My friend dismounted, and opened the gate, and we drove in among
the cattle, and after they had satisfied a peaceful curiosity
concerning us, they went about their business of eating grass,
and we strayed over "the large comone," and tried to imagine its
looks nearly three hundred years before. They could not have been
very different; the place could hardly have been much wilder, and
there was the "creeke hardby wher they lay," the hapless women
and children, in their boat "at lowwater," while the evening came
on, no doubt, just as it was doing with us, the weather clearing,
and the sunset glassy and cold. Off yonder, away across the
solitary moor, was the course of the Humber, marked for us by the
trail of a steamer's smoke through the fringes of trees, and for
them by the sail of the Dutchman, who, when he saw next day that
"great company, both horse and foote, with bills and gunes, and
other weapons," coming to harry those poor people, "swore his
countries oath, 'sacremente,' and having the wind faire, waiged
his ancor, hoysed sails, and away," leaving those desolate women
and their little ones lamenting.
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