It is best to wander inland, to pass every night at some one of the small market towns, and, when one has returned from the county, to be able to remember the many unbroken woods, the isolated clearings, the primeval tracks, now metalled and now green, the little patches of swamp, the clay pools and the short oaks of the Weald, the abrupt sandstone ledges crowded with pine, the bare Downs beyond seen between such trees, and the large levels of the four rivers which, between them, make up the county, and explain the history of its soil and of its families, and the peculiar tenacity with which it maintains under all modern vicissitudes its unique and enduring character. It may not be without utility to close these pages with a few remarks upon the last way in which the county can be explored in the course of a holiday. We will consider the approach from the sea and learn something of the way in which a small boat should regard the harbours of this coast; of how the rivers are to be ascended, and of the particular difficulties at the mouth of each. Those of our readers who have the opportunity to explore the county in this way from the coast and the Channel may not be numerous, but they can at least boast that their method of travel can give them the best appreciation of its history, for Sussex grew up from the harbours. We have already remarked that the Sussex harbours come at fairly regular intervals, especially those between Beachy Head and the Isle of Wight, but they are not by any means equally easy of access, even for a small boat drawing, let us say, six feet of water; and the most difficult of all five is Rye, at the mouth of the Rother. It is an almost universal rule that old harbours from which the sea has retreated, but to which the waterway still exists, are difficult of access, and Rye is no exception to this rule. There extends for more than a mile from the shore a mass of peaty mud through which the sea-bed of the river winds in a most tortuous fashion; at half-tide it is almost impossible to follow it if one has had no local experience. The matter is made worse from the fact that the channel is very poorly marked; its first entrance from the sea is impossible to discover in thick weather and not too easy upon a clear day. All this is a pity, for if Rye were still as accessible [Illustration: BOAT-BUILDING AT RYE] [Sidenote: HASTINGS BAY] as is say Arundel, or even Bosham, it would form the most charming of all entries into the county, with its pyramid of old red roofs and its deep and visible history.