shellfish cannot be taken unless their shells are taken also. What it
must be understood to lay down is this, that we may take the shells so
long as they are attached to, and form, as it were, part of the living
fish; but that we must not take a shell when it has become detached
from its inmate, and is nothing more than a shell. This prohibition to
take empty shells is really equivalent to a prohibition to take not
shells only, but also sand or pebbles, or indeed any other part of
the soil of the shore. It may be added here, by way of parenthesis,
that, by an Act of Parliament passed in 1620, a special privilege is
granted to all persons living in the counties of Devon and Cornwall ‘to
fetch and take sea-sand at all places under the full sea-mark.’ Why
this privilege was specially granted to the inhabitants of these two
counties is not at all clear. At anyrate, the passing of the Act shows
that the right did not previously exist.
The last case to which we shall refer is that of Howe against Stowell.
It was tried in the year 1833. Here, as in the case of Bagott against
Orr, the plaintiff was the owner of a portion of the shore, upon which,
at different times, the sea cast up great quantities of seaweed. The
farmers in the neighbourhood were in the habit of carting this seaweed
away, using it for the purpose of manuring their land. Stowell had
taken some, and Howe brought an action against him. Stowell urged that,
as a subject of the king, he had full and perfect liberty to go upon
the shore and take the seaweed, which had been left there by the reflux
of the tide. The court, however, found that no such right as Stowell
claimed existed. Their judgment to some extent supplements and explains
the one delivered in the case of Bagott _v._ Orr. The court referred
to that case, and said that the taking of fish was for the immediate
sustentation of man—a reason which did not apply to the taking of
seaweed. Whatever the reasons may have been which caused the court to
make a distinction between the fish and their shells, the distinction
certainly now exists; and while it is unlawful to take away from the
shore any shells, sand, pebbles, or seaweed, it is perfectly lawful to
carry away any shellfish that may be found there.
Here we may leave the subject. Sufficient has been said to show the
reader how much of the liberty of doing what he likes on the seashore
is entirely due to the goodwill of such as have the power, if they
choose to use it, of very seriously curtailing that liberty. Happily,
by far the greater portion of our shore is still the property of the
Crown, which is never likely to enforce its strict rights to the
curtailing of the reasonable liberty of the subject. These rights
might, however, with general advantage, be much more strictly enforced
than they are on some parts of our coasts, where sand, pebbles, and
stones are being constantly carted away in large quantities, to the
detriment of the beach and adjacent land.
A NAMELESS ROMANCE.
I have a leisure hour to spend now and then, and I spend it in rambling
round the city where I dwell. Perhaps some of you may think this is
poor enjoyment, but it does not seem so to me. True, were I young and
rich, I might seek my pleasures farther afield—on the sunny shores of
the Mediterranean, or in the gay gardens of France. I might bask more
in the smile of gentle dames, forgetting my loneliness, as one forgets
in the sunshine that only a moment before the sky hung black with
clouds. But I am neither young nor rich; and even if I were, it seems
to me that no place in the world could ever be so dear as those lanes
and meadows I love so well.
Yes; I am old now, and chilly sometimes at night when the fire gets
low, wearing a greatcoat even on the summer days, and shivering often
when the zephyrs fan my face. But I am kept young by my love for
nature; I woo her as amorously as ever maid was wooed by swain, and she
is not afraid to press her rosy lips to mine, yellow and withered as
they are, and to twine her lovely arms round my neck. I love her for
her hopefulness, for her inexhaustible store of youth. Everywhere with
love she rebukes poor mortals for sitting down sad with folded hands,
and with a glad voice bids them be up and doing. She is irrepressible.
You may crush her down with stony hand and plaster over every vestige
of her beauty, and then say to yourself, in pride of heart, ‘I have
made a city, a place for commerce and traffic, and pleasure and
sorrow;’ and yet, turn your back for an instant, lo! a little blade of
grass comes up between the stones of the causeway and laughs in your
very face. We may build our houses up story upon story, with the dingy
attic at the top, for women’s hearts to break in, and the squalid court
beneath in which little children may get their first taint of sin; but
a gleam of sunshine will day after day work its way down to the very
centre of the filth and squalidness, and a rose will bud and bloom in
some poor man’s window, blushing back with pleasure into the face of
its kindly keeper.
Then think how charitable she is, how slow to return an insult, how
cheerfully she bears an affront. I often think—though, of course, it
is but the vagary of an old dreamer—that those who build up masses of
brick and mortar would be well repaid if nature left a sterile belt
round their work, a belt gray and cold as their own walls. But no! She
takes no such revenge as this. Long before the city-smoke has mingled
with the clouds, or the hum of city-life died away, we come on patches
of green, smiling us a welcome; on trees, too, sprouting forth in
beauty, or draped with leaves and flowers, nodding to us in a grave
and stately way, as if to show that they at least bear no grudge, and
are prepared to be friendly in spite of all rebuffs. Ruminating thus,
many a lesson have I learned on charity and forgiveness.
Nor are my rambles unromantic, though the scenes are no longer
strange. Every house and farm has become familiar to me. I have seen
a generation or two of cowboys develop into ploughmen, wed themselves
to rosy dairymaids, and go their ways. I have beguiled idle hours in
weaving webs of fancy round their married lives, listening for the
merry laughter of children in their cottages, and watching for the glad
light of love on many a mother’s face. And as with men and women, so
with things. The old castle with its turreted walls and secret passages
has furnished me much food for thought. I have recalled in fancy the
noble men and fair women who used to tread its halls, their courtly,
gallant ways, their feasts and tournaments; and, as I stand in the
chambers, girt with gray stone and canopied by heaven, I can see the
coats of mail still on the walls, and hear through the mist of years
the voice of some gay warrior recounting his triumphs in the field. And
many a story, too, have I heard from the rustic people about the old
gray house which stands in the hollow among the trees. You see, I am
old enough to pat the comely maidens on the shoulder without exciting
the ire of their brawny lovers, and to chat, too, with impunity to the
buxom matrons in the cottages while their husbands sit smoking by the
fireside. And thus it was I heard the story of the Old House in the
Hollow. I had often wondered if it did contain a secret, so silent
was it, so forbidding in aspect, with its old porch black with age,
and its windows stained and weather-beaten. It looked so grim, that I
used to think it, too, must have witnessed deeds of blood, and taken
the best way to avoid detection by standing for evermore in gloomy
silence. It stood among thick foliage, so thick, that even on a summer
day but a stray sunbeam or two rested on its blackened walls, wavering
and timorous, as if scared at their bravery in venturing so far. The
carriage-road from the gate to the door had faded out of sight, and
there was nothing around but grass, heavy and dark-coloured, with the
weeds that grew among it. The woman in the cottage not far off was glad
enough to give me the key of the rusty iron gate which admitted to the
grounds, and there I used to wander, more from curiosity than pleasure.
But I always felt morbid under the old trees; and the grass, too, was
so thick and rank, that it was like walking over deserted graves.
In that old garden, said the villagers, a lady in a white mantle used
to walk among the trees, and look with yearning glance towards the
windows of the old house. There I have waited for her, but she never
came; for, through habit, I have fallen into believing the stories I
hear. Perhaps the sunshine frightened her away; perhaps, from long
living in the shades, her eyes had grown too weak to bear the light;
perhaps she cared not that strangers should share her grief, and wished
to mourn there alone, with the darkness for her friend, and the winds
sighing comfort to her among the trees. Whatever the reason was, I
never met her face to face in that gloomy hollow. Yet, although she was
so fair and young, the older villagers could not tell her tale without
a shudder; and though the lads and lasses laughed aloud, yet it was a
wavering, uncertain laugh, which died on their lips, and left a silence
all the more profound.
Forty years had passed since the oaken door creaked on its hinges to
admit the master and his fair young bride; and a year later, it had
closed on her as they bore her away to sleep in the churchyard, to the
grave that had proved too small for her wandering, restless spirit. On
that day, cold, and with a drizzling, chilling rain, the small cortège
passed through the gate, a man walking behind, with head bent and eyes
cast on the ground, his face calm, but chill and gray as the sky. And
if the curious one had turned his eyes on the house, he would have
seen, at an upper window, a woman’s figure, clad in mourning, with head
bent, intently watching the pallbearers as they wound along the muddy
road. Had the curious one cared to look closer, he might have seen the
gleam of triumph in her eyes—dark, flashing, coal-black eyes—as she
watched the tall bent figure walk behind with such a weary, listless
step. But soon a turn in the road hid the company from view, and the
window was empty again.
One year had sufficed to darken the brightness of that fair young life.
Did it ever strike you, reader, that some men and women seem to have
had a sunlight bath before entering this world, so destined are they to
make everything around them pure and good; while others, wafted from
the regions of gloom, cast all around them the shadow of death? Into
this baleful darkness had the young bride fallen, and in it her spirit
had been quenched. She loved her husband truly, that tall, bronzed man,
who had come from the Indies to woo her in the sunny lanes of her own
England. Right glad, too, had she been to become mistress of his old
home. For months, no spot had come on their home-picture. He was happy
in his treasure; she, too, in her simple life in the village, where,
from her kindness, she already was receiving the homage due to a queen.
But one day, when the snow was on the ground and the flowers were
dead, a woman came to the Old House in the Hollow. She was dark, and
radiantly beautiful, with the beauty that blossoms under western skies.
She neither asked nor received leave to stay as a member of the family
circle in the old house, but there was no one to oppose her action.
The master was her cousin, she said; and even as she spoke, the gleam
in her eyes gave her words the lie. Yet he said nothing, for suddenly
he had grown silent and cold, avoiding even the wistful, questioning
glances of his wife.
The shadow spread slowly over the house, up the staircases, into the
nooks and corners of the rooms, laying its black hand now on this and
now on that, but nowhere so strongly as on the heart of the young
mistress. Her rippling laughter changed to sighs, her bright smiles
were replaced by downcast looks; she passed from summer to winter with
no mellowing autumn days to make the change less sad. It was not that
the woman, who had come so strangely, sought the love of her husband,
or in any other way attempted to dispel the sunshine of her life; she
simply dwelt with them, nay, was friendly enough at times; but the
dark dress which she wore, and the masses of dark hair which at times
she would let fall about her shoulders, seemed indicative of the moral
cloud which was slowly gathering over their lives. The lily drooped
day by day for want of sunlight. She became morbid, nervous, full
of strange and wayward fancies. She thought the love of her husband
was dead; and she took to dressing herself in her wedding garb, to
try if by that strange way she might make it live again. Clad in the
soft, lustrous satins—in which as a happy bride she had blushed and
smiled in the little English church but a few months before—she would
pace her room for hours, and stand, too, longingly before the glass,
peering wistfully to see if aught of her charm were gone. In this garb,
too, she would walk among the old trees, and deck her bosom with the
snowdrops of spring; but they seemed to wither away at her touch and
hang listless and dead. Thus it was, one day she was found sitting
among the trees on the fresh spring grass, some faded snowdrops in her
lifeless hand, her golden hair surmounting a face darkened with some
mysterious presence. A pale gleam of spring sunlight had crept down and
settled on her brow; but it was out of place, and timid as the sunbeams
which I have seen playing on the old house itself.
Thus quietly as the gliding of a river did her spirit depart, or rather
was effaced, as a cloud can hide the silver moon from us for a time.
And so, they tell me, she can be seen at times in the old garden, just
as, when the clouds grow faint, the welcome shafts of light come down
to assure us that their mother orb still lives.
QUARANTINE.
BY AN EXAMINING OFFICER.
At a time when every one has been anxiously perusing the daily accounts
of the increase or abatement of cholera in European towns, and when
there exists a lurking fear lest the dreaded scourge should obtain a
footing on our shores, a brief description of the precautions taken
against such a visitation may possibly prove interesting to your
readers. The majority of people have, of course, a hazy idea that
vessels from Southern France are not allowed to slip in and out of
the United Kingdom without strict examination as to the possibility
of cholera or other disease existing on board. They know that there
is some action taken bearing the old-fashioned title of ‘Quarantine,’
and that it relates to the isolation of vessels on board which disease
may exist; but with this knowledge, in a majority of instances their
information ends. This very haziness thus induces unfounded fear—and
fear supplies one of the chief ingredients on which cholera may be
most bountifully fed. If I can in any way lessen this apprehension
by detailing, as briefly as possible, the close supervision to
which vessels from foreign ports—just now from the south of France
especially—are subjected, the purpose of this article will be fully
realised.
‘Quarantine,’ according to the lexicographers, ‘is the term during
which a ship arriving in port, and suspected of being infected with a
malignant, contagious disease, is obliged to forbear all intercourse
with the shore.’ Thus a ship arriving in the United Kingdom at the
present time, and having on board, or suspected of having on board, a
case of cholera, would be at once cut off from all intercourse with the
shore or with any neighbouring vessel. This ‘cutting-off’ process was
in olden times much more cumbrously managed than at present. Then, the
quarantine stations round the shores of Great Britain were not only
numerous, but were themselves a source of danger to all concerned.
Now, the only one of the old quarantine stations of the United Kingdom
is that of the Mother-bank, in the Isle of Wight, where are located
three unemployed men-of-war, having on board a staff of officers and
men with all appliances necessary for dealing with vessels placed in
quarantine. These vessels, I understand, have only been called into
requisition on twelve occasions during the last twenty years. The place
for the performance of quarantine at any port is now generally decided
by the Local Authority of that port in conjunction with the officers
of Customs who may be stationed there. Her Majesty’s Privy Council
are, of course, primarily responsible for the due carrying out of the
quarantine regulations; but on the officers of Customs depends the
detention of any vessel, pending the decision of the higher authorities
regarding such detention. To enable the officer of Customs to act with
authority in the matter, he is provided with a ‘Quarantine Commission,’
on the faith of which he can detain any vessel arriving from abroad
on board of which he may suspect the existence of cholera or other
infectious disease.
I will suppose, now, a vessel arriving in the Mersey, the Thames, the
Tyne, or other busy shipping centre. The vessel, with her national
ensign flying aft, to denote that she is from a foreign port—let us
suppose a port infected with cholera—sails or steams up to a position
some distance from the shore, termed the ‘boarding station.’ Here the
master must ‘bring to’ under a penalty of one hundred pounds. The
Customs officers come alongside in their boat; and before any one goes
on board, the following questions are put to the master: ‘What is the
name of the vessel and of the master? From what port have you come? Was
there any sickness at the port while you were lying there or at the
time you left it? Have you any Bill of Health?—if so, produce it. What
number of officers, crew, and passengers have you on board? Have any of
them suffered from any kind of illness during the voyage?—if so, state
it, however trifling it may have been. Is every person on board in
good health at this moment?’ Should the master refuse to answer any of
these questions, or give a false answer to any of them, the refusal or
falsehood subjects him to a penalty of one hundred pounds; and if the
questions have been put upon oath and he returns a false answer, he is
liable to punishment for wilful and corrupt perjury.
Should the answers of the master be deemed unsatisfactory, and should
the officer of Customs suspect the existence of cholera on board, he
at once detains the vessel and apprises the Local Authority, in order
that its medical officer may inspect the vessel, and decide whether
or not the suspicions of the officer of Customs are well founded. If,
however, the Local Authority _fails to have such inspection carried out
within twelve hours_—and local Sanitary Boards would do well to bear
this fact in mind—the officer of Customs _does not possess the power
to detain the vessel longer_, but must, on the expiration of the said
twelve hours, release the vessel from detention. Thus it becomes of the
utmost importance that, for the safety of the community, local sanitary
authorities should see that the medical inspection is carried out with
all despatch.
The inspection being completed, and cholera, we will suppose, being
found to exist, the vessel is obliged to proceed at once to the
quarantine station selected. Every person on board must remain there
until the vessel is released. Should any one choose to disobey the law
and endeavour to escape, he or she incurs a heavy money penalty, with
the alternative of six months’ imprisonment. This is mild punishment,
indeed, to that inflicted in the days of our forefathers, when
disobedience to quarantine laws subjected the offender ‘to suffer death
without benefit of clergy.’ Still, it is heavy enough to discourage
any attempt at disobedience, when such disobedience would bring upon
the transgressor the full rigour of the law. Compared with quarantine
punishments in other countries, our penalty is, nevertheless, in my
opinion, far too lenient. I have known of sailors in the Mediterranean
who had left their vessel after she had been placed in quarantine,
narrowly escaping being shot dead on the spot. This ‘speedy despatch’
would not, of course, be altogether in accord with our British system
of punishment; yet I can conceive no greater crime than that of risking
the propagation of disease in a locality which till then had been
free from it. Nothing short of a lengthened period of imprisonment is
adequate punishment for a crime so heinous.
To leave the particular case of cholera-infected vessels, it may
be advisable to have a last word on foreign arrivals generally. In
the questions noted above which are put to the master of a vessel
on arrival in the United Kingdom, there occurs the query, ‘Have
you any Bill of Health?’ Most people will probably be inclined to
inquire what a Bill of Health consists of. Bills of Health are of two
classes—namely, clean bills of health and foul bills of health. The
former is a document signed by a British consul abroad testifying that
there was no disease on board the vessel, or at the port at which
the vessel loaded her cargo for the homeward voyage. The latter is a
similar document testifying that there has been disease on board, or at
the port of lading, or at any of the ports at which the vessel may have
touched on her way home. A clean Bill of Health, issued at Gibraltar a
fortnight ago, lies before me as I write, and thereon it is certified
in unmistakable English that ‘good health is enjoyed in the city and
garrison of Gibraltar, and that there does not exist therein plague,
Asiatic cholera, or yellow fever; as witness the seal of the said
city and garrison hereupon engraved.’ A vessel possessing a testimony
similar to this is, generally speaking, free from the trouble and
annoyance of quarantine; but were the Bill of Health a foul one, the
case would be widely different. With the latter on board, the display
of the dreaded yellow flag with the black ball in the centre at the
main topmast head makes quarantine almost a foregone conclusion.
To narrate the numerous other duties of shipmasters, of pilots, and
of passengers in connection with vessels liable to quarantine, is
scarcely possible within the limits of the present paper. Their duties,
indeed, would be understood only by the initiated; and an attempt at a
popular translation of very dry and wordy regulations would be utterly
frustrated by the introduction of uninteresting technicalities. In
conclusion, let me ask readers to reflect that not a single vessel
comes near our shores that is not thoroughly investigated with regard
to the existence of infectious disease, and, by such reflection, to
banish those unwholesome fears which do more than anything else to
foster cholera or any similar scourge.
ON THE COAST.
A lonely strip of coast where golden sands
Stretch dreamily into the far-off blue;
A drowsy wind, the breath of southern lands,
And seas of opal hue.
A glorious, wide expanse of heaven o’erhead,
Whose tender blue is flecked with clouds of light;
A fleet of boats, with dusky sails outspread,
Fast dropping out of sight.
Tall, beetling cliffs that purple shadows throw
Athwart still pools where ocean treasures hide;
Low undertones—which ever clearer grow—
From the in-coming tide.
A perfect peace! Here never comes the strife
That ever waits upon the race for gold;
Here in still grooves goes on the march of life,
With simple joys untold.
Here sweet desire would have me always stay—
Far from the city’s toil, its passions strong—
And in contentment live through life’s brief day,
Unto its evensong.
But Duty, ever jealous, cries ‘Not yet!
Thy place is still upon the busy mart;
Thou must go forth, and earn with labour’s sweat,
The wishes of thy heart.’
And so, at Duty’s call, do I depart,
And leave these joys regretfully behind;
But as a vision bright, within my heart,
Their beauty is enshrined.
CHARLES H. BARSTOW.
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