After the chocolate faces of the West, and the yellow faces of the East, and the copper-colored faces of the South; after two years of mosquitoes, of cathedral-like forests, of spacious roasting bays, of sharks and alligators, and league-broad rivers, and songless birds angelically plumed, and endless miles of ocean; after--but I should need a volume to catalogue all that follows this _after_--after the _Royal Brunswicker_, in a word, how exquisite was my happiness on feeling the Deal shingle under my foot; how rejoiced was I to be in a land of white men and women, who spoke my own native tongue with its jolly, hearty, round, old Kentish accent, and who lived in a kingdom of roast beef and Welsh mutton and the best ales which were ever brewed in this world! While I paused, full of happy thought, the men who had brought me ashore dragged their boat up the shingle. Two or three others joined them, and the little company rushed the boat up in thunder. They then went rolling silently into Beach Street and disappeared. I was struck by the absence of animation fore and aft the beach. Many luggers and galley-punts lay high and dry, but only here and there did I observe the figure of a man, and, as well as I could make out in the evening dusk, the figure was commonly that of an old man. Here and there also a few children were playing, and here and there at an open door stood a woman gossiping with another. But though I saw lights in the public houses, no sounds of singing, of voices growling in argument, of maudlin calls, such as had been familiar to my ear in old times, issued from the doors or windows. I was surprised by this apparent lifelessness. A fleet of two hundred sail in the Downs should have filled the little town with bustle and business, with riotous sailors and clamorous wenches, and a coming and going of boats.