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KIPLING'S SUSSEX |
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smells which assault and perturb the mind of the wayfaring man returned to civilisation. I rank wood-smoke first since it calls up more, more intimate and varied memories over a wider geographical range, to a larger number of individuals than any other agent that we know. My powers are limited, but I think I would undertake to transport a quarter of a million Englishmen to any point in South Africa, from Zambezi to Cape Agulhas, with no more elaborate vehicle than a box of matches, a string or two of rifle cordite, a broken-up biscuit box, some chips of a creosoted railway sleeper, and a handful of dried cowdung, and to land each man in the precise spot he had in his mind. And that is only a small part of the world that wood-smoke controls. A whiff of it can take us back to forgotten marches over unnamed mountains with disreputable companions ; to day-long halts beside flooded rivers in the rain ; wonderful mornings of youth in brilliantly lighted lands where everything was possible—and generally done ; to uneasy wakings under the low desert moon and on top of cruel, hard pebbles ; and, above all, to that God's own hour, all the world over, when the stars have gone out and it is too dark to see clear, and one lies with the fumes of last night's embers in one's nostrils—lies and waits for a new horizon to heave itself up against a new dawn. Wood-smoke magic works on every one according to his experience. I live in a wood-smoke country and I know how men, otherwise silent, become suddenly and surprisingly eloquent under its influence."
About two and a half miles west of Bexhill is Cooden Beach. Bungalows fringe the sea front, but the beach is very secluded. The following |
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