Читать книгу Carette of Sark - John Oxenham - Страница 3

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Sercq is a small exclusive land where the forty farm holdings to-day are almost identical with those fixed by Helier de Carteret in the time of Queen Elizabeth; where feudal observances which date back to the time of Rollo, Duke of Normandy, are still the law of the land; and where family names and records in some cases run back unbroken for very many generations.

To obviate any personal feeling, I desire to state that, to the best of my belief, no present inhabitant of Sercq is in any way connected with any of the principal characters named in this book.

The name Carré is still an honoured one in the Island. It is pronounced Caury.

The numbers on the map refer to the farms and tenants in the year 1800—the approximate date of the story. As this map has been specially compiled, and is, I believe, the only one of its kind in existence, it may be of interest to some to find at the end of this volume a list of the holdings and holders in Sercq about one hundred years ago.

The photographs from which this book is illustrated were specially taken for me at considerable expenditure of time and trouble by various good friends in Sark and elsewhere. If, in one or two cases, we have permitted ourselves some little license in the adaptation of the present to the past, it is only for the purpose of presenting to the reader as nearly as possible what was in the writer's mind when working on the story.

The map and list of the Forty Men of Sark and their properties in the year 1800 were compiled for me from the old Island records, by my friend Mr. W.A. Toplis, over twenty years resident in Sark, and for all the time and labour he expended upon them I here make most grateful acknowledgment.

The length of the Coupée depends upon—one's feelings, one's temperament, and the exact spots where it really begins and ends. To the nervous it seems endless, and some have found themselves unable to cross it under any conditions whatever. So high an authority as Ansted gives it as 600 feet, others say 300; the simple fact being that, unless one goes for the express methodic purpose of measuring it (which no one ever does), all thought, save that of wonder and admiration, is lost the moment one's foot falls upon it. The span from cliff to cliff is probably something over 300 feet, while, from the dip of the path in Sark to the clearing of the rise in Little Sark, it is probably twice as much.