Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/591

 576 attend to my home duties, and by the time our little ones were fed, bathed, and asleep, the full moon was sailing on her quiet way across the dark-blue sky, shedding her sweet bright smile earthwards, and lighting up the sea and shore with a calm radiance more like twilight than moonlight. To the south-west shone the Caldy light-house, throwing a long red line of reflection upon the sands and across the bay; taking this as a beacon, I walked on, until, turning, I found I had reached the shore beyond the high cliffs; the point hid the village, not a human habitation or sign of life was to be seen or heard, and verily I stood entranced and overpowered by the solemn grandeur of the scene.

Before me lay the sands, sparkling as if strewn with diamonds, stretching away to the foot of the bold beetling cliffs, at the base of which lay great boulders, armoured with acorn shells. On one side the cliffs rose a solid perpendicular wall, several hundreds of feet high; on the other side they were broken in upon by numerous caverns of every fantastic shape imaginable; when I saw them their mysterious depths were filled with weird-like shadows, and it required but small effort of the imagination to convert the bleached, waterworn columns into those spectral forms known in all parts of Wales as "White Ladies." While the refrain of the distant tide went echoing through the dim recesses like spirit songs, as my ear became accustomed to the harmonious medley it began to distinguish the silvery bell-like note of a dripping well and the gush of a waterfall, and there was some thing to strangely sweet in the tone of the last that I could not but seek it out. Accordingly, after much scrambling and scratching upon the acorn shells, I discovered the secret to be a deep chasm, in which a stream of water gleamed in the moonbeams, as it poured down some forty feet from a rent in the dark rock. So enrapt was I that I ran a narrow chance of passing the night among the ghostly caves. The first warning I perceived of the rising tide was the rippling of the water round the rock upon which I was sitting, and the first wave just kissed the point as I hurried past. A couple of hours later, when I looked out of my bed-room window, the tide was fully up, breaking within twenty yards of me, and radiant with phosphorescent light. I sat watching the flashes until my eyes grew dim, and I was fain to seek my rest; but even then the musical rhythm of the waves filled my dreams with scenes of other days. Madame de Stael says, "C'etait le parfum que toujours portait Corinne;" true as this is, sound has a still greater power, and an old melody, the intonation of some passing voice, or, as now, the throb of the restless ocean touches the key-note of memory, bringing back with startling vitality, voices, scenes, and joys that earth can never give us back.—

No place in the United Kingdom could be mere completely adapted than Pendine by those natural advantages generally considered indispensable at a bathing place, and that, too, not only in summer, but likewise as a sheltered and healthy place of retreat from the east and north winds which afflict our land in spring. At present, accommodation is scanty; but land, labour, and material are cheap, and the sides of the hills and dells are filled with tempting sites for cottages.

The first attraction of the place is the great extent of dry, hard, and clean sand left bare by every tide; these sands are nearly eight miles in length, and at the neap tides two or more in width, and are as deeply interesting to the conchologist as the pleasure-seeker; indeed, as a proof of what they do offer, I may say that the collection I have here made comprises almost every variety of shell found upon the South Coast, and a few rarely-seen specimens into the bargain.

A semicircle of high grassy hills partially encloses the flat plain; the sea-board side of which is composed of sand-hills, upon which the bent grows, and gives occupation in making very elegant and useful kind of baskets; these "borrows," as they are called, are inhabited by hundreds of rabbits, whose gambols it is amusing to watch. Beyond the borrows and mouth of the Towey is Ferryside; then a flat shore, enlivened by the smoke of the coal and copper works at Kidwelly, Llauclly, and Pembray; then comes a long reach of sandy flat; then Gower's Land, terminating in the Worm's Head, which stands like a natural fortress at the mouth of the bay.

West of Pendinee the coast assumes a wild and grand character. Beyond the Beacon Hill is a pretty little harbour opening into Morvybachen Bay, and upon the other side of this basin the cliffs rise again, and, with the exception of a hill or so at Amroth, continue the same precipitous wall-like defence as far as Tenby Castle rock.

Wales has long been famous among the artist fraternity, not only for the picturesque combinations of mountain, wood, and water there to be found in a comparatively small compass, bat also for the exquisite variety of