Broadland

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. MAN AND NATURE ON THE BROADS BY ARTHUR HENRY PATTERSON PREFACE Ten years ago a book on Broadland would have needed a lengthy introduction.

The likeness of its spreading lagoons, their whereabouts, attractions, and delights would have required treatment in detail to have become intelligible to many who live outside the county that boasts their possession.

Now everyone knows them, many by a personal inspection, most by repute.

Some, like the birds, have become rara aves, and will probably as individuals become extinct, as some avine species have also become.

The experiences and opinions of a few of these nearly obsolete characters will be found in Man and Nature.

Arthur Patterson, Great Yarmouth, October 1895 End of Preface Chapter 1 of Man and Nature on the Broads by Arthur Henry Patterson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain January in Broadland He rises early, and he late takes rest, and sails intrepid o'er the watery waste, waits the return of shot-sail on the lake, and listens to the wild fowl's distant quack, at dusk steers homeward with a plenteous freight.

From Life of a Fenman, 1771 The fame of the Broads of Norfolk has become worldwide.

Preface.

Ten years ago, a book on Broadland would have needed a lengthy introduction.

The likeness of its spreading lagoons, their whereabouts, attractions, and delights would have required treatment in detail to have become intelligible to many who live outside the county that boasts their possession.

Now everyone knows them, many by a personal inspection, most by repute.

Chapter one of Man and Nature on the Broads by Arthur Henry Patterson.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

January in Broadland.

He rises early, and he late takes rest, and sails intrepid o'er the watery waste; Waits the return of shot-sail on the lake, and listens to the wild fowl's distant quack; At dusk steers homeward with a plenteous freight.

Preface.

Ten years ago, a book on Broadland would have needed a lengthy introduction.

The likeness of its spreading lagoons, their whereabouts, attractions, and delights would have required treatment in detail to have become intelligible to many who live outside the county that boasts their possession.

Now everyone knows them, many by a personal inspection, most by repute.

Chapter One of Man and Nature on the Broads by Arthur Henry Patterson.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

January in Broadland.

He rises early, and he late takes rest, and sails intrepid o'er the watery waste, waits the return of shot sail on the lake, and listens to the wild fowl's distant quack, at dusk steers homeward with a plenteous freight.

Preface.

Ten years ago, a book on Broadland would have needed a lengthy introduction.

The likeness of its spreading lagoons, their whereabouts, attractions, and delights would have required treatment in detail to have become intelligible to many who live outside the county that boasts their possession.

Now everyone knows them, many by a personal inspection, most by repute.

Chapter One of Man and Nature on the Broads by Arthur Henry Patterson.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

January in Broadland.

He rises early, and he late takes rest, and sails intrepid o'er the watery waste, waits the return of shot-sail on the lake, and listens to the wild fowl's distant quack, at dusk steers homeward with a plenteous freight.

Preface.

Ten years ago, a book on Broadland would have needed a lengthy introduction.

The likeness of its spreading lagoons, their whereabouts, attractions, and delights would have required treatment in detail to have become intelligible to many who live outside the county that boasts their possession.

Now everyone knows them, many by a personal inspection, most by repute.

Chapter one of Man and Nature on the Broads by Arthur Henry Patterson.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

January in Broadland.

He rises early, and he late takes rest, and sails intrepid o'er the watery waste.

On dissection, however, a small pike, fourteen inches in length, was discovered in its crop.

A great northern diver, disporting itself among the roach on Horsey Mere, was shot and badly wounded by a Broadland gunner.

On being hauled into the boat, it threw up thirty-two fish, some of them large enough to be used as bait.

This was in January.

A marked increase in the numbers of the wood pigeon, Columba palumbus, has taken place in Norfolk, attributable, Stevenson says, in a great degree to the extension of our fur plantations, added to their immunity at the present time from the attacks of their natural enemies, crows, magpies, and hawks, now almost exterminated as residents amongst us through the strict preservation of game.

Numbers build in the neighboring country.

The coo of the ringdove is perhaps the most familiar sound to be heard in the wooded surroundings of the Broadlands, and the noisy flip-flap of its wings is frequently heard as one moves along by the country roadside.

At all periods of the year, even when the close season has made the market bare of wildfowl, wood pigeons are common objects of the countryman's stall.

Frontmatter.

To Threw Broadland in a Braid and Punt by John Noletal.

A pseudonym of the writer and naturalist Arthur Henry Patterson.

this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org through broadland in a braid and punt by john knowlittle front matter to my many east coast friends i dedicate this little book as i love nature as i love singing birds and gleaming stubble and flowing rivers and morning and evening and summer and winter i love thee my friend by thoreau and nature the old nurse took the child upon her knee saying here is a story book thy father hath written for thee come wander with me she said into regions yet untrod and read what is still unread in the manuscripts of god and he wandered away and away with nature the dear old nurse who sang to him night and day the rhymes of the universe by henry wadsworth longfellow author's note the following chapters originally appeared in the autumn of nineteen nineteen in the columns of the eastern daily press and met with a most gratifying reception from the readers of that popular newspaper many of whom strongly urged me to republish them in permanent book form i have to thank the editor of that paper for reserving to me the right of republication and also one of his assistants for a discriminating use of the blue pencil in eliminating certain small portions of matter of an ephemeral character that were more suited to current journalism than in a published volume the chapters were written as i proceeded on my voyage mostly in the punt under the stars at other times when drifting on the tides or leisurely waiting for wind and tide signed john knowlittle march the sixth nineteen twenty preface to second edition with some degree of trepidation the first edition of this little book was prepared for the press its reception by those who know and love broadland and many more who are not ill-disposed towards my output of nature scribbling has been not only flattering to myself but satisfactory to my publisher to whom i am greatly indebted for his enterprise in these days of expensive materials and costly labour and if my endeavours to interest my friends and a considerable reading public have succeeded in giving them pleasure and an increased love for the delightful inland waterways of norfolk and suffolk what greater satisfaction can i desire signed john no little ibis house great yarmouth june the first nineteen twenty introduction dear john knowlittle i do not think that any book of yours requires an introduction but since you wish for one here it is close on half a century ago i was sitting in my home in shropshire reading the field when i came across an article by one greville f descriptive of the norfolk broads up to that time my boating experiences had consisted only of voyages down west country rivers and canals in a home-made rob roy canoe in norfolk there seemed more scope for a water vagabond i had just passed my final examination for the law and procuring a legal journal i searched the advertisements and found one for a managing clerk in a norwich office i applied at once and obtained the post on the evening of my arrival in norwich i strolled as far as the river and jumped on board a wherry drifting downstream to be landed past midnight on the brundle marshes whence i walked back getting to my lodgings between two and three in the morning to find my landlady sitting up for me and wondering what kind of a young man her new lodger was that was the beginning of the fascination which the broad district had for me and i indulged in it to the uttermost in all sorts of craft from yarwelps upwards until they grew too big from motives of comfort and had to be taken to sea and to dutch waterways but in those old days the wildness and silence of the broads were complete the sight of another sail was an event in the day now the rivers are in the summer gay with craft it is only in that most beautiful period of the year late autumn that the old charm revives no wonder some old stages complain one day i sat at lunch in a restaurant next a stranger who was talking of the broads to some friends he said that fellow christopher davies has spoiled the broads completely if ever i meet him i will punch his head for him i remarked here he sits punch away he looked at me gravely for a few seconds and then said what will you take to drink i went one evening last summer in nineteen nineteen to my cottage by brony fen broad horning on purpose to hear the booming of the bitterns which my marshman assured me was a beastly nuisance keeping him awake but it was past eleven before the sounds of the motor-horns on the road the sirens of motor-boats on the river and the cries of revellers subsided sufficiently and then while sitting in the porch watching both a brown owl and a white owl flitting about the garden and a night-jar circling the tops of the apple-trees i heard at intervals the fivefold note of the bittern a weird sound which no word can accurately describe my keeper when he first heard it within a hundred yards of the cottage thought it was a cow struggling in the bog now while you and i are equally sympathetic with the wild life of the waterside my surplus energies were directed to sport and yours to the accurate chronicling of your observations in the field of natural history so that your life's work will be of more use to those who come after us than mine your other books have an honoured place in my special library but your present venture is a reversion to the personal type which is common to us both and will i think appeal strongly to the ever-increasing number of readers who feel the rebound from ultra civilisation to the call of the wild such wild at all events as is still possible in this well-regulated land of ours i hope that the cruise of the yarwelp will result in a good cargo being brought into port yours sincerely george christopher davies front matter chapter i the voyage begins as i had a boat my next design was to make a tour fitted up a little mast and made a sail to it then i built lockers or boxes to put provisions necessaries etc into to be kept dry either from rain or spray at last i resolved on my tour from robinson crusoe For months, at odd moments, the Yarwelp punt, my Braden ship of these twenty-six years, had been under review, guessing, calculating, measuring her capacities for a lengthy broadland tour, and then fitted with shears, awning and sundry, in order to make the voyage at least a comfortable one.

i intended to get afloat on the first day of the school holidays losing no time being eager like crusoe to view the circumference of my little kingdom for gawd's sake said jari the braid and bird watcher dun't start on a friday for of all the unlucky days he still said don't when i promised to pitch my tent hard by his houseboat in the centre o brayden i shan't be there so to please his superstitious feeling on the matter i started the day before but it was a rafty hefty day and the yarwhelp's small lug-sail made the most of a slant of wind cleaving the brown tide under a grey-brown sky with a rare fuss leaving behind her a wake of seething waters that made our progress less speedy than it appeared to be brayden was deserted a solitary smelt boat and an amateur fisherman eel picking were all that represented a lost race recalling to mind the lament of baruch the friend of jeremiah apocrypha who thus wrote they that had their pastime among the fowls of the air they are vanished and gone down to the grave and others are coming up in their steads but the newcomers follow not in their sire's footsteps the glory too of the old estuary has departed and all are well-nigh forgotten however there came from the drains the hoarse cries of herons and the call of curlews the returned black-headed gulls with their mottled young made merry upon the ooze a-worming and once in a while there came a lesser turn to its squealing young on the muds with a tiny herring between its mandibles so steady was the mist-laden breeze that the punt but once gibed its penguin's wing the swan wing of a pleasure wherry hard astern going over at the same moment my old tub laid well to her work with her load of bedding and two trements sinking her to the water line it had been my intention to moor for the night in the drain beside jari's houseboat but with such a goodly wind and tide i pressed on for there seemed the possibility of a roughish night coming along in a little under the hour the yar whelp was slapping along on the waves made by the meeting of the wind and the waters of the river but for the sharp murmuring of the toughless and lanky reeds there was scant music along the lower reaches of the waveney the redshanks no longer clamoured for brayden had wooed them a flock of fifty lapwings off to the wireworm's haunt passed over without a peewit each will no doubt devour a hundred before morning five thousand less to do mischief and the birds are not likely though persecuted and unpaid to go on strike like so many other hungry earth workers we put up a small lot of common sandpipers and three or four young herons who were a-fishing on the margin the day was not over cheerful whilst passing yachtsmen looked pinched and subdued and their womankind were clad in waterproofs instead of gaudy yachting fell the rails the monotony of the reed beds on either bank was not inspiring the only break in those dreary miles of them was pettingill's pump mill and farm premises a picture always in summer or winter for an artist's pencil The bridge we came to shortly, after a sharp bend in the river, is stronger than beautiful.

But Johnson's houseboat, cutting, a stone's throw from it, is as pretty a water-lover's rendezvous, with its willows, through which peep rich red tiles and hoary thatches, as any one will discover in Broadland.

as i turned the punt's nose into farmer means cutting i passed a solitary angler ledgering in the deep strong tide who rejoiced over a few goodly outwitted bream flats lashing the yarwhelp to her parent ship the moorhen the second i soon had the kettle going and then snugged down for the night the sunset trying to smile but its efforts were marred by frowning clouds and fiery gleams of colouring that night and the next were as cold as if it were march but a strip of canvas between the rugs brought comfort i like this quiet cutting one is out of the way of traffic there is a good dry bank and the hanger at the rear of the pretty little farm is heather-clad and adorned by fir-trees whilst the marshland stretches away to a far horizon on the frontage St. Olive's too is a through-water station, and not a terminus, and unbeloved of those who like an excess of gaiety, regattas, and other water frolics.

It is a rare houseboating corner, and no two boats are alike as elsewhere, reminding a birdman of summertime roughs.