A COASTING SCRAP.


(_For the Mirror_.)


It was a bright summer afternoon: the estuary of Poole Harbour lay
extended before me; its broad expanse studded with inlands of sand and
furze bushes, of which Brownsea is the most considerable. A slight
ripple marked the deeper channels which were of a blue colour, and the
shallow mud banks being but barely covered by the tide, appeared like
sheets of molten silver. The blue hills of Purbeck bounded the distant
heath-lands to the westward, and the harbour extended itself inland
towards the town of Wareham, becoming more and more intricate in its
navigation, although it receives the contributions of two rivers, the
Piddle and the Froome, arising probably from the soil carried down by
the streams, and the faint action of the tide at a distance of eight
or ten miles from the mouth of the harbour. The Wareham clay boats
added life to the scene. Some were wending their way through the
intricate channels close hauled upon a wind; others were going right
away with a flowing sheet. On the eastern side was the bold sweep of
the shore, extending to the mouth of the harbour, and terminating in a
narrow point of bright sand hills, separating the quiet waters of the
harbour from the boisterous turmoilings of the English Channel.

Sauntering along the Quay of Poole, indulging in a kind of reverie,
thinking, or in fact, thinking of nothing at all, (a kind of waking
dream, when hundreds of ideas, recollections, and feelings float with
wonderful rapidity through the brain,) my attention was attracted by
a stout, hardy-faced pilot, with water boots on his legs, and a red,