Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/539

. 1, 1862.] the level sand; the soft shadows, purple, fleeting, and mysterious, chasing each other adown the precipices; the purple, crimson, and cream-coloured “lady’s fingers” (varieties known only in this county) blooming on the tall cliff edges; and the not less beautiful living flowers of the Antheacereus and crassicornis blossoming in the crystal pools down on the shore by the sea, while here and there the stately ships go softly gliding on into the distance, and the sailor lad is singing to himself in his boat far out on the quiet bay.

Of quite other aspect, however, in those dark December days, when “the storm has come up like a lion refreshed” out of the Atlantic which lies beyond and in under that faint sky line; and when the cruel north-easter is blowing inwards, scattering the wet shore-grasses and tearing the bindweed in its wrath. Nothing but a picture of the most metallic of “iron-bound coasts” then; mile after mile of its dark dreary length peering through grey glooms of the fog, and tracked only by the flying gleam of the cruel foam at its feet; with no perceptible break in the long unwavering sternness for those who watch it from seaward, and no hope for the mariner who sees it lying on his lee. No hope, I say, for at the height of the tide, or when such a north-easter is blowing, the water reaches and climbs far up the cliff foot. But the tide is falling now. We can walk for miles along these sands, which we see stretching like a strip of yellow light between the blue of the sea and the darker shadows cast by the rocks themselves. Let us go down and see the “mighty being”—who, for all he wears so smooth a face now, toying with the shore yonder, is yet

awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder everlastingly,—

closer. There has a rude path of steps been cut out of the solid rock just here. Take care as you round this corner of foot-broad rock, however, at about a third of the descent, for if you slip you will fall 150 feet to the beach below. We are down without accident, and I know not from which point of view the cliffs look the nobler. Their front is all torn and seamed and ragged from the action of the sea. You can see where it has reached a great wave here in one place, and has torn the smooth face of the slate as if with a tiger’s claw. Fierce and stern as seem these giant walls guarding the green lowland pastures we came through this morning, they are gradually falling before these attacks. The soft rocks, slate, and the less vitreous composites—of which for the most part they are composed—are worn into honeycombs. There are caverns, dark clefts, and curious “blow-holes” undermining them; passages penetrating hither and thither amidst their most seeming fastnesses, interlacing in tortuous bends and courses, and “running,” so says our guide (whom we purchased for sixpence in paper covers, illustrated), “in every direction.” Here and there, moreover, are lofty natural arches, Nature’s own glorious gothic, where the promontory has been worn quite through; and looking through and beyond these we catch beautiful vistas of heaving water and quiet sky. Here and there too, stooping our heads beneath some grey rock portal, or creeping on all fours through a rift, we find ourselves in lofty halls lit by a pale green reflected light from the entrance, or from crevices in the sides; halls so dim, so cool, so quiet, out of the glare and heat of the garish sun. That beautiful ever-green fern, the Asplenium marinum, we found growing in one of these, where it must be covered deep in salt water at every returning tide. But how to speak of the pools—isolated though profound enough some of them—which lie in these recesses, scooped only an hour or two ago, as is manifest, by the action of some current out of the clear shining sand? Or you may say, if you like, and are poetical, graven by old Oceanus himself, as a delicate compliment to the local Nereids (if there are any) ere he ebbed away this morning on his visit to other shores. Fit baths at least, I will grant you, they seem for these chaste ones—mulier formosa superne only—their waters so clear, so icy cold; so safe, so guarded, moreover, in the dim half light, and silent, save for that distant echoing thunder. For my part, though I am neither Nereid nor Triton, I know I would like to have such an exchange for the usual “tubbing” apparatus at hand on every morning of my life.

And so we wander on beneath the grey precipices, in the full sunlight, in the falling shadows, of a glorious August day. Sometimes, as we get further out towards the point or horn of the half-circle of coast which we have been traversing, we have to watch for such opportunity as the retreat of a wave affords us, in order to get round the outermost rocks of all. It is a critical moment when, the last smooth, oil-like flow of the