Puslapio vaizdai
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PREFACE.

THE TITLE of this volume so clearly expresses its purport, that, save for custom's sake, a preface is scarcely needful. The following pages contain the simple record of a delightful summer outing, a 'cruise on wheels' through the three counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. The scenic and other attractions of this eastern portion of England are, I think, too little known. True, I cannot promise those who follow us in our pleasant journey either mountains or waterfalls, but all things else that go to make up the beauty of the land I can; ruined abbeys and ancient churches fraught with interest for the ecclesiologist and antiquary; romantic homes of the olden days-many of these moated stillall abounding in past memories and historic associations; old-time coaching hostelries wherein our portwine-loving forefathers made merry; old-fashioned oddly built country towns; picturesque hamlets; pleasant pastoral scenes varied by wild wind-swept heaths and gorse-sprinkled commons; and, if I can

not show my readers lakes, I can introduce them to the Land of the Broads, the quiet beauties of which artists seem only recently to have discovered.

The roads we found to be on the whole excellent; better indeed than we have found them elsewhere in England (the extent of ground covered being considered); moreover—an important moreover for the comfort of the driving tourist-the inns on the way are good, above the average of country inns.

With so much to interest and delight us, little wonder that we most thoroughly enjoyed our expedition, and that we returned home with a very pleasant impression of the scenic and other attractions of this neglected corner of England.

Of the illustrations I have only to remark that I trust they will lend an added interest to the account of our wanderings out of the beaten tourist track. I have to express my thanks to Mr. Pearson for the care he has taken in reproducing them.

J. J. H.

1889.

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