Brookland, hard to get at, stands on the great road which runs south- westward out of the Marsh and brings you at last out of Kent into Sussex at Rye. It was there I lingered a little to say farewell. As one looks at evening across that vast loneliness, so desolate and yet so beautiful and infinitely subject to the sky, lying between the hills and sinking so imperceptibly into the sea, one continually asks oneself what is Romney Marsh, by whom was it reclaimed from the all-devouring sea, what forces built it up and gathered from barrenness the infinite riches we see? Was it the various forces of Nature, the racing tides of the straits, some sudden upheaval of the earth, or the tireless energy of men--and of what men? Those seventeen miles of richest pasture which lie in an infinite peace between Appledore and Dungeness, to whom do we owe them and their blessedness? That wall at Dymchurch which saves the marshes, Romney, Welland, Guildford and Denge, who contrived it and first took advantage of those great banks of shingle and of sand which everywhere bar out the great tides of the straits and have thus created and preserved this strange fifth part of the world? Was it the Romans? May we see in Romney Marsh the greatest material memorial of their gigantic energy and art to be found in the western provinces, a nobler and a greater work than the Wall as well as a more lasting? And if this be so, how well is the Marsh named after them, for of all they did materially in our island, this work of reclamation was surely the worthiest to bear their name. But to these questions there can perhaps never be an answer. Certainly the very aspect of the Marsh recalls nothing so much as the Campagna of Rome, in its nobility, loneliness and infinite subjection to the sun, the clouds, and the sky, so that at evening there we might almost think that Rome herself lay only just beyond that large horizon, and that with an effort we might reach the great gate of San Giovanni e'er darkness fell. It is as though in the Marsh our origins for once and unmistakably were laid bare for us and we had suddenly recognised our home. CHAPTER IX RYE AND WINCHELSEA