This was such an astounding fact to
record that the writer of the old manuscript explains that 'old men
that would be loath to have their credyt crackt by a tale of a stale
date, report confidently that ... a _sea-man_ was taken by the
fishers.' They took him up to an old disused house, and kept him there
for many weeks, feeding him on raw fish, because he persistently
refused the other sorts of food offered him. To the people who flocked
from far and near to visit him he was very courteous, and he seems to
have been particularly pleased with any 'fayre maydes' who visited him,
for he would gaze at them with a very earnest countenance, 'as if his
phlegmaticke breaste had been touched with a sparke of love.'
The lofty coast-line we have followed all the way from Sandsend
terminates abruptly at Huntcliff Nab, the great promontory which is
familiar to visitors to Saltburn. Low alluvial cliffs take the place of
the rocky precipices, and the coast becomes flatter and flatter as you
approach Redcar and the marshy country at the mouth of the Tees. The
original Saltburn, consisting of a row of quaint fishermen's cottages,
still stands entirely alone, facing the sea on the Huntcliff side of
the beck, and from the wide, smooth sands there is little of modern
Saltburn to be seen besides the pier.
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