Gibraltar.' Nor is that the only wonder connected
with the district. Close by is Aldborough, where the poet Crabbe learned
to become, as Byron calls him,

'Nature's sternest painter, but the best;'

and as Camden writes, 'Hard by, when in the year 1555 all the corn
throughout England was choakt in the ear by unseasonable weather, the
inhabitants tell you that in the beginning of autumn there grew peas
miraculously among the rocks, and that they relieved the dearth in those
parts. But the more thinking people affirm that pulse cast upon the
shore by shipwreck used to grow there now and then, and so quite exclude
the miracle.' At the present the crag-beds are the most interesting
feature to the visitor, especially if he be of a geological turn. These
are so rich in fossil shells that you may find some of the latter in
almost every house in Ipswich. The Coralline Crag is the oldest bed; but
this formation does not occur in an undisturbed state, except in
Sudbourne Park and about Orford. A drive thither from Ipswich, through
Woodbridge, conveys the traveller through some of the loveliest scenery
in Suffolk, and the numerous exposures of Coralline Crag in Sudbourne
Park, which is about two miles from Orford, will amply repay the
traveller, on account of the number of fossils which he can there obtain,
and the ease with which he can extract them. In this neighbourhood live
the far-famed Garrett family, one of whom, as Mrs. Dr. Anderson, is well
known in London society, as is also her sister, Mrs. Fawcett, the wife of
the late popular M.P. for Hackney. Close by is Leiston Abbey, originally
one of Black Canons, consisting of several subterranean chapels, various
offices and a church, which appears to have been a handsome structure,
faced with flint and freestone. The interior was plain and undecorated,
yet massive. A large extent of the neighbouring fields was enclosed with
walls, which have been demolished, as was to be expected, for the sake of
the materials. We hear much of the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee. On
her eastern coast England has her dead cities. Dunwich, of which I have
already spoken, is one. Orford, now known solely by its lighthouse, is
another; Blythburgh, in the church of which is the tomb of Anna, King of
the East Angles, who was slain in 654, is a third. Like Tyre and Sidon,
these places had their merchant princes, who lived delicately, and whose
ships traded far and near. It is said i