The wind dropped; the sea went on uneasily, tumbling and rolling, but within a very little while--before eleven, I think--there was no breeze at all; and there I lay, with Folkestone harbour not a mile away, but never any chance of getting there; and I whistled, but no wind came. I sat idle and admired the loneliness of the sea. Till, towards one, a little draught of air blew slantwise from the land, and under it I crept to the smooth water within the stone arm of the breakwater, and here I let the anchor go, and settling everything, I slept. It is pleasant to remember these things. THE VALLEY OF THE ROTHER There is in that part of England which is very properly called her Eden (that centre of all good things and home of happy men, the county of Sussex), there is, I say, in that exalted county a valley which I shall praise for your greater pleasure, because I know that it is too jealously guarded for any run of strangers to make it common, and because I am very sure that you may go and only make it the more delightful by your presence. It is the valley of the River Rother; the sacred and fruitful river between the downs and the weald. Now, here many travelling men, bicyclists even and some who visit for a livelihood, will think I mean the famous River Rother that almost reaches the sea. The Rother into which the foreigners sailed for so many hundred years, the River of the Marshes, the river on which stands Rye; the easy Rother along whose deep meadows are the sloping kilns, the bright-tilted towns and the steep roads; the red Rother that is fed by streams from the ironstone. This Rother also all good men know and love, both those that come in for pleasure, strangers of Kent, and those that have a distant birthright in East Sussex, being born beyond Ouse in the Rape of Bramber. But it is not this Rother that I am telling of, though I would love to tell of it also--as indeed I would love to tell at length of all the rivers of Sussex--the Brede, the Ouse, the Adur, the Cuckmere; all the streams that cut the chalk hills. But for this I have no space and you no patience. Neither can I tell you of a thousand adventures and wonderful hazards along the hills and valley of this eastern Rother; of how I once through a telescope on Brightling Hill saw the meet at Battle, and of how it looked quite near; of how I leapt the River Rother once, landing on the far side safely (which argues the river narrow or the leap tremendous); of how I poached in the wood of a friend who is still my friend; of how I rode a horse into Robertsbridge; of the inn. All these things could I tell with growing fervour, and to all these would you listen with an increasing delight. But I must write of the River Rother under Petworth, the other Rother in the West. Why? Because I started out so to do, and no man should let himself be led away by a word, or by any such little thing.