Rambles Beyond Railways Part 3

V.

LOO-POOL

"Now, I think it very much amiss," remarks Sterne, in 'Tristram Shandy,'

"that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about, and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely, o' my conscience, for the sake of drawing it." I quote this wise and witty observation on a bad practice of some travel-writers, as containing the best reason that I can give the reader for transporting him at once over some sixty miles of Cornish high-roads and footpaths, without stopping to drop one word of description by the way. Having left off the record of our travels at Liskeard, and taking it up again--as I mean to do here--at Helston, I skip over five intermediate market-towns and two large villages, with a mere dash of the pen. Lostwithiel, Fowey, St. Austell, Grampound, Probus, Truro, Falmouth, are all places of mark and note, and have all certain curiosities and sights of their own to interest the inquisitive tourist; but, nevertheless, not one of them "meddled" with me in the course of my rambles, and acting on Sterne's excellent principle, I purpose "letting them alone" now. In other words, the several towns and villages that I have enumerated, though presenting much that was generally picturesque and attractive in the way of old buildings and pretty scenery, exhibited little that was distinctive or original in character; produced therefore rather pleasant than vivid impressions; and would by no means suggest any very original series of descriptions to fill the pages of a book which is confined to such subjects only as are most exclusively and strikingly Cornish.

The town of Helston, where we now halt for the first time since we left the Cheese-Wring and St. Cleer's Well, might, if tested by its own merits alone, be pa.s.sed over as unceremoniously as the towns already pa.s.sed over before it. Its princ.i.p.al recommendation, in the opinion of the inhabitants, appeared to be that it was the residence of several very "genteel families," who have certainly not communicated much of their gentility to the lower orders of the population--a riotous and drunken set, the only bad specimens of Cornish people that I met with in Cornwall. The streets of Helston are a trifle larger and a trifle duller than the streets of Liskeard; the church is comparatively modern in date, and superlatively ugly in design. A miserable altar-piece, daubed in gaudy colours on the window above the communion-table, is the only approach to any attempt at embellishment in the interior. In short, the town has nothing to offer to attract the stranger, but a public festival--a sort of barbarous carnival--held there annually on the 8th of May. This festival is said to be of very ancient origin, and is called "The Furry"--an old Cornish word, signifying a gathering; and, at Helston particularly, a gathering in celebration of the return of spring. The Furry begins early in the morning with singing, to an accompaniment of drums and kettles. All the people in the town immediately leave off work and scamper into the country; having reached which, they scamper back again, garlanded with leaves and flowers, and caper about hand-in-hand through the streets, and in and out of all the houses, without let or hindrance. Even the "genteel" resident families allow themselves to be infected with the general madness, and wind up the day's capering consistently enough by a night's capering at a grand ball. A full account of these extraordinary absurdities may be found in Polwhele's "History of Cornwall."

But, though thus uninteresting in itself, Helston must be visited by every tourist in Cornwall for the sake of the grand, the almost unrivalled scenery to be met with near it. The town is not only the best starting-point from which to explore the n.o.ble line of coast rocks which ends at the Lizard Head; but possesses the further recommendation of lying in the immediate vicinity of the largest lake in Cornwall--Loo Pool.

The banks of Loo Pool stretch on either side to the length of two miles; the lake, which in summer occupies little more than half the s.p.a.ce that it covers in winter, is formed by the flow of two or three small streams. You first reach it from Helston, after a walk of half a mile; and then see before you, on either hand, long ranges of hills rising gently from the water's edge, covered with cl.u.s.tering trees, or occupied by wide cornfields and sloping tracts of common land. So far, the scenery around Loo Pool resembles the scenery around other lakes; but as you proceed, the view changes in the most striking and extraordinary manner. Walking on along the winding banks of the pool, you taste the water and find it soft and fresh, you see ducks swimming about in it from the neighbouring farm-houses, you watch the rising of the fine trout for which it is celebrated--every object tends to convince you that you are wandering by the sh.o.r.es of an inland lake--when suddenly at a turn in the hill slope, you are startled by the shrill cry of the gull, and the fierce roar of breakers thunders on your ear--you look over the light grey waters of the lake, and behold, stretching immediately above and beyond them, the expanse of the deep blue ocean, from which they are only separated by a strip of smooth white sand!

You hurry on, and reach this bar of sand which parts the great English Channel and the little Loo Pool--a child might run across it in a minute! You stand in the centre. On one side, close at hand, water is dancing beneath the breeze in gla.s.sy, tiny ripples; on the other, equally close, water rolls in mighty waves, precipitated on the ground in das.h.i.+ng, hissing, writhing floods of the whitest foam--here, children are floating mimic boats on a mimic sea; there, the stateliest s.h.i.+ps of England are sailing over the great deep--both scenes visible in one view. Rocky cliffs and arid sands appear in close combination with rounded fertile hills, and long gra.s.sy slopes; salt spray leaping over the first, spring-water lying calm beneath the last! No fairy vision of Nature that ever was imagined is more fantastic, or more lovely than this glorious reality, which brings all the most widely contrasted characteristics of a sea view and an inland view into the closest contact, and presents them in one harmonious picture to the eye.

The ridge of sand between Loo Pool and the sea, which, by impeding the flow of the inland streams spreads them in the form of a lake over the valley-ground between two hills, is formed by the action of storms from the south-west. Such, at least, is the modern explanation of the manner in which Loo Bar has been heaped up. But there is an ancient legend in connexion with it, which, tells a widely different story.

It is said that the terrible Cornish giant, or ogre, Tregeagle, was trudging homewards one day, carrying a huge sack of sand on his back, which--being a giant of neat and cleanly habits--he designed should serve him for sprinkling his parlour floor. As he was pa.s.sing along the top of the hills which now overlook Loo Pool, he heard a sound of scampering footsteps behind him; and, turning round, saw that he was hotly pursued by no less a person than the devil himself. Big as he was, Tregeagle lost heart and ignominiously took to his heels: but the devil ran nimbly, ran steadily, ran without losing breath--ran, in short, _like_ the devil. Tregeagle was fat, short-winded, had a load on his back, and lost ground at every step. At last, just as he reached the seaward extremity of the hills, he determined in despair to lighten himself of his burden, and thus to seize the only chance of escaping his enemy by superior fleetness of foot. Accordingly, he opened his huge sack in a great hurry, shook out all his sand over the precipice, between the sea and the river which then ran into it, and so formed in a moment the Bar of Loo Pool.

In the winter time, the lake is the cause and the scene of an extraordinary ceremony. The heavy incessant rains which then fall (ice is almost unknown in the moist climate of Cornwall), increase day by day the waters of the Pool, until they encroach over the whole of the low flat valley between Helston and the sea. Then, the smooth paths of turf, the little streams that run by their side--so pleasant to look on in the summer time--are hidden by the great overflow. Mill-wheels are stopped; cottages built on the declivities of the hill are threatened with inundation. Out on the bar, at high tide, but two or three feet of sand appear between the stormy sea on the one hand, and the stagnant swollen lake on the other. If Loo Pool were measured now, it would be found to extend to a circ.u.mference of seven miles.

When the flooding of the lake has reached its climax, the millers, who are the princ.i.p.al sufferers by the overflow, prepare to cut a pa.s.sage through the Bar for the superabundant waters of the Pool. Before they can do this, however, they must conform to a curious old custom which has been practised for centuries, and is retained down to the present day. Procuring two stout leathern purses, they tie up three halfpence in each, and then set off with them in a body to the Lord of the Manor.

Presenting him with their purses, they state their case with all due formality, and request permission to cut their trench through the sand.

In consideration of the threepenny recognition of his rights, the Lord of the Manor graciously accedes to the pet.i.tion; and the millers, armed with their spades and shovels, start for the Bar.

Their projected labour is of the slightest kind. A mere ditch suffices to establish the desired communication: and the water does the rest for itself. On one occasion, so high was the tide on one side, and so full the lake on the other, that a man actually sc.r.a.ped away sand enough with his stick, to give vent to the waters of the Pool. Thus, after no very hard work, the millers achieve their object; and the spectators watching on the hill, behold a startling and magnificent scene.

Tearing away the sand on either side, floods of fresh water rush out furiously against floods of salt water leaping in, upheaved into mighty waves by the winter gale. A foaming roaring battle between two opposing forces of the same element takes place. The noise is terrific--it is heard like thunder, at great distances off. At last, the heavy, smooth, continuous flow of the fresh water prevails even over the power of the ocean. Farther and farther out, rus.h.i.+ng through a wider and wider channel every minute, pour the great floods from the land, until the salt water is stained with an ochre colour, over a surface of twenty miles. But their force is soon spent: soon, the lake sinks lower and lower away from the slope of the hills. Then, with the high tide, the sea reappears triumphantly, das.h.i.+ng and leaping, in clouds of spray, through the channel in the sand--making the waters of the Pool brackish--now, threatening to swell them anew to overflowing--and now, at the ebb, leaving them to empty themselves again, in the manner of a great tidal river. No new change takes place, until a storm from the south-west comes on; and then, fresh ma.s.ses of sand and s.h.i.+ngle are forced up--the channel is refilled--the bar is reconstructed as if by a miracle. Again, the scene resumes its old features--again, there is a sea on one side, and a lake on the other. But now, the Pool occupies only its ordinary limits--now, the mill-wheels turn busily once more, and the smooth paths and gliding streams reappear in their former beauty, until the next winter rains shall come round, and the next winter floods shall submerge them again.

At the time when I visited the lake, its waters were unusually low.

Here, they ran calm and shallow, into little, gla.s.sy, flowery creeks, that looked like fairies' bathing places. There, out in the middle, they hardly afforded depth enough for a duck to swim in. Near to the Bar, however, they spread forth wider and deeper; finely contrasted, in their dun colour and perfect repose, with the flas.h.i.+ng foaming breakers on the other side. The surf forbade all hope of swimming; but, standing where the spent waves ran up deepest, and where the spray flew highest before the wind, I could take a natural shower-bath from the sea, in one direction; and the next moment, turning round in the other, could wash the sand off my feet luxuriously in the soft, fresh waters of Loo Pool.

VI.

THE LIZARD.

We had waited throughout one long rainy day at Helston--"remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow"--for a chance of finer weather before we started to explore the Lizard promontory. But our patience availed us little. The next morning, there was the soft, thick, misty Cornish rain still falling, just as it had already fallen without cessation for twenty-four hours. To wait longer, in perfect inactivity, and in the dullest of towns--doubtful whether the sky would clear even in a week's time--was beyond mortal endurance. We shouldered our knapsacks, and started for the Lizard in defiance of rain, and in defiance of our landlady's reiterated a.s.sertions that we should lose our way in the mist, when we walked inland; and should slip into invisible holes, and fall over fog-veiled precipices among the rocks, if we ventured to approach the coast.

What sort of scenery we walked through, I am unable to say. The rain was above--the mud was below--the mist was all around us. The few objects, near at hand, that we did now and then see, dripped with wet, and had a shadowy visionary look. Sometimes, we met a forlorn cow steaming composedly by the roadside--or an old horse, standing up to his fetlocks in mire, and sneezing vociferously--or a good-humoured peasant, who directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of "fine rain" often lasted for a fortnight. Sometimes we pa.s.sed little villages built in damp holes, where trees, cottages, women scampering backwards and forwards peevishly on domestic errands, big boys with empty sacks over their heads and shoulders, gossiping gloomily against barn walls, and ill-conditioned pigs grunting for admission at closed kitchen doors, all looked soaked through and through together. Nothing, in short, could be more dreary and comfortless than our walk for the first two hours. But, after that, as we approached "Lizard Town," the clouds began to part to seaward; layer after layer of mist drove past us, rolling before the wind; peeps of faint greenish-blue sky appeared and enlarged apace. By the time we had arrived at our destination, a white, watery sunlight was falling over the wet landscape. The prognostications of our Cornish friends were pleasantly falsified. A fine day was in store for us after all.

The man who first distinguished the little group of cottages that we now looked on, by the denomination of Lizard _Town_, must have possessed magnificent ideas indeed on the subject of nomenclature. If the place looked like anything in the world, it looked like a large collection of farm out-buildings without a farm-house. Muddy little lanes intersecting each other at every possible angle; rickety little cottages turned about to all the points of the compa.s.s; ducks, geese, c.o.c.ks, hens, pigs, cows, horses, dunghills, puddles, sheds, peat-stacks, timber, nets, seemed to be all indiscriminately huddled together where there was little or no room for them. To find the inn amid this confusion of animate and inanimate objects, was no easy matter; and when we at length discovered it, pushed our way through the live stock in the garden, and opened the kitchen door, this was the scene which burst instantaneously on our view:--

We beheld a small room literally full of babies, and babies' mothers.

Interesting infants of the tenderest possible age, draped in long clothes and short clothes, and shawls and blankets, met the eye wherever it turned. We saw babies propped up uncomfortably on the dresser, babies rocking snugly in wicker cradles, babies stretched out flat on their backs on women's knees, babies p.r.o.ne on the floor toasting before a slow fire. Every one of these Cornish cherubs was crying in every variety of vocal key. Every one of their affectionate parents was talking at the top of her voice. Every one of their little elder brothers was screaming, squabbling, and tumbling down in the pa.s.sage with prodigious energy and spirit. The mothers of England--and they only--can imagine the deafening and composite character of the noise which this large family party produced. To describe it is impossible.

Ere long, while we looked on it, the domestic scene began to change.

Even as porters, policemen, and workmen of all sorts, gathered together on the line of rails at a station, move aside quickly and with one accord out of the way of the heavy engine slowly starting on its journey--so did the congregated mothers in the inn kitchen now move back on either hand with their babies, and clear a path for the great bulk of the hostess leisurely advancing from the fireside, to greet us at the door. From this most corpulent and complaisant of women, we received a hearty welcome, and a full explanation of the family orgies that were taking place under her roof. The great public meeting of all the babies in Lizard Town and the neighbouring villages, on which we had intruded, had been convened by the local doctor, who had got down from London, what the landlady termed a "lot of fine fresh matter," and was now about to strike a decisive blow at the small-pox, by vaccinating all the babies he could lay his hands on at "one fell swoop." The surgical ceremonies were expected to begin in a few minutes.

This last piece of information sent us out of the house without a moment's delay. The sunlight had brightened gloriously since we had last beheld it--the rain was over--the mist was gone. But a short distance before us, rose the cliffs at the Lizard Head--the southernmost land in England--and to this point we now hastened, as the fittest spot from which to start on our rambles along the coast.

On our way thither, short as it was, we observed a novelty. In the South and West of Cornwall, the footpaths, instead of leading through or round the fields, are all on the top of the thick stone walls--some four feet high--which divide them. This curious arrangement for walking gives a startling and picturesque character to the figures of the country people, when you see them at a distance, striding along, not on the earth but above it, and often relieved throughout the whole length of their bodies against the sky. Preserving our equilibrium, on these elevated pathways, with some difficulty against the strong south-west wind that was now blowing in our faces, we soon reached the topmost rocks that crown the Lizard Head: and then, the whole n.o.ble line of coast and the wild stormy ocean opened grandly into view.

On each side of us, precipice over precipice, cavern within cavern, rose the great cliffs protecting the land against the raging sea. Three hundred feet beneath, the foam was boiling far out over a reef of black rocks. Above and around, flocks of sea-birds flew in ever lengthening circles, or perched flapping their wings and sunning their plumage, on ledges of riven stone below us. Every object forming the wide sweep of the view was on the vastest and most majestic scale. The wild varieties of form in the jagged line of rocks stretched away eastward and westward, as far as the eye could reach; black shapeless ma.s.ses of mist scowled over the whole landward horizon; the bright blue sky at the opposite point was covered with towering white clouds which moved and changed magnificently; the tossing and raging of the great bright sea was sublimely contrasted by the solitude and tranquillity of the desert, overshadowed land--while ever and ever, sounding as they first sounded when the morning stars sang together, the rolling waves and the rus.h.i.+ng wind pealed out their primeval music over the whole scene!

And now, when we began to examine the coast more in detail, inquiring the names of remarkable objects as we proceeded, we found ourselves in a country where each succeeding spot that the traveller visited, was memorable for some mighty convulsion of Nature, or tragically a.s.sociated with some gloomy story of s.h.i.+pwreck and death. Turning from the Lizard Head towards a cliff at some little distance, we pa.s.sed through a field on our way, overgrown with sweet-smelling wild flowers, and broken up into low gra.s.sy mounds. This place is called "Pistol Meadow," and is connected with a terrible event which is still spoken of by the country people with superst.i.tious awe.

Some hundred years since, a transport-s.h.i.+p, filled with troops, was wrecked on the reef off the Lizard Head. Two men only were washed ash.o.r.e alive. Out of the fearful number that perished, two hundred corpses were driven up on the beach below Pistol Meadow; and there they were buried by tens and twenties together in great pits, the position of which is still revealed by the low irregular mounds that chequer the surface of the field. The place was named, in remembrance of the quant.i.ty of fire-arms,--especially pistols--found about the wreck of the ill-fated s.h.i.+p, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day, the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night.

Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circ.u.mstance connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the s.h.i.+pwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ash.o.r.e, troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from preying on the mangled remains that were cast up on the beach. Ever since that period, the peasantry have been reported as holding the dog in abhorrence. Whether this be true or not, it is certainly a rare adventure to meet with a dog in the Lizard district. You may walk through farm-yard after farm-yard, you may enter cottage after cottage, and never hear any barking at your heels;--you may pa.s.s, on the road, labourer after labourer, and yet never find one of them accompanied, as in other parts of the country, by his favourite attendant cur.

Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we pa.s.sed before the front of the large and ma.s.sive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circ.u.mference.

Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is treacherously smooth. The first moment when you see it, is the moment when you start back instinctively from its edge, doubtful whether the hole has not yawned open in that very instant before your feet.

This chasm--melodramatically ent.i.tled by the people, "The Lion's Den"--was formed in an extraordinary manner, not many years since. In the evening the whole surface of the down above the cliff was smooth to the eye, and firm to the foot--in the morning it had opened into an enormous hole. The men who kept watch at the Lighthouse, heard no sounds beyond the moaning of the sea--felt no shock--looked out on the night, and saw that all was apparently still and quiet. Nature suffered her convulsion and effected her change in silence. Hundreds on hundreds of tons of soil had sunk down into depths beneath them, none knew in how long, or how short a time; but there the Lion's Den was in the morning, where the firm earth had been the evening before.

The explanation of the manner in which this curious landslip occurred, is to be found by descending the face of the cliff, beyond the Lion's Den, and entering a cavern in the rocks, called "Daw's Hugo" (or Cave).

The place is only accessible at low water. Pa.s.sing from the beach through the opening of the cavern, you find yourself in a lofty, tortuous recess, into the farthest extremity of which, a stream of light pours down from some eighty or a hundred feet above. This light is admitted through the Lion's Den, and thus explains by itself the nature of the accident by which that chasm was formed. Here, the weight of the upper soil broke through the roof of the cave; and the earth which then fell into it, was subsequently washed away by the sea, which fills Daw's Hugo at every flow of the tide. It has lately been noticed that the loose particles of ground at the bottom of the Lion's Den, still continue to sink gradually through the narrow, slanting pa.s.sage into the cave already formed; and it is expected that in no very long time the lower extremity of the chasm will widen so far, as to make the sea plainly visible through it from above. At present, the effect of the two streams of light pouring into Daw's Hugo from two opposite directions--one from the Lion's Den, the other from the seaward opening in the rocks--and falling together, in cross directions on the black rugged walls of the cave and the beautiful marine ferns growing from them, is supernaturally striking and grand. Here, Rembrandt would have loved to study; for here, even _his_ sublime perception of the poetry of light and shade might have received a new impulse, and learned from the teaching of Nature one immortal lesson more.

Daw's Hugo and the Lion's Den may be fairly taken as characteristic types of the whole coast scenery about the Lizard Head, in its general aspects. Great caves and greater landslips are to be seen both eastward and westward. In calm weather you may behold the long prospects of riven rock, in their finest combination, from a boat. At such times, you may row into vast caverns, always filled by the sea, and only to be approached when the waves ripple as calmly as the waters of a lake.

Then, you may see the naturally arched roof high above you, adorned in the loveliest manner by marine plants waving to and fro gently in the wind. Rocky walls are at each side of you, variegated in dark red and dark green colours--now advancing, now receding, now winding in and out, now rising straight and lofty, until their termination is hid in a pitch-dark obscurity which no man has ever ventured to fathom to its end. Beneath, is the emerald-green sea, so still and clear that you can behold the white sand far below, and can watch the fish gliding swiftly and stealthily out and in: while, all around, thin drops of moisture are dripping from above, like rain, into the deep quiet water below, with a monotonous echoing sound which half oppresses and half soothes the ear, at the same time.

On stormy days your course is different. Then, you wander along the summits of the cliffs; and looking down, through the hedges of tamarisk and myrtle that skirt the ends of the fields, see the rocks suddenly broken away beneath you into an immense shelving amphitheatre, on the floor of which the sea boils in fury, rus.h.i.+ng through natural archways and narrow rifts. Beyond them, at intervals as the waves fall, you catch glimpses of the brilliant blue main ocean, and the outer reefs stretching into it. Often, such wild views as these are relieved from monotony by the prospect of smooth cornfields and pasture-lands, or by pretty little fis.h.i.+ng villages perched among the rocks--each with its small group of boats drawn up on a slip of sandy beach, and its modest, tiny gardens rising one above another, wherever the slope is gentle, and the cliff beyond rises high to shelter them from the winter winds.

But the place at which the coast scenery of the Lizard district arrives at its climax of grandeur is Kynance Cove. Here, such gigantic specimens are to be seen of the most beautiful of all varieties of rock--the "serpentine"--as are unrivalled in Cornwall; perhaps, unrivalled anywhere. A walk of two miles along the westward cliffs from Lizard Town, brought us to the top of a precipice of three hundred feet.

Looking forward from this, we saw the white sand of Kynance Cove stretching out in a half circle into the sea.

What a scene was now presented to us! It was a perfect palace of rocks!

Some rose perpendicularly and separate from each other, in the shapes of pyramids and steeples--some were overhanging at the top and pierced with dark caverns at the bottom--some were stretched horizontally on the sand, here studded with pools of water, there broken into natural archways. No one of these rocks resembled another in shape, size, or position--and all, at the moment when we looked on them, were wrapped in the solemn obscurity of a deep mist; a mist which shadowed without concealing them, which exaggerated their size, and, hiding all the cliffs beyond, presented them sublimely as separate and solitary objects in the sea-view.

It was now necessary, however, to occupy as little time as possible in contemplating Kynance Cove from a distance; for if we desired to explore it, immediate advantage was to be taken of the state of the tide, which was already rapidly ebbing. Hurriedly descending the cliffs, therefore, we soon reached the sand: and here, leaving my companion to sketch, I set forth to wander among the rocks, doubtful whither to turn my steps first. While still hesitating, I was fortunate enough to meet with a guide, whose intelligence and skill well deserve such record as I can give of them here; for, to the former I was indebted for much local information and anecdote, and to the latter, for quitting Kynance Cove with all my limbs in as sound a condition as when I first approached it.

The guide introduced himself to me by propounding a sort of stranger's catechism. 1st. "Did I want to see everything?"--"Certainly." 2nd. "Was I giddy on the tops of high places?"--"No." 3rd. "Would I be so good, if I got into a difficulty anywhere, as to take it easy, and catch hold of him tight?"--"Yes, very tight!" With these answers the guide appeared to be satisfied. He gave his hat a smart knock with one hand, to fix it on his head; and pointing upwards with the other, said, "We'll try that rock first, to look into the gulls' nests, and get some wild asparagus."

And away we went accordingly.

We mount the side of an immense rock which projects far out into the sea, and is the largest of the surrounding group. It is called Asparagus Island, from the quant.i.ty of wild asparagus growing among the long gra.s.s on its summit. Half way up, we cross an ugly chasm. The guide points to a small c.h.i.n.k or crevice, barely discernible in one side of it, and says "Devil's Bellows!" Then, first courteously putting my toes for me into a comfortable little hole in the perpendicular rock side, which just fits them, he proceeds to explain himself. Through the base of the opposite extremity of the island there is a natural channel, into which the sea rushes furiously at high tide: and finding no other vent but the little crevice we now look down on, is expelled through it in long, thin jets of spray, with a roaring noise resembling the sound of a gigantic bellows at work. But the sea is not yet high enough to exhibit this phenomenon, so the guide takes my toes out of the hole again for me, just as politely as he put them in; and forthwith leads the way up higher still--expounding as he goes, the whole art and mystery of climbing, which he condenses into this axiom:--"Never loose one hand, till you've got a grip with the other; and never scramble your toes about, where toes have no business to be."

At last we reach the topmost ridge of the island, and look down upon the white restless water far beneath, and peep into one or two deserted gulls' nests, and gather wild asparagus--which I can only describe as bearing no resemblance at all, that I could discover, to the garden species. Then, the guide points to another perpendicular rock, farther out at sea, looming dark and phantom-like in the mist, and tells me that he was the man who built the cairn of stones on its top: and then he proposes that we shall go to the opposite extremity of the ridge on which we stand, and look down into "The Devil's Throat."

This desirable journey is accomplished with the greatest ease on his part, and with considerable difficulty and delay on mine--for the wind blows fiercely over us on the height; our rock track is narrow, rugged, and slippery; the sea roars bewilderingly below; and a single false step would not be attended with agreeable consequences. Soon, however, we begin to descend a little from our "bad eminence," and come to a halt before a wide, tunnelled opening, slanting sharply downwards in the very middle of the island--a black, gaping hole, into the bottom of which the sea is driven through some unknown subterranean channel, roaring and thundering with a fearful noise, which rises in hollow echoes through the aptly-named "Devil's Throat." About this hole no gra.s.s grew: the rocks rose wild, jagged, and precipitous, all around it. If ever the ghastly imagery of Dante's terrible "Vision" was realized on earth, it was realized here.