the 'heathen men' continually returned to the island, which they used apparently as a base of operations, with their ships lying in Sandwich Haven; in fact, Thanet must long have been a sort of irregular Danish colony. Still, St. Mildred's nuns103 appear to have lived on somehow at Minster through the dark time, for in 988 the Danes landed and burnt the abbey, as they did again under Swegen in 1011, killing104 at the same time the abbess and all the inmates105. On the whole, it is probable that life and property in Thanet were far from secure any time in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries.
At least as late as the Norman conquest the Wantsum remained a navigable channel, and the usual route to London by sea was in at Sandwich and out at Northmouth. It was thus that King Harold's fleet sailed on its plundering106 expedition round the coast of Kent (a small unexplained incident of the early English type, only to be understood by the analogies of later Scotch107 history), and thus too, that many other expeditions are described in the concise102 style of our unsophisticated early historians. But from the eleventh century onward108 we hear little of the Wantsum as a navigable channel; it has dwindled109 down almost entirely to Sandwich Haven, 'the most famous of English ports,' says the writer of the life of Emma of Normandy, about 1050. Sandwich is indeed the oldest of the Cinque Ports, succeeding in this matter to the honours of Rutupi?, and all through the middle ages it remained the great harbour for continental traffic. Edward III. sailed thence for France or Flanders, and as late as 1446 it is still spoken of by a foreign ambassador as the resort of ships from all quarters of Europe.
Still, the Wantsum was all this while gradually silting up, a grain at a time, and the Isle of Ruim was slowly becoming joined to the opposite mainland. When Leland visited it, in Henry VIII.'s reign110, the change was almost complete. 'At Northmouth,' says the royal commissioner, in his quaint111 dry way, 'where the estery of the se was, the salt water swelleth yet up at a Creeke a myle or more toward a place called Sarre, which was the commune fery when Thanet was fulle iled.' Sandwich Haven itself began to be difficult of access about 1500 (Henry VII. being king), and in 1558 (under Mary) a Flemish engineer, 'a cunning and expert man in waterworks,' was engaged to remedy the blocking of the channel. By a century later it was quite closed, and the Isle of Thanet had ceased to exist, except in name, the Stour now flowing seaward by a long bend through Minster Level, while hardly a relic112 of the Wantsum could be traced in the artificial ditches that intersect the flat and banked-up surface of the St. Nicholas marshes.
Meanwhile, Thanet had been growing once more into an agricultural country. Minster, untenable by its nuns, had been made over after the Danish invasions to the monks of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and it was they who built the great barn and manor113 house which were the outer symbol of its new agricultural importance. Monkton, close by, belonged to the rival house of Christ Church at Canterbury (the cathedral monastery), as did also St. Nicholas at Wade, remarkable114 for its large and handsome Early English church. All these ecclesiastical lands were excellently tilled. After the Reformation, however, things changed greatly. The silting up of the Wantsum and the decay of Sandwich Haven left Thanet quite out of the world, remote from all the main highroads of the new England. Ships now went past the North Foreland to London, and knew it only as a dangerous point, not without a sinister115 reputation for wrecking116. On the other hand, on the land side, the island lay off the great highways, surrounded by marsh8 or half-reclaimed117 levels; and it seems rapidly to have sunk into a state resembling that of the more distant parts of Cornwall. The inhabitants degenerated118 into good wreckers and bad tillers. They say an Orkney man is a farmer who owns a boat, while a Shetlander is a fisherman who owns a farm. In much the same spirit, Camden speaks of the Elizabethan Thanet folks as 'a sort of amphibious creatures, equally skilled in holding helm and plough'; while Lewis, early in the last century, tells us they made 'two voyages a year to the North Seas, and came home soon enough for the men to go to the wheat season.' With genial119 tolerance120 the Georgian historian adds, 'It's a thousand pities they are so apt to pilfer121 stranded122 ships.' Piracy, which ran in the Thanet blood, seemed to their good easy local annalist a regrettable peccadillo123.
In all this, however, we begin to catch the first faintly-resounding note of modern Thanet. The intelligent reader will no doubt have observed, with his usual acuteness, that up to date we have heard practically nothing of Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs, which now form the real centres of population in the nominal124 island. Its relations have all been with Rutupi?, Sandwich, Canterbury, and the mainland. But the silting up of the Wantsum turned the new Thanet seaward, by the chalky cliffs; and the gaps or gates in that natural sea-wall now began to be of comparative importance as fishing stations and small havens125. Ebb's Fleet was no longer the port of Ruim. The centre of gravity of the island shifts at this point, accordingly, from Minster to Ramsgate. The change is well marked by certain interesting ecclesiastical facts. Neither Ramsgate nor Broadstairs had originally churches of their own. The first formed part of the parish of St. Lawrence, which was itself a mere chapelry of Minster till late in the thirteenth century. The old village lies half a mile inland, and Ramsgate itself was throughout the middle ages nothing more than a mere gap and cove10 where the fishermen of St. Lawrence kept their boats. The first church in the town proper was not erected127 till 1791. Similarly, Broadstairs formed part of the parish of St. Peter's, the village of which lies back at about the same distance from the sea as St. Lawrence; and St Peter's, too, was at first a chapelry of Minster. The cliffs were then nothing; the inward slope was everything.
Margate seems to have been the first place in the new Thanet to attain128 the honour of a place in history. As in two previous cases, the Mere Gate was at first but a fisherman's station for the village of St. John's, which gathered about the old church at the south end of the existing town. But as the Northmouth closed up, and Sandwich Haven decayed, the Mere Gate naturally became the little local port for corn grown on the island and wool raised on the newly-reclaimed Minster Level. A wooden pier existed at Margate long before the reign of Henry VIII., when Leland found it "sore decayed," and the village was in repute for fishery and coasting trade. Throughout the Stuart period Margate was the ordinary place of departure and arrival for Flushing and the Low Countries. William of Orange frequently sailed hence, and Maryborough used it for almost all his expeditions. It was about the middle of the last century, however, that the real prosperity of Margate first began. Then it was that citizens of credit and renown129 in London first hit upon the glorious discovery of the seaside, and that watering-places tentatively and timidly raised their unobtrusive heads along the nearer beaches. The journey from London could be made far more easily by river than that to Brighton by coach; and so Margate, the nearest spot to town (by water) on the real sea with any accommodation for visitors, became in point of fact the earliest London seaside resort. It was, if not the first place, at least one of the first places in England to offer to its guests the perilous130 joy of bathing machines, which were inaugurated here about 1790.
With the introduction of steamers Margate's fortune was made. Floods of Cockneydom were let loose upon the nascent131 lodging-houses. Then came the London, Chatham and Dover, and South Eastern Railways, and with them an ever-increasing inundation132 of good-humoured cheap-trippers. The Hall-by-the-Sea and other modern improvements and attractions followed. Like the rest of Thanet, Margate has now become a mere suburb of London, and what it resembles at the present day a delicate regard for the feelings of the inhabitants forbids me to enlarge upon. I will merely add that the recognized modern name of Margate is an etymological133 blunder, due to the idea immortalized in the borough26 motto, "Porta maris, Portus salutis," that it means Door of the Sea. The true word is still universally preserved on the lips of the local fisher-folk, who always religiously call it either Meregate or Mergate.
Ramsgate, a much more attractive and enjoyable centre, rich in excursions to points of genuine interest, dates somewhat later. It first came into note about the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it did a modest trade with the Levant and the Black Sea, or, as contemporary English more prettily134 phrases it, 'with Russia and the east country.' In 1750 the first pier was built, as a national work, mainly to serve as a harbour of refuge for ships caught in gales135 off the Downs. The engineer was Smeaton, and he succeeded in creating an artificial harbour of great extent, which has lasted substantially up to the present time. This new port, rendered safer by the enlargement in 1788, made Ramsgate at once into an important seafaring town, the capital of the Kentish herring trade, alive with smacks136 in the busy season. The steamers did it less good at first than they did to Margate; but the completion of the two railways, and the building of the handsome extensions on the east and west cliffs, turned it at once into a frequented watering-place. It is the fashion nowadays rather to laugh at Ramsgate. Marine137 painters know better. Few harbours are livelier with red and brown sails; few coasts more enjoyable than the cliff walk looking across towards the Goodwins, the low shore by Sandwich, the higher ground about Deal and Dover, and the dim white line of Cape138 Blancnez in the distance.
Broadstairs, close by the lighthouse on the North Foreland (the Cantium Promontorium of Roman geography), is still newer as a place of public resort. But as a fishing village it dates back to the middle ages, when the little chapel126 of "Our Lady of Bradstow" stood in the gap of the cliffs, and was much addressed by anxious sailors rounding the dangerous point after the silting up of the Wantsum. Ships as they passed lowered their top-sails to do it reverence139. Under Henry VIII. a small wooden pier was thrown out to protect the fishing boats; and about the same time, as part of the general scheme of coast defence inaugurated by the king, a gate and portcullis were erected to close the gap seaward, in case of invasion. The archway and portcullis groove140 remain to this day, with an inscription141 recording142 their repair in 1795 by Sir John Henniker. The railway has turned Broadstairs into a minor143 rival of Ramsgate and Margate and 'a favourite resort for gentry,' where 'those who require quietness, either from ill health or a retiring disposition,' says a local guide-book, may enjoy 'the united advantages of tranquillity144 and seclusion145.' Hundreds of retiring souls indeed may be observed on the beach any day during the season, seeking tranquillity in a game of cards, repairing their health with the stimulus146 of donkey exercise, or soothing147 their souls in secret hour with music sweet as love, discoursed148 to them by gentlemen in loose pink suits and artificially imitated ?thiopian countenances149.
Westgate is the very latest-born of these Thanet gates, a brand-new watering-place, where every house proclaims the futility150 of the popular belief that Queen Anne is dead, and where fashionable physicians send fashionable patients to cure imaginary diseases by a dose of fresh air. It has no history, for only a few years since it consisted entirely of a coastguard station and three or four cottages: but it is interesting as casting light on the nature of the revolution which has turned Thanet inside out and hind69 part before, making the open sea take the place of the Kentish mainland, and the railway to London that of the silted Wantsum.
At the present day Thanet as a whole consists of two parts: the live sea front, which is one long succession of suburban151 watering-places; and the agricultural interior, including the reclaimed estuary, which ranks among the best-farmed and most productive districts in all England, Yet till a very recent date the Thanet farmers still retained the use of the old Kentish plough, the coulter of which is reversed at the end of every furrow152; and many other curious insular153 customs mark off the agriculture of the island even now from that which prevails over the rest of the country.
I don't know whether I'm wrong, but it often seems to me the very best way to gain an idea of the real history of England is thus to take a single district piecemeal154, and trace out for one's self the main features of its gradual evolution. By so doing we get away from mere dynastic or political considerations, leave behind the bang of drums or the blare of trumpets155, and reach down to the living facts of common human activity themselves—the realities of the workaday world of toilers and spinners. By narrowing our field of view, in fact, we gain a clearer picture on our smaller focus. We see how the big historical revolutions actually affected156 the life of the people; and we trace more readily the true nature of deep-reaching changes when we follow them out in detail over a particular area.
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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promontory
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| n.海角；岬 | |
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subsiding
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的现在分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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bifurcating
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| v.（指道路、河流、树枝等）分岔，分成两支( bifurcate的现在分词 )；使分枝，使分叉 | |
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marshes
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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shrimps
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| n.虾，小虾( shrimp的名词复数 )；矮小的人 | |
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trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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14
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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15
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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16
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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17
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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18
antedating
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| v.（在历史上）比…为早( antedate的现在分词 )；先于；早于；（在信、支票等上）填写比实际日期早的日期 | |
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19
component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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20
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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21
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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22
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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23
attest
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| vt.证明，证实；表明 | |
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24
mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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25
wade
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| v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉 | |
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26
borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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27
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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28
prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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29
yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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30
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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31
freckled
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|
| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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32
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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33
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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34
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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35
estuary
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| n.河口，江口 | |
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36
warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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37
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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38
fortresses
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| 堡垒，要塞( fortress的名词复数 ) | |
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39
piracy
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| n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害 | |
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40
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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41
precursor
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|
| n.先驱者；前辈；前任；预兆；先兆 | |
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42
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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43
rendezvous
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|
| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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44
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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45
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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46
silt
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|
| n.淤泥，淤沙，粉砂层，泥沙层；vt.使淤塞；vi.被淤塞 | |
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47
silting
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|
| n.淤积，淤塞，充填v.（河流等）为淤泥淤塞( silt的现在分词 )；（使）淤塞 | |
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48
epicures
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|
| n.讲究饮食的人( epicure的名词复数 ) | |
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49
glib
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|
| adj.圆滑的，油嘴滑舌的 | |
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50
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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51
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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52
villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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53
betoken
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| v.预示 | |
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54
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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55
provincial
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|
| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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56
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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57
legendary
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|
| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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58
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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59
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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60
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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61
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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62
amber
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|
| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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63
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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64
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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65
irresistible
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|
| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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66
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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67
colonization
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| 殖民地的开拓，殖民，殖民地化； 移殖 | |
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68
slit
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|
| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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69
hind
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|
| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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70
prospect
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|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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71
garbled
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|
| adj.（指信息）混乱的，引起误解的v.对（事实）歪曲，对（文章等）断章取义，窜改( garble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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73
essentially
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|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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74
intercourse
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|
| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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75
Christian
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|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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76
monks
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|
| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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77
monastery
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|
| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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78
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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79
dedicated
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|
| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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80
lathe
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|
| n.车床，陶器，镟床 | |
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81
civilizing
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|
| v.使文明，使开化( civilize的现在分词 ) | |
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82
situated
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|
| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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83
pier
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|
| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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84
apparently
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|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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85
silted
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|
| v.（河流等）为淤泥淤塞( silt的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）淤塞 | |
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86
encumbered
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|
| v.妨碍，阻碍，拖累( encumber的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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87
impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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88
sufficiently
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|
| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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89
ousted
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|
| 驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺 | |
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90
drawn
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|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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91
relentless
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|
| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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92
estuaries
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| （江河入海的）河口，河口湾( estuary的名词复数 ) | |
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93
fortified
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|
| adj. 加强的 | |
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94
pointed
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|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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95
foulness
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|
| n. 纠缠, 卑鄙 | |
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96
isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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97
isolated
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|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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98
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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99
mythical
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|
| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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100
plunder
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|
| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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101
conciseness
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| n.简洁，简短 | |
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102
concise
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|
| adj.简洁的，简明的 | |
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103
nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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104
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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105
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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106
plundering
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的现在分词 ) | |
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107
scotch
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|
| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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108
onward
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|
| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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109
dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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110
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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111
quaint
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|
| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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112
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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113
manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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114
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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115
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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116
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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117
reclaimed
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|
| adj.再生的；翻造的；收复的；回收的v.开拓( reclaim的过去式和过去分词 )；要求收回；从废料中回收（有用的材料）；挽救 | |
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118
degenerated
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| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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119
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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120
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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121
pilfer
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| v.盗，偷，窃 | |
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122
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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123
peccadillo
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| n.轻罪，小过失 | |
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124
nominal
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|
| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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125
havens
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| n.港口，安全地方( haven的名词复数 )v.港口，安全地方( haven的第三人称单数 ) | |
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126
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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127
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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128
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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129
renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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130
perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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131
nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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132
inundation
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| n.the act or fact of overflowing | |
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133
etymological
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| adj.语源的，根据语源学的 | |
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134
prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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135
gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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136
smacks
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| 掌掴（声）( smack的名词复数 )； 海洛因； （打的）一拳； 打巴掌 | |
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137
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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138
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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139
reverence
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|
| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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140
groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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141
inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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142
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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143
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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144
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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145
seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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146
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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147
soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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148
discoursed
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| 演说（discourse的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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149
countenances
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| n.面容( countenance的名词复数 )；表情；镇静；道义支持 | |
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150
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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151
suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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152
furrow
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| n.沟；垄沟；轨迹；车辙；皱纹 | |
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153
insular
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| adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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154
piecemeal
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| adj.零碎的；n.片，块；adv.逐渐地；v.弄成碎块 | |
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155
trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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156
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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