At the farther end of Whitstable, and giving character to an otherwise featureless shore, is the wooded bluff of Tankerton, the growing residential suburb that Whitstable is at last throwing off. New roads strike through it, and there are fond hopes that the place will become a great seaside resort; but it has hitherto been slow in developing. Meanwhile, the cliff-top--a very modest cliff-top though it be-- affords the best view of the “Street Stones” and of the crowded flotilla of the oyster-fleet. The coast-line through the hamlet of Swalecliffe, and on to and through Herne Bay, is protected from wastage by the sea by serried ranks of closely-set wooden groynes, erected in the shingle at enormous expense and looking, in the long perspective, like gigantic combs. CHAPTER IX HERNE BAY--RECULVER--WANTSUM--SARRE Herne Bay is a place of entirely modern creation, and does not stand upon a bay. The coastline, in fact, runs remarkably straight between Whitstable and Margate, and anything in the nature of a bay is not to be seen. But, as old writers speak of a point here, it seems likely that a bay of some sort existed and has disappeared in the great wastage of the land that has certainly taken place all along this coast and around Sheppey. The “Street Stones” at Whitstable, pointing to a Roman road into a vanished country, the shallowness of the sea, and the many sands out there, and the vague legends that “Herne the Hunter” once chased the deer where the sea now rolls, all support the idea of great encroachments upon the land. The town of Herne Bay is built upon a foreshore rising gradually from the water. Where the houses end this line of coast is known as “The Downs”; a rough upland stretch of common or commonable land which forms a peculiar feature of the place, and is an unconventional playground for the children, Herne Bay being above all else a seaside resort of unsophisticated ways, and favoured by parents with large families.