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382

POCAHONTAS

CHAP.

county bordering the Thames shows evidence of the extent to which the chalk has been removed, in great pits—sometimes now converted into gardens-giving a scarred appearance to the river-side county.

Gravesend, as we approach it coming up or down the Thames, has a certain picturesqueness, especially perhaps in the eyes of those who have been down to the sea in ships and return after a long voyage, to whom it is often the first home town of which they get an intimate view. Its buildings show diversified with trees and backed by the rising chalk hills. It is a place of considerable importance for its shrimp fishery fleet, and from the fact that it is practically the limit of the Port of London-the point at which in-coming vessels are visited by the Customs officers, the point at which the river pilots are taken on board. The old part of the town has a certain picturesqueness in its narrow ways, but it has not much to hold the attention of visitors. Opposite, on the Essex coast, is Tilbury, a famous old place in the scheme of Thames defences, where Queen Elizabeth reviewed her army when the Spanish Armada threatened her dominions.

In Gravesend Church was buried the romantic Indian Princess, Pocahontas, who married John Rolfe the first tobacco cultivator of Virginia, as smokers may like to be reminded-visited England and died in 1617, when arrangements had been made for her to return with her husband to Virginia. Recently attention has been drawn once more to her story by the discovery, during building operations near the church, of remains supposed to be hers. According to the church register, however, the beautiful young Indian" was buried in ye chauncell," so it is scarcely likely that the peculiar skull found last summer is that of Pocahontas.

On a wall near a Gravesend bowling-green a local eighteenth century celebrity was commemorated in the punning fashion admired at the time :

"To the Memory

of Mr. Alderman Nyun

An honest Man and an excellent Bowler.

Cuique est sua Fama.

Full forty long years was the Alderman seen,

The delight of each Bowler, and King of this Green :

As long be remembered his art and his name,

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Whose hand was unerring,-unrivalled his fame.
His BIAS was good, and he always was found
Το go the right way, and take enough ground.
The Jack to the uttermost verge he would send,
For the Alderman lov'd a full-length at each end.
Now mourn ev'ry eye that has seen him display
The Arts of the Game, and the wiles of his Play,
For the Great Bowler, DEATH, at one critical cast,
Has ended his Length, and close rubb'd him at last.
F. W. posuit. MDCCLXXVI."

383

Rosherville Gardens, laid out largely amid disused chalk quarries which stretch along the river-side west of Gravesend, have long been famous as one of the places in which the Cockney takes his pleasures anything but sadly. The

Gardens," which were originally established by one Jeremiah Rosher-hence the name-lie between Gravesend and Northfleet. The latter place is worth visiting on account of its very large church, from which are to be had good views up and down stream. All about these places are wide fruit gardens and nursery grounds-the district being particularly noted for its rhubarb and asparagus. The railway from Gravesend to Rochester runs for some distance closely parallel with the old Thames and Medway Canal, which was completed a few years before the coming of the railways, only to fall into early disuse.

CHAPTER XX

COBHAM, ROCHESTER, AND THE THAMES MARSHES

LEAVING Gravesend we have choice of ways to the triple towns of Strood, Rochester, and Chatham. First we reach Chalk, its landmark church notable for curious carvings over the doorway. Here Dickens spent his honeymoon and here he wrote the beginning of his perennially amusing "Pickwick." Passing Chalk we may go by Gadshill; going south to the Watling Street we can take the beautiful road by Cobham Park, or crossing that highway can take a very pleasant round-through the chalk country, of hops, orchards, and woodlands-by Nurstead and Meopham. Here we should pause to remember that in this village was born in 1608 John Tradescant the younger, the famous botanist and traveller whose "Closet of rarities forms part of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Tradescant and his father deserve our grateful remembrances for the many trees and plants they introduced into this country, trees and plants so familiar now that it is difficult to realise what our gardens (and especially our suburban gardens) would be without them, for among the trees which we owe to them are the acacia, the plane, and the lilac.

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From Meopham to Wrotham we may go over a picturesque bit of the Downs by following the south road, or by yet more attractive roundabout ways through well-wooded country, touching at many retired hamlets, may come down to the Medway at Snodland or Halling and thence follow the river to the triple towns. The whole of this tract with its up and down lanes, its wide woodlands, its hillside hopfields is full of beauty. Turning east after passing Meopham Church an attractive route over Foxen Down takes us to Luddesdown

CH. XX

A QUAINT OLD INN

385

Church and thence to Cobham at the western end of the beautiful park.

The clean and neat old village is a famous point of pilgrim

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age for Dickensians, the quaint old "Leather Bottle" inn being familiar to all readers of "Pickwick." Was it not here that the misanthropic Tracy Tupman retired? Was it

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