[Illustration: HAULING THE NETS FOR WHITEBAIT. _From photographs by R. B. Lodge_.]
The hope of reclaiming land from the waves exercises a peculiar fascination over most minds. It presents itself in more than one form as a most desirable activity. It is something like creation--a form of making earth from sea. The clothing of the fringe of ocean's bed with herbage, the reaping of a harvest where rolled the tide, the barring out of the dominant sea, the vision, not altogether illusive, of planting industrious and deserving men on the ground so won, all these are alluring ideas. The undertaker, to use the word in vogue in the Stuart days when such enterprises were in high favour, always leaves a name among posterity, generally an honoured name, and in nearly every case one associated with courage, perseverance, and in some measure with benevolence. The picturesque and sentimental side will always remain to the credit of the reclaimers of the waste of Neptune's manor. But if the balance of profitable expenditure, or of good done to others, is weighed between winning land from the sea and expenditure in improving the cultivation of land already accessible, the award should probably be given to the latter. Intensive cultivation and the improvement of the millions of acres which we now possess is a more thankworthy task, demands more brains, and should give greater results than the gaining of a few thousands of acres now covered by water. This conclusion is not the one which any lover of enterprise or of picturesque endeavour would prefer. It is a pity that it is so. Perhaps in days to come when wheat is once more precious the sea wastes may once more be worth recovery. But even so they are not desirable spots on which to plant a population. They are by natural causes on the way to nowhere, and out of communication with the towns and villages. Brading Harbour, in the Isle of Wight, is an exception, for it ran up inland. Lord Leicester's marshes at Holkham are narrow though long, and, while splendidly fertile, are all well within reach of the farms and villages. But to scatter farms and labourers' cottages on the dreary flats of a place like Canvey Island is not likely to appeal to the wishes of modern agriculturists, who feel the dulness of rural life acutely already. The growth of the Jewish colonies not far off on the mainland, where poor Hebrews continually reinforce a community devoted to field and garden labour and content to begin by earning the barest living, seems to indicate that a population from the poorest urban class might be found for reclaimed land. But the industrious town artisans of English blood have not yet found life so intolerable as to be ready to try the experiment.