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The British fell back twenty-seven miles and concentrated at Estcourt, leaving the all-important Colenso railway-bridge in the hands of the enemy. From this onwards they held the north of the Tugela, and many a widow wore crepe before we got our grip upon it once more. Never was there a more critical week in the war, but having got Colenso the Boers did little more.
Our roads, I saw, divided, and there was, further, a need upon me to laugh. "I shall stay here," I said. "It's a very pretty country." "My God!" he murmured, as softly as he shut the door, and I felt that it was a prayer. Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course for the railway-bridge. It was necessary to pass by the bench once more, but the wicket was between us.
The grounds cover between thirty and forty acres, and are well laid out in flower-beds, etc., at the southern end. The Ravenscourt Park Railway-station is on the east side, and the arched railway-bridge crosses the southern end of the park. A beautiful avenue of fine old elms leads to the Public Library, which is at the north end in what was once the old manor-house.
Further northward, beyond the railway-bridge, is Holy Trinity Church. The foundation-stone was laid on Ascension Day, 1887, by the Duchess of Albany. It is a red-brick building with a fine east window decorated with stone tracery. Beyond this there is nothing further of interest except St. Mary's Roman Catholic cemetery at Kensal Green. It comprises thirty acres, and was opened in May, 1858.
Ruskin fails to appreciate or, rather, to depreciate railways in their connection with Italian landscapes; for, besides his series of complaints regarding the Florence bells, he denounces the railway from Rome to Naples, and the railway-tunnels under Monts Cenis and St. Gothard, and the railway-bridge leading into Venice, as enemies of the beautiful and picturesque in Nature.
The West London Railway runs in the bed of an ancient stream which rose north of Wormwood Scrubs and ended at Chelsea Creek, and this brook was crossed by a bridge at the place where the railway-bridge now stands on the Hammersmith Road.
A little farther on, the deviation line and the railway-bridge were pointed out as one of the many triumphs of engineering skill to be seen and marvelled at on that recently restored line. The achievements of these lion-hearted engineers could not fail to impress themselves even on a civilian.
North of Flodden Field, and not far distant, is the Scottish Border, which in this part is made by the river Tweed, with Berwick at its mouth. The two kingdoms, so long in hot quarrel, are now united by a magnificent railway-bridge, elevated one hundred and twenty-five feet above the river and costing $600,000.
Hidden away behind the church is an old wooden farmhouse, the last of many that formerly dotted these fields. Passing eastwards, the Upper Road leads to the Charlwood Road, and across the railway-bridge the new streets, Norroy and Chelverton Roads, have been made as far as the High Street through the grounds of The Lawn, an old house which stood next the Spotted Horse.
Retreating cautiously, I would take a run, and then a terrific leap into the darkness, sometimes finding myself on firm dry sand, and as frequently in the water. I had decided that I should probably not reach Sandsend until daylight, when a red lamp near the railway-bridge shone out as a beacon, and I realized that I would soon be safe from the tentacles of sea-monsters.
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