Rother becomes part of one of the most picturesque and most painted scenes in the south of England. Beneath the rock on which the most striking by far of south coast towns clusters, the Rother abandons its canal-like habit and at high tide coils gleaming seaward for its last two miles through the Sussex end of Romney Marsh, the worthy centre of probably the most curious and striking outlook between Pool harbour and the Humber. Two other lesser streams, the Brede and the Tillingham, come into it through the meadows. But as late as Tudor times all these rivers formed together a large estuary serving the then ports of Rye and Winchelsea. These are typical Sussex rivers, flowing down valleys whose least pleasing feature might almost be said to be the actual streams that made them. The rich meadows in the flat, the old [Illustration: THE OUSE, NEAR BARCOMBE MILLS, SUSSEX] [Illustration] homesteads, the hop-fields upon the slopes, the charming villages, and the still surviving windmills surmounting the ridges are of the best that tranquil southern England has to offer. But the dyked-in waters themselves, flowing sullenly and monotonously over their muddy bottoms between raised turf banks, with rare exceptions contribute nothing and are powerless to charm. The most easterly of the four chief rivers cutting through the coast range is the Cuckmere. As one drops down the long westward slope from Beachy Head into a sequestered and far-spreading Down country this little river, cleaving a narrow way into the sea below, without port or harbour or village or anything but an isolated homestead or two within apparent touch of it, seizes one's fancy not a little. For this reason the Cuckmere as a replica in miniature of the Ouse and Arun, but of curiously sequestered habit on this otherwise rather populous coast, has a place of its own somewhat apart from its fellows.