Charles Kingsley and the poem become nearer and dearer to us than ever
with the knowledge that he was a cousin of Grenfell, and knew the
Sands o' Dee, over which Grenfell tramped and hunted as a boy, for the
sandy plain was close by his father's house.
There was a time when the estuary was a wide deep harbor, and really a
part of Liverpool Bay, and great ships from all over the world came
into it and sailed up to Chester, which in those days was a famous
port. But as years passed the sands, loosened by floods and carried
down by the river current, choked and blocked the harbor, and before
Grenfell was born it had become so shallow that only fishing vessels
and small craft could use it.
Parkgate is on the northern side of the River Dee. On the southern
side and beyond the Sands of Dee, rise the green hills of Wales,
melting away into blue mysterious distance. Near as Wales is the
people over there speak a different tongue from the English, and to
young Grenfell and his companions it was a strange and foreign land
and the people a strange and mysterious people.
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