Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/125

Rh rifles which succeed the old tiers of threatening guns as guardians of Plymouth.

The whole city rises irregularly upon the three points reaching out into the sound and stretches four thousand yards from the Cattewater to the Devonport dockyards. But Plymouth proper holds to the little peninsula directly opposite the entrance of the sound to the sea; and the heart of this peninsula is the Hoe.

Sloping steeply from the sea-front, the Hoe has been smoothed and made into a high, rounded mound, half park and half promenade. It commands a full view of the sound and looks directly over the breakwater at the entrance, toward the Eddystone light, fourteen miles out to sea.

So before the Hoe there pass in daily review the naval and mercantile fleets of Southwest Britain. Back and forth, as they pass in and out of the Hamoaze and the Devonport docks, steam the battle-ships, cruisers, scout-ships, destroyers, and all the attendant ships of 105