Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/96

Rh At length we are under Whitenose, that bold chalk cliff that is so prominent an object as the eye roves along the coast line from Weymouth. Here we turn the boat's head to the southward and throw the dredge overboard in fourteen fathoms. And while I am enjoying, with the line in my hand, what a dredger particularly likes to feel, the vibration produced by the instrument as it rumbles and scrapes over a moderately rough bottom, telling that it is doing its work well,—we will gaze with admiration on this magnificent precipice of dazzling white that rears its noble head behind us. It is the termination of that range of chalk hills which, with some few interruptions, intersect the kingdom from the Yorkshire coast to Dorset; and stands in simple majesty, the snowy whiteness of its vast face unvaried, except by the slanting lines which mark the dipping strata running across it, and which look so fine and so regular as if they had been drawn by the pen of a geometrician. My companion told me the story of a lad of thirteen, who four years ago fell from the loftiest part of the summit, 500 feet above the sea. It is true a great part of this descent was performed by rolling and sliding, but for fifty feet the fall was absolutely perpendicular. The boy had been seeking rabbits, which