Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England. It is
frequently water-logged till late in the summer: invisible a part of
the year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat. Willoughby is
a considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles and
a half southeastward from Alford. It stands just on the edge of the
chalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, and
the scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats. All the
villages in this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character.
The name ends in by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, and
we can measure the progress of the Danish invasion of England by the
number of towns which have the terminal by, distinguished from the
Saxon thorpe, which generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire.
The population may be said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed.
Such was John Smith. The sea was the natural element of his
neighbors, and John when a boy must have heard many stories of the
sea and enticing adventures told by the sturdy mariners who were
recruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby, and whose oars had
often cloven the Baltic Sea.
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