Away at our back rises the Muncaster Fell with its grey beacon-tower, its herd of deer, its wind-blown oaks, its primrose and bluebell haunted woods, that slope towards the Vale of Esk. Further inland, sheltered by its magnificent wall of forestry, stands rose-red one of the most interesting of our northern castles, with its long terrace-lawn of quite unequalled grace and loveliness. There in sheltered combe the rhododendrons bloom from earliest spring, and the air will to-day be honeysweet from laurel-flower far and wide. But I was bent on seeing an older people than Cymri, Roman, Viking, or Castle-Lord, albeit the line of Pennington reached far into the past, and suited well his ancient castle hold. I had come in the last week of April, by courteous invitation, to renew acquaintance with that fast-growing colony of black-headed gulls that make the dunes of Ravenglass famous. {61} A boat was called, and leaving the pebbly beach that 'Stott of Oldham' so delights to paint, we rowed across the flooding tide of the Ravenglass harbour to the sand-dunes of happy quietude, where the oyster-catchers were sunning themselves, and where the sheldrake in her nesting season loves to hide. As one went forward over the dunes one felt back in the great desert of the Badiet-Tih, and expected to see Bedouins start from the ground, and camels come in single file with solemn sway round the sedge-tufted, wind-blown hillocks and hummocks of glaring sand. Then suddenly the silence of the waste was broken by a marvellous sound, and a huge cloud of palpitating wings, that changed from black to white and hovered and trembled against the grey sea or the blue inland hills, swept by over-head. The black-headed gulls had heard of our approach, and mightily disapproved of our trespass upon their sand-blown solitude. We sat down and the clamour died: the gulls had settled. Creeping warily to the crest of a great billow of sand, we peeped beyond. Below us lay a natural amphitheatre of grey-green grass that looked as if it were starred with white flowers innumerable. We showed our heads and the flowers all took wing, and the air was {62} filled again with sound and intricate maze of innumerable wings.