The road leading across these marshy levels is really an ancient causeway, marked on old maps “Sarre Wall.” This old history of it is still very plainly manifest in its straight course, in its level, raised above the surrounding fields, and in the deep dykes, brimming with water and filled with rushes, on either side. The tall, delicate poplars that line Sarre Wall and confer upon it a distinctive grace, like that of some country road in Picardy, give a gentle sighing voice to every breeze. It requires stronger winds to set the sword-blades of the clustered rushes rustling sharply in the dykes. This road into Sarre is your only entrance this way into the Isle of Thanet, now an island only by courtesy, but still to be entered or departed from by but two roads, one at either extremity; the one now under discussion, the other at Sandwich. The marshy character of the land still renders roads into Thanet scarce. The Wantsum, the channel that formerly divided the Isle of Thanet from the mainland of Kent, flowed past here in a salt-water estuary half a mile broad in the times of the Romans, who were so concerned to defend each of its two mouths, that they built the strong maritime fortresses of _Regulbium_ and _Rutupium_ where ruined Reculver and Richborough now stand. The direct way into Thanet was then, as now, by this road, but it was by ferry that travellers then crossed, and continued for many centuries to cross. The Wantsum had already somewhat shrunk in the time of Bede, who died in 735. It was then three furlongs wide. But that it was readily navigable for ships for another couple of centuries is proved by Earl Godwin’s fleet sailing through. That the channel must, however, have been known from the earliest times as a dwindling passage seems evident from the very name given to it by the Saxons; an adjectival form of the verb _wansian_, to diminish, or to wane.[1] [1] It is also said to have a common origin with the name of the river Wensum, in Norfolk, and to signify a winding stream. Yet this Wantsum appears to have been practicable for small vessels until 1460, and it was not until 1485 that it had narrowed sufficiently for the original bridge, dating from that year, to be built. That bridge was of course a work of piety, owing its origin to the monastery of the Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul, at Minster, which had from ancient times owned the ferry and had derived from it a handsome revenue. In a curious map of Thanet, the work of one of the monks of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, and now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is to be found a representation of the ferry-boat, with a boatman and a nun, while a man is observed wading from the shore to the boat, carrying a monk as passenger on his back. He is evidently one of those employed at the ferry by the Abbey, for he wears a cross-badge on his right arm. [Illustration: THE WANTSUM FERRY. _From an ancient Map._ ]