Title: The Islets of the Channel

Author: Walter Cooper Dendy

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

E-text prepared by
Mardi Desjardins, Cindy Beyer, Ross Cooling,
and the Distributed Proofreaders Canada team
(http://www.pgdpcanada.net)

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Ascending the ledge to the eastern side of the Corbie du Nez or Grin, we come abruptly on a yawning cleft that nearly isolates the cape itself. Its aspect is formidable but its descent is easy, and it leads down to the mouth or funnel of the largest cave in the islet, La Boutique, par excellence. To reach an inner cave a barrier must be mounted. At high water, the billows, after dashing on the shore cliff, rush in with a thundering sound at two chasms on the north and west. At low water the inner boutique may be entered with a light; it is lofty, and on its surface there are a few stalactitic droppings and a sprinkling of ferns. There are smaller caverns in the cliffs. We come out on the broad bay of Banquette, and in the little cave to southward stand out in the most fantastic beauty the finest outlying rocks in the islet, Les Autelets—little altars: in complete contrast, however, one being a stupendous cube of Grauwacke on a very narrow base, the other a huge pyramid, on the ledges of which a flight of choughs and shags settle and roost in the evening. The overhanging cliffs are nearly perpendicular, and along their base lie around in heaps the most gigantic blocks of very variegated stones, black, red and grey; and unlike the angular blocks on the hills they are mathematically rounded off by the attrition of the waves. Among these rocks are deep pools of water, in which we may discover small crustacea, and rich varieties of the daisy actinia, the nereis, and holothuria, and other anthozoa. There is one flaunting in bright orange, and yonder crawls the hermit crab that seems to have perforated an actinia within a shell, the tissue of the anemone forming a ring round the crab. Many of the blocks are richly clothed with fucus spiralis (bladdervraich) and crithmum (samphire) in all their splendour of gold and bronze. We must be wary, however, in paddling over these slippery carpets, a fall from them is not a trifle. Chondrus membranifolius, and pink and green polysyphonia and dasya are hanging on the cliffs, and the ulva and porphyra, oyster-green, and purple laver on the deeper rocks. The blocks are studded with minute univalves, and the patella shells of the limpet show like bosses on a shield.

Through a splendid arch of dark reddish sienite, marked by horizontal lines of schist, standing nobly out from the cliff, we pass into the next bay, the most magnificent in Serque, Porte Meullin. It is a deep wide cave, overfrowned by cliffs of clay shale 300 feet high, that come down perpendicularly on the beach. On their sides and brow zigzags are cut, by which the summit is gained, and from it we look down on the most splendid grouping of the islet. A cleft on the south side of Port Meullin sets off an isolated rock of very quaint form, and leads to another fine cave with chaotic blocks and pools, a lofty pinnacle towering above the cleft, and a wide cavern yawning in the islet rock. These rocks are bronzed by masses of golden gelatine, laminaria bulbosa, and fucus canaliculatus.

Among these ferruginous blocks, talc and asbestos and agate chalcedony, green, red, and yellow jasper may be discovered, and veins of lapis ollaris running across the islet.

During the western gales—and we now encountered one of the most determined violence—the waves roll into Port Meullin a profusion of the most magnificent algÆ or weeds that we have beheld. In a few minutes we selected and displayed on the pebbles half a score of splendid specimens, a complete museum of sea treasure. There was a gigantic flag, six yards long, of rich sienna brown with a fringe of pink, covered with white spots, laminaria saccharina, or sea hanger. There were the fleshy fans of nitrophyllum; long brown ribbon slips six or eight in a bunch, asperococcus and rhodomenia; bunches of golden pods or bladders at the end of narrow leaves, fucus spiralis; huge bunches of broad reddish leaves, like those of the oak, delesseria sanguinea; eight or ten ribbon thongs, six feet long, on a thick brown stem, laminaria digitata (they might be a cat-o’-nine-tails for the backs of the Nereids); filigree weeds of the purest pink and white, polysyphonia and dasya; very long, tough, gelatinous brown thongs in a bow, chorda filum, sea whip-lash, and the purple iridea. The heath brows over this lane are clothed in corresponding luxuriance. There were at least three species of erica, a profusion of spurges, aspidia, and asplenia ferns; ophioglossum, adder’s-tongue, and an adiantum, maiden-hair fern, and dwarf polypodium were springing from the stunted stems, and little tufts, like codium bursÆ, green purse-moss, and all these among clumps of thrift and chicory, and dwarf thistles, and wild sage and spinach, and vaccinia. We could not light on the stramonium, wormwood, or canna indica, which we were told now grew wild in the islet.

Couleur de rose will ever gild our memory of Port Meullin. It was the scene of our first grand impression of the extreme beauty of Serque; but it was gilded by a sentiment somewhat beyond mere admiration. From another point, a very courteous gentleman left his islet villa, and his lady and his luncheon, and guided us to the descent, where a bevy of fair girls, in all the romance of elegant deshabille, were gathering weed and pebbles among the rocks. Charming! Look across from Port Meullin to Havre Gosselin; there is a green fissure in the cliff 200 feet in height, as if the rocks had quarrelled and fallen away from each other—it is the Moie du Mouton, and along it sheep are lifted to browse on the green down above.

And there on the right stretches the bold isolated rock, Brechou, or L’Isle de Merchant, a table of rich mould on a belt of flat rock. On its southern side yawns a very lofty chasm. We longed to pore into it; but the currents daunted even the boatmen of Serque. Round the point of Lionee opens the wide bay of Le Grand GrÈve, divided from the opposite bay by that most eccentric wall of rock 200 feet high and 6 feet thick on its ridge. This coupÉe, thus pared down for safety and for traffic, is chiefly of sienite or hornblende granite, traversed by a vein of porcelain clay, and it divides the islet into Great and Little Serk. This, perhaps prudent cutting down, has, however, shorn the guide-books of the high-flown epithets of “awe” and “terror,” which they affirm must strike the adventurer from Great to Little Serk. This peninsula, presq’Île du petit Serque—wears a dreary aspect on its face; yet parterres of the most splendid ericas here and there adorn its soil—a little nest of cots and some scattered ruins of miners’ huts display a curious contrast of vitality and desertion. The southern point is the mining district; and though they have quite abandoned the search for ore, the superficial barrenness is perfectly consistent with mineral impregnation below. Our research for mollusca was more fertile in the pools about the southern point than elsewhere. As we round the point we come on a little bay, the avant courier of a splendid succession of coves and clefts on the eastern coast, and lying off this southern point peers up the bold rock L’Etat du Serq. Every brow on this deeply indented shore should be rounded and scaled and descended, as far as the worn or stony path can be traced, and then we look directly on the face of the cliff and into the caverns. There is one cave especially, called, we believe, Le Pot, as fine as can be imagined—the boldest feature of Little Serk, and on these rock-brows the lichens are in beautiful profusion, and the grey and yellow cetraria, and the fleshy sycophorus deformis.

We now come round to the eastern cliff of CoupÉe Bay, its extraordinary wall lifting up its causeway almost in the clouds. Beyond, the next headland opens on us the fine bay of Baleine, or Dixcard, the holiday spot of the islet. It is carpeted by white sand, on which small boats may be pushed in calm weather; it is the bathing-place of the visitors, whose half-mile walk from the hotel is chiefly on the greensward, and there is an arched cave in a pinnacle for our disrobing. Every step on this bold shore displays a fresh picture.

Le Creux cavern, a great hole 100 feet deep, and opening above on the hill, yawns on the beach. At high-water a boat can be pushed into this cauldron, which is a perfect miniature of the famed Buller of Buchan in Scotland. Point Vignette, La Terrible, or La ConchÉe, lifts its proud pinnacles beyond this. Les Burons and La Moie lie off the cliffs. Then comes a black ridge, looking like porphyry, termed, we believe, La Chateau. It bounds the only little cave, L’Eperquerie—Paregorois—Port Gourey, in which boats may be sheltered and moored. Into this caverned cave of green velvet it was our fortune to descend during one of the severest gales, the rolling foam beautifully contrasting with the black-green rocks. The small boats were dancing high on the liquid mountain, and even the cutters and a lugger were rocking and dipping their bows in the water, and yet at the time the water in this cave, and in Creux also, was the calmest around the islet. The group of fishermen below us on a rock-ledge were seemingly in dilemma for ourselves. It was a most perilous footing; so boisterous was the blast around the rocks, that we were compelled to cling to the rocks, and several of our hapless sketches were wafted aloft in a moment. The sailors seemed to think us wild, and to wonder how and whence we came, and, indeed, why we came at all; and yet this was what we hoped to see—a calm would have tamed the scene down to insignificance. Close to the landing-place and the off-lying rock it is all perfect studies. We have La Chapel de Meuve, a square block of pendant granite, as if momentarily about to fall. The range of rocks on the eastern coast consist chiefly of sienite. We have now well-nigh rounded the islet of Serk, a complete embarras de richesse; one glimpse of these rocks taken at random were worth a day’s journey.

Hark! amid the howling of the wind there is the scrape of a fiddle—shade of Straduarius, a cremona in Serk! A band of wandering minstrels are wind-bound in the islet, and in sympathy they are about to invoke Terpsichore in a stable-loft, approached by a narrow mud path, beneath a dripping hedge and a muck-heap! And there is the fair, the fairest maid in Serk, Fanny, of whom it is the fashion to talk, flirting in very accomplished style, raising flames of jealousy among the juveniles who resort to Mrs. Hizzlehurst’s hotel. It was a very fair bit of romantic burlesque, and took.

We are in Serk four days more than we had contemplated; the pressure of harvest binds us in the islet; all hands to the sickle and the sheaf. Boreas, however, had the credit of our imprisonment; yet we regret it not—almost every waking hour was passed in contemplation of some fresh beauty. The bracing breeze of health, the complete retirement—solitude, if you will—the absence of all mere holiday intrusion, the instant transition from our hostelry into the midst of romantic beauty, to be admired or studied as the fit may work, and, withal, the order of domestic economy, all mark this little islet as the perfect home of the student who is reading or writing—of the romantic wanderer—of the artist—of the geologist—of all, indeed, who love to revel in wild and unspoliated nature.

Adieu! beautiful Sark, we shall not soon forget your perfection; adieu! for yonder lies the “Lady” of the islet, in whose bosom we are to be wafted off to Guernsey with the market-people who wend to St. Peter’s Port to replenish the exhausted stores of the islet. Romance itself must be fed, it cannot live on flowers: and so, at five in the morning, in bright moonlight, amid a bevy of visitors and a group of Serquois peasants, we have passed the portal of the rocks, and wait on the beach to be rowed to the cutter in the cove—wind, tide, and currents dead against us; so, to gain an offing, we make the tour of the island, and by a long tack of three miles run up the Great Russell and round Castle Cornet into the haven of Sarnia.

And now, still further southward, we are nearing the fairest islet of the Channel, and after the circuitous struggles of our voyage from Serque, with all the charm of contrast, we overcome time and space with almost a certainty of progression. We chuckle at this triumph of vapour over the gales, yet with time to spare, and with wind and tide and current in our favour—a very rare coincidence in the Channel seas—we would yet prefer to hoist our canvas, and skim leisurely over the glittering waves to Jersey.

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JERSEY:

We have rounded the south-western point of the islet, and are floating into the wide bright bay of St. Aubin’s, steering by the western passage through the narrows between the bold fortress of Elizabeth Castle and the pier, and we wend at once to our hostelry at St. Helier’s.

This Jersey is an oblong islet, about twelve miles from east to west, by about seven or eight from north to south, extending from the Points of Sorell and of Noirmont, and those of Belle Hogue and Du Pas. It is completely escalloped by bays and coves and ravines, with their essential rocks and promontories, and belted with myriads of outlying rocklets of very eccentric forms, composed chiefly of sienite and porphyry. The five Points on the south coast—CorbiÈre, Moye, Noirmont, Le Nez, and La Roque, being nearly in the same latitude. To these natural bulwarks the art of defence has added a circle of martello towers around the coast, and these are now so completely dismantled as even to embellish and add interest to the landscape; for they seem to tell of deeds and people of a feudal age, like the Border peels of the north. The three great bays of St. Ouen, St. Aubin, and Grouville, form the flat shores of the islet.

The area of the islet is about 40,000 acres; its population about 37,000. It is divided into twelve parishes—St. Helier’s, St. Lawrence, St. Peter’s, St. Brelade, St. Ouen, St. John, St. Mary, Trinity, St. Martin, St. Saviour, St. Clement, Grouville—and subdivided into about forty vintaines, an area containing twenty houses.

From each of these churches, which were held sacred as a sanctuary, there was in ancient times a direct road—Perquages—to the coast, by which the criminal might escape unscathed if he kept the direct line.

And these are the chief officers of the islet:—The military lieutenant-governor, the baillie, and the dean, appointed by the sovereign; the advocate, selected by the baillie, and the twelve judges, by the people.

As we step on the quay of St. Helier’s, or “town,” we look on quaint grey houses assuming a Norman aspect; but as we proceed to the interior we are reminded of an English market-town, with neat shops and new wine-houses. There are about 1000 houses in the town; its population being about 30,000.

In the royal square is the court-house, La Cohue, of the date of 1647, around which we meet loungers and gossips, especially during the sittings, and in the centre is a royal statue.

The public library was erected by Falle, the historian of Jersey, and contains a very fair batch of literature, and also the drawings of Capelin, a native artist.

There is a new prison, and a hospital, and a poorhouse.

St. Helier’s is prolific of temples of worship. Amidst French Protestant and Catholic fanes and conventicles, stands pre-eminent in the royal square the mother Church, 500 years old, and of pure Norman style,—a new aisle, in perfect harmony, being lately added. Very grotesque gargouilles and a profusion of ivy mark it as a very eccentric pile. The government stall and pulpit are ancient, and there are monuments and slabs to the memory of Carterets in 1767—Durel, Dauvergues, Gordon, and Pierson, the defender. The gallery stairs are outside the walls. The evening is devoted to the French service.

The several market-places, especially on Saturdays, are scenes of very lively interest. The produce of the Jersey gardens is most prolific, and sold at a moderate price. The grapes are pre-eminent, and the Chaumontelle pear has nearly attained the weight of one pound, and is often sold at five guineas per hundred. In the afternoon the market is a sort of fashion; but the grouping of the buyers and the loungers is not picturesque, the costume being chiefly the formal cut of England, or the sombre colours of Normandy. The colloquial language is a mingling of French and English: the children are taught both, but, whether in truth or in courtesy, several assured us that they preferred the English.

The votary of mere pleasure or the excitement of gaiety, must not sojourn in Jersey: out of the pale of select society St. Helier’s will be most monotonous; it will be indeed a complete blank, and he will quietly fly off to scenes more exciting though infinitely less healthful and happy, leaving beautiful Jersey to us, to those whom the Deity has endowed with a deeper feeling for the charms of Nature’s loveliness.

The visitation of the ancient and modern works around St. Helier’s is worth a day even to the superficial gazer. The eye of the archÆologist and the artist is attracted at once by the bold fortress of Elizabeth Castle, isolated at high tide, but approached at low-water on the floor of the bay. Along a causeway track from the “Black rock,” on the shore, we wend with market-women at our heels, and meet a company of soldiers marching on some duty to St. Helier’s. We must not linger in our survey, as the tide will flow in four or five hours, often to the height of forty feet.

The castle stands amidst a group of schist rocks, about a mile in circumference. One of the outermost blocks is crowned by the remnant of a real hermitage, the cell of St. Helier, who was murdered in the ninth century by a band of Norman pirates.

The access to the stronghold is intricate and well planned for safety and defence. It was built in the seventeenth century. Amidst a profusion of modern and debasing architecture, look on the very curious gate-arch, on the ascent to the keep. Above a fleur-de-lis at the point of the ogee of the arch is an escutcheon in stone—the royal shield of Britain, crested by the red and white roses. Over the left feet of the supporters are the initials, E. R., of the maiden Queen, in whose reign the first stone was laid. On one of the arches is a circular disc, displaying daggers and a fret. To this keep Charles II., when Prince of Wales, fled for refuge, with his brother James and Clarendon, the islet of Jersey having declared for him, while Guernsey sided with the Parliament; and here Charles drew a new map of the island, and Clarendon penned part of his celebrated record of the Rebellion. In gratitude for its loyalty the King presented them with a gilt mace on the Restoration, and graced it with a Latin inscription.

Across a deeper water opens the capacious harbour, with its two piers, Victoria and Albert, which, especially in storm and tempest, is often crowded with vessels. The basins were now nearly destitute of craft; but acephalÆ are floating around the piers. Crowning the high greenstone ridge above it, Mont de la Ville, is Fort Regent, a fortress, erected at the cost of a million, of stone from the quarry of Medo, on the northern coast. Its area is about four acres. It is bomb-proof, and commands completely the bay and the town. The view from its height compasses the bay of St. Aubin, the government house, the college, a mansion of modern Gothic, erected in 1846, after the Queen’s visit, and the south-eastern corner around St. Clement’s and Grouville, the Banc des Violets displaying a strange group of black blocks among the surf waves. At low tide the bay is a wide stone basin, carpeted with rock and weed. As we looked on it at high water, in an autumn sunset, it was a mirror of liquid amethyst.

On the brows around St. Helier’s many Druidical stones and tumuli have been discovered. The chief cairn, or Poquelaye, very complete, with its circle and alley, was revealed in 1785. It was removed entire by General Conway to Park Place at Henley.

And now there are three classes of subjects that are to be admired and studied in Jersey—the magnificent cliffs, the beautiful bays, and the fair natural garden of the interior, taking up the archÆological relics in our way as choice morceaux of historic illustration, adding an interest even to the face of Nature.

In our visitation of the bay and the cliffs we thread the lanes and valleys, scenes of very contrasted excellence, like the picture of a fair beauty within a richly-carved frame. The scenic grandeur of Jersey is between Le Tac and La CoupÉ, the whole northern coast of the islet, and at the south-eastern corner, from Noirmont to La Rocca in St. Ouen’s, all exquisitely rich in rockwork. The coast from St. Helier’s to Gourey is a mass of button rocks. In the interior St. Peter’s displays the only Devonian valley. But throughout the islet there are very lovely spots, like those of Kent and Surrey, for our rambling, amid meadows enlivened by tethered cows and green hedge-rows, enamelled with flowers, often rich and rare, on which bees luxuriate and gather their luscious stores of honey, and dingles (the Val des Vaux is close to “Town”) feathered with petit, though very luxuriant foliage; but there are no gigantic woods of oak or beech frowning from uplands of chalk or sand. The descent to the caves, however, opens all around us, often with the heightening charm of unexpectedness, dingles of surpassing beauty, as wild as we can wish them. And to all this, the mere holiday folk may be wafted along the military roads of General Don, and they may be lifted from St. Helier’s to St. Aubin’s and to Gourey in public coaches. We, who come to woo Nature—for we love her with all the pure idolatry of a Thomson or a Davy—select the bye-lanes and the meadow paths. Yet even here we loiter not, although these garden meads of Jersey are the very choicest spots for the secluded rambles of lovers and the joyous festa of gipsying, especially when the warm south-west blows over the Atlantic.

But running water is well-nigh a blank in Jersey. As in all small islets, the rivulets are quiet little runnels rippling down from springs on the northern brow, and stealing south straight into the bays; the gulleys of GrÈve le Lecq and Boullay creeping northward. Here and there the runnels turn a little mill-wheel; and then, in our walks, we often stumble on an old church, and also on a venerable manor-house, of which there are about half a score in Jersey, St. Ouen’s, Rosell, La Hogue BoËte, &c. And now to compass the beauty of Jersey. The walks should be around and across the south-west and south-east corners, from Town to La CorbiÈre, and to Gourey, the northern coast from Le Tac to St. John’s, and thence to St. Martin’s. A pony may carry us to any of the northern villes, from which we may reach the magnificent points of the northern coast, or a carriage may take us along the Devonian valley of St. Peter’s to St. Ouen’s, and await us at St. Martin’s, to bring us back to St. Helier’s, and, in this lovely valley of St. Peter’s, if we are fond of cryptogamic botany, let us thread the bosky cliffs of the glen, and on the stems of the wild rose find the finest tufts of the beautiful golden lichen, Borrera chrysophthalma.

High and low water display contrasted aspects, both equally perfect. At high tide, the full bays and havens, like gigantic mirrors, are resplendent with the reflection of their beautiful shores.

To the botanist, the geologist, and even the artist, low water is far more propitious, for the beach, cliffs, and rocks are profuse in weed and sea-flowers and pebbles and shells, and they thus give up their treasures for the seeking; the outlines and colours present a perfect charm for the pencil.

Let us be off in pursuit of these temptations, scramble among the rocks, creep round the bays, or into the caves; for, like the violet, much of the more enduring beauty of the creation lies hid in the deep shades of the earth.

We are about to make the circuit of the islet. It is high water, and we float over the wide bay to St. Aubin’s, or to Noirmont. It is low tide, and we walk round the shore of this marine crescent on the firm carpet of sand. (At a tiny rill at Doet de Demigrave there is a very sudden transition from firm to soft.) There a group of girls are disporting like Nereids among the waves. It is at full tide, and at evening hour, however, that the bay of St. Aubin’s is perfect to the eye; the setting sun is flinging the most gorgeous colours on the little slate rocks and the walls of the fort: the hue is gold, with a shadow of bronze, while the more distant walls of Elizabeth Castle are bronze with shadows of deep grey, a scene special for the eccentric brush of Turner.

From the brow over St. Aubin’s the view is splendid, overlooking the now poor, yet neat and secluded little village town, its petty haven, and its castle. We are at the entrance of a richly wooded glen, leading up to the peninsular hill (on which stands a tolmen stone), that dips southward to Noirmont, a ridge formed of sienite, rose feldspar, and thallite, striated at the point; ay, and we may gather a wallet-full of ferns—and there is one very rare, if not quite unknown, in England, gynogramma leptophylla. We may creep round the secluded Portelet Bay (enlivened by the Janerim towers or martello) from Noirmont to Point la Frette, or descend from the brow to the broad bright bay of St. Brelade’s, divided by a red rock ledge into two; the cliffs and rocks come out in great splendour, and the out-crops of the sienite groups on the hills are in the finest style. One enormous mass of blocks is a perfect specimen of Titanic arrangement; it looks primeval, antediluvian. It is richly covered by grey and yellow lichen, and deeply festooned with ivy and clematis, amidst the most luxuriant variety of heath-flowers, pink and deep purple, blended with the bright golden pods and deep green of the mountain furze. Around it are the green tufts of the protonoma moss and the adiantum, or maiden-hair fern, and myriads of the dwarf rose d’amour are studding the turf, and amidst all this floral profusion green lizards are creeping stealthily, their eyelets sparkling like diamond points amid the leaves—a perfect study for a Pre-Raphaelite. From the hills we descend to the white hard-soft sand around the crescent bay—it is a luxury to step on it.

The gem of St. Brelade’s is its very quaint little church, the parish fane of St. Aubin’s. It is perched on the edge of the Rock cliff, overwashed by the waves at spring tide, and surrounded by tombs and slabs on the velvet turf, and spotted with cypress. It is of the Æra of Henry I., 1111, one of the twenty-five erected at that period, and its history bears a very romantic legend. It was to have been built eastward of the bay, but the fairies of the sward removed from their realm the work and tools of the masons for three successive nights, and dropped them at St. Brelade’s; and at length the people, in a panic, yet warned and directed by this deposit, erected their church on the spot which the fairies had thus selected. On the walls of an antique chapel the form of Herod and the angel Gabriel are rudely figured, and on a scroll from the mouth of the Tetrarch is inscribed, “Herod le Roy,” and before him is the Saviour, bearing his cross.

On the brow of La Maye is the signal-post, and off the cove of Beauport lie the Aiguillons rocks, and off the south-west point the rock of La CorbiÈre, its apex painted white for a sea-mark. From the downs the views are complete.

An extensive district of this south-west corner, Les Quenvais, is a record of the devastation of the hurricane in the fifteenth century. In St. Ouen’s Bay, as in Loughneagh, in Ireland, it is believed that ruins of houses and walls are visible at low ebb. The village was overwhelmed, and all the people drowned, for decoying, by false beacons, some Spanish argosies that then foundered on the rocks. The wreckers plundered and plunged them into the deep. As they were by Bacchanalian orgies celebrating the anniversary of the wreck, the sea rolled in and overwhelmed the sinners and their ville beneath its waves.

And there spreads out its arc of nearly three miles the flat bay of St. Ouen, from the rock of La CorbiÈre to that of Le Tac, or La Crevasse. The bay shore consists almost entirely of round hillocks of mica-quartz sand (the relics be sure of the avenging elements), profusely covered by long marine grasses, to the fine stems of which myriads of tiny univalves are adhering. The sea holly, eryngo, is in the most brilliant flowering; its blossom, of the purest cerulean blue, may rival in Jersey the brightest exotic of the greenhouse. The Great and Little Sandbanks lie off the bay, and nearer are the fine group of La Rocca, and the Gorden tower in the bight.

The quaint ancient church of St. Ouen is on the brow and close by the venerable manor-house, and there is a fresh-water marsh lake, La Mara. And here Sir Philip de Carteret was fishing in the olden time, when he was attacked by a French troop; but he escaped by leaping his horse over a chasm near La Val de la Charriere, the animal falling dead as he reached his home. A giant rock stands alone at Le Tac and La Pinnacle, 100 feet high at the extreme point, both very fine studies. A recluse may lodge at Le Tac, almost out of the world.

The road abruptly winds from the beach over the hill, and on the downs we are at the hamlets of Grosnez and Vincelez. Cape Grosnez, “the great nose,” points half a mile to the left, the boldest cliff of the islet. The rocks are of magnificent proportions, 300 feet deep, and almost perpendicular. The gate arch of the very ancient castle of Grosnez, its origin believed to be Roman, and the home of Le Carteret, in the Æra of the Plantagenets, stands alone on its green platform. From it the whole group of islets to the north-west forms an exquisite little picture.

From the “Stone Plank,” lying across a deep rock ravine, a youth fell, and was washed to sea, in sight of his friends assembled at a pic-nic.

A flash, a peal—ay, all in keeping with the scene—the growl of thunder completely around and above us, and the lurid gleam flings a sort of spectral halo over the heavens. There are two intensely black clouds sailing in contrary currents towards each other, like destroying spirits. The flash from the Guernsey cloud charged highly electric streams over to that from Sark. Guernsey comes out in bright light for a moment, and then is lost. Sark is overshadowed, and looms out like a great purple wall, the chiselling of its cliffs and rocks, that a minute since showed like huge bastions and gables, is totally obscured. An awful position, if we linger here, and yet the mise en scÈne is most magnificent—sublime. The storm instantly bursts on Grosnez, and we brave its wild fury, to look forth on a glory from which Salvator, Loutherbourg, and Turner might have drunk in ideas of elemental majesty. A black and murky cloud settles round yon point of Pleinmont, a bold, caverned rock of sharp sienite, shaking with its thunder the old fort and drawbridge, and driving its flood across the bay of GrÈve au Laucheon, and far into its caves of gloom, 400 feet deep. One of those sudden transitions of electric storm brings out the brightest sunbeams, and we look across yonder rocky dingle two miles away on the beautiful cove of GrÈve la Lecq, with its barrack and hostelry. The sea is rolling gloriously at high water over the rocks of Les Deniers, its mountains of milk-white foam breaking on a floor of sand as white as they, and thundering on the deep umber rocks, embossed on the surface, and then rolling with a deeper roar into that yawning cavern on the western cliff. Towering over the shore of the bay hang stupendous cliffs, some 400 feet high. From the eastern mound over the Crab Caves, Catel de Lecq, we look up the two dingles which come down, rich in woodland, to the bay, just about an old grey martello: then by a mere turn on the heel we are directly on the verge of a magnificent cave, closed in by cliffs nearly 500 feet high, huge granite blocks strewed around their bases, and more seaward a belt of white sand and a beach of black pebbles. The scene is wild and rude as the Hebrides, and where the rolling surge on the beach meets the transient flood of a storm-cloud, it displays a picture almost as majestic as a sea-loch in Skye.

On the face of the cliff yawn two deep and dark caverns, to reach which at low water a ledge of rudest steps has been cut diagonally on the perpendicular face of the rock. The descent by this rock-ladder is no puerile feat. We are halfway down, and are checked by a block having fallen from the ledge. There was no turning, so there we lay on the side looking down over the perpendicular 200 feet on the black rocks in the cave. To fall or not to fall, that was the question: if we condescended to drop, that is, to descend rapidly, in obedience to the primal law of gravitation, a fracture of limb or neck was a certainty, and yet we deemed an ascent an impossibility; so as a dernier ressort, or rather a forlorn hope, we turned on the back, worked upwards half on and half off the cliff, when happily a wider ledge by six inches enabled us to turn, and then we stood erect in proud triumph, crowing like a bantam at our really narrow escape, and looked gratefully down on the frowning rocks thus cheated of “an awful catastrophe.” There is a grey kite, too, hovering noiselessly over our head. We wave him off majestically—we are not to be the prey of gleds and corbies be sure on’t.

Silence reigns around, a calm between the storms, save when the sea-bird flutters screaming along, or the beetle wheels around us his droning flight. But, hark! again—thunder is growling like a jealous gnome at our escape and our exalted enjoyment. Twice, indeed, we essayed to leave this accomplished spot, and lingered until the broad evening shadows began to deepen even the gloom of the storm-cloud, and we descend by two dismantled forts, their guns lying rusted on the turf. Les Pierres du lacq—the Paternosters—high above water on our ascent, are now lost in the deep.

The tempest was raging as we were driving down a wooded dingle. A flash and a crash in quick succession—the lightning has struck the rock: a huge block, several tons in weight, rolls thundering down the precipice, crushing trees to atoms in its downward course.

The driver of our carriage is scared from under the boughs and dashes down the valley like a madman. Poor fellow, he was neither a Franklin nor a Faraday; and not reflecting that the storm-cloud travels swiftly, he did not know that this very dingle was now the safest place in Jersey.

The villes of St. Mary and St. John are near us; their churches of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries.

In St. John’s, on its saint’s eve, was once celebrated in all its degraded perfection of orchard-robbing, cow-milking, &c., the wild marauding game of Faire brave les Poeles, a stain on the sporting annals of Jersey. It is now, we hope and believe, nearly obsolete.

The coast is still bold, and there are tiny cascades on the runnels close by, and a ruined mill somewhat picturesque. It is on this northern coast that the scenic contrasts of the islet are so exquisitely displayed. Not far from the verge of a cliff 300 feet high, we are in a leafy dingle, and look over the waters unconscious of our height. Yonder, a mile off, are the Pierres du lacq at low water; the front of Guernsey looming on the left, and Serk rearing its majestic wall of sienite on the right.

The granite quarries of Mount Mado are above the coast, and near the point of Belle Hogue there is a little twin spring of water that is believed to cure blindness, age, and dumbness—and this is the legend of the wells. These little founts were the tears of two fairies—for fays feel like ordinary mortals.—Well, Arna and Aruna were wont to gambol and to chant around the rocks of Belle Hogue. They were at length sanctified, and wafted to heaven by an angel; but the love of their Channel home was still warm in their little bosoms, and once, musing in melancholy mood on the delights of their Belle Hogue, and fluttering with longing hearts directly over the enchanting spot, each dropped a tear of regret on the earth, and from them two little fountains were instantly playing up the sparkle of their crystal drops.

From Belle Hogue to the bold round block of La CoupÉ, the cliffs are of breccia, or pudding-stone; the rest is chiefly schist, with veins of porphyry, especially about St. Martin’s and Roselle.

Trinity lies about a mile from the shore. In the old manor house, the home of the Carterets, are still preserved the goblet, table, and gloves, presented by Charles II. The lord of this manor presents two drakes before the sovereign who may be dining in Jersey.

Descending along a fine dingle, we open the wide bold bay of Boullay, the landing-place of Strozzi, the invader, in 1549. The panorama, enlivened by its beacon and its pier, is almost as beautiful as that of St. Brelade’s, and it is belted by very splendid cliffs and rocks of thallite, greenstone, and porphyry.

Near Le Nez du Guet are the Roman mound works of La Petite CÆsare.

And now opens the little bay, Havre de Roselle, a beautiful rocky basin, bounded by Le Nez du Guet and Le Couperose, and spotted with three rocklets, and possessing a barrack. A fine rocky dingle, between lofty cliffs and fringed with wood, runs up into the land towards a Druidical Poquelaye above Le Couperose and La CoupÉ and the bay of Fliquet, with its tower. The road from Roselle to Gourey is scooped in the shore rock. Round the point of Verclut opens the bay of St. Catherine with its insular horns of rock, and one crowned by the tower of Archirondel. Then there is St. Geoffrey’s rock, from which in the olden time criminals were thrown into the sea. Roselle Manor and the ville of St. Martin’s lie on the high ground.

Approaching Gourey, we stumbled on two most interesting bits of antiquity. On the hill near the coast is a very fine Poquelaye in a rough field near the warren. An oval of twenty-one stones—fourteen within, in two rows, supporting three large horizontals, one fifteen feet long and ten and a half broad, and weighing eighty tons. Near the Parc de la belle Fontaine a very quaint old house stands in an orchard. Its turret staircase, La Tourelle, is especially curious, but we cannot find it described.

And here below us on a shallow bay is the quaint little town of Gourey, the third ville of importance; its church perched on the brow—large dark blocks lying around its little haven—one, l’Ecquiercriere, standing out the most eastern point of the islet. Above all, the magnificent, though now dismantled fortress of Mount Orgueil is towering aloft on its rock, fully illustrating its proud title. It is a perfect subject for the pencil, and is replete with historical associations. It was an especial object with King John. In the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV. the Count de Maulevrier seized Mount Orgueil and half Jersey for Henry, while Carteret of Grosnez, Seigneur of St. Ouen, held the rest for Edward. In its dungeon were imprisoned by De Carteret the two Bandinels; one, in trying to escape, was killed on the rocks; the other went mad. It was the prison of Prynne, who here wrote his thoughts and Rhymes on the castle, which he dedicated to—

As we mount the immense flight of steps, we come on the door through which Charles II. passed to the cliffs where the boat was moored that wafted him to France. He had fled hither to Jersey from St. Mary’s in Scilly, as more remotely secure. Near this is the crypt—one of the most eccentric bits of antique masonry which we have seen—and opposite is the court in which was discovered the effigy of the Virgin Mary; and onwards yawns the tower dungeon deep and dark. There are Roman bits of masonry still in the walls. Near the gate are stone benches, once the seat of judges, and close by beams for the suspension of those whom they condemned. From the keep the Cathedral of Coutances is distinct in a clear atmosphere.

On the rocky beach of Grouville bay, a profusion of vraich is often deposited. The sand hillocks are covered by long grass, and the eryngo here blooms beautifully. The oyster bank, for which Gourey is famous, is spread two miles off the bay. The rocky ledge of sienite which underlies the schist of all this south-east point fringes the whole south-eastern angle, and is defended by a formal range of martellos—La Roque at the point, and Seymour tower stands in the midst of the waves.

And near La Roque, or Rocbert, is the Rock of the Hag, and this is the legend of the rock:—

There was a very beautiful Madeleine and there was a young fisher named Hubert, who loved her; but he was inveigled by the witches, and charmed into aversion to her. The heroine in despair, with a cross in her hand, incurred the perils of storm and billows to save him from these spells, and as a memento of her happy success, there is the Point du Pas, the “footstep of the virgin,” to this day.

Then there is another large rock, once a stumbling-block of contention between St. Magloire and the Druids. The priests engaged the Devil to roll a block from the shore to proselyte the people; but when they tried to roll it back again, St. Magloire laid his holy book on it and it was immovable; he then set the cross on the rock, and the demon fled, the Druids succumbed, and the immortal safety of the people was insured.

And these rocks may be discovered if one will, and pebbles and shells may be gathered, and we may bathe at the favourite dipping-place of Portague, or we may ramble to the nice little church of Grouville, dated 1312.

LA TOUR D'AUVERGNE