Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/33

Rh Across its broad expanse of moors the sun still sets the same in summer time—into some deep bank of clouds in the west, and as it plunges down, flashes of light run along their edges, and each thin band of vapour becomes a bar of fire, and the far-away Purbeck hills gleam with purple and amethyst.

The same sea, too, still heaves and tosses beneath the Hordle and Barton Cliffs, with the same purple patches, shadows of clouds, sailing over it, as its waves, along the shore, unroll their long scrolls of foam.

These great natural facts have not changed. Kelt and Roman have gone, but these are the same.

Nor must I forget the extraordinary lovely atmospheric effects, noticed also by Gilpin, as seen under certain conditions, from the Barton Cliffs on the Isle of Wight and the Needles. Far out at sea will rise a low white fog-bank gradually stealing to the land, enveloping some stray ship in its folds, and then 15