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, woollen night-cap on his head, who was driving a very earnest bargain for a “small, but elegant assortment,” of dabs and flounders.  “Dree and zixpence if you like,” said he.  “I could a bought vour times as much vor one and zixpence coast-ways, if I’d a mind, and I’ll give thee no more, and not a word of a lie.”  His oratory conquered the coyness of the fishy damsel; and he invited the lady to take a glass of “zomat avore he topped his boom for Swanwidge.”

Having before me the certainty of a dull, monotonous afternoon, and cheerless evening, without any visible means of amusement, I instantly closed a bargain with Dick Hart (for such was the pilot’s name) to give me a cast to Swanwidge.  In a short time I found myself on board a trim, little pilot boat, gliding along the waters as the sun was sliding his downward course, and shedding a mellow radiance over the distant scenery towards Lytchett.  The white steeple of Poole church was lighted by the rays, while the town presented a neat and picturesque appearance with the masts of the shipping cutting against the blue sky.

Dick Hart formed no small feature in the scene as he stood at the helm with his red cap and black, curly hair, smoking a short, clay pipe, which like his own face, had become rather brown in service.  He looked around him with an air of independence and unconcern, as the “monarch of all he surveyed,” casting his eye up now and then at the trim of his canvass, but more frequently keeping it on me.  Dick began to open his budget of chat, and I found him as full of fun as his mainsail was full of nettles.