Thus favourably began the work Augustine was sent to do. The place at Ebbsfleet where he set foot ashore was long held sacred and a myth speedily grew about it; no less wild a story than that his foot had miraculously impressed itself upon the rock. If for “rock” we read “mud,” which is much more likely to have been a feature of this shore, we shall have less difficulty in believing the story. A chapel was built over that wonderful footprint--which no doubt the monks in after-years had provided; but, more wonderful still, it afterwards became known as the footprint of St. Mildred, who had landed at Ebbsfleet about a century later. I do not pretend to be able to reconcile the footprint of a man well over six feet high, as Augustine was represented to be, with that of a woman; but who would seriously criticise the statements in fairy tales? Not I, for one. The chapel disappeared at some unspecified time, and the marvellous footprint is said to have been broken up by roadmenders for road-metal in the first decade of the nineteenth century. This seems, for many reasons, a sad pity. One would joyfully barter the modern St. Augustine’s Cross that stands hereby for such. This memorial, a very fine one, was set up in 1884, on the supposed site of the landing, where an ancient oak formerly stood. It rises eighteen feet and is elaborately sculptured on the model of the famous crosses at Sandbach, Cheshire. Close at hand (a very modern touch this) is “Ebbsfleet, Cliff’s End, and St. Augustine’s Cross” railway station: which rather discounts the romance of the spot. [Illustration: THANET AS AN ISLAND, SHOWING THE WANTSUM, FROM AN ANCIENT MAP.]