“Dost thou know Dover?” asks Gloucester, in the pitiful tragedy of King Lear.

Aye; and knowing Dover, we cannot but be well acquainted with that—

It is Shakespeare’s Cliff. “Here’s the place,” says Edgar.

The height of Shakespeare’s Cliff is said to be 365 feet; but it looks more, owing to the grand outline it presents to the sea. It was once much taller, but for centuries the waves have been nibbling at it. In 1847 some 48,000 tons of chalk fell, and numerous other falls have taken place since.

Not even the ugly tunnel by which the South-Eastern Railway penetrates it can spoil the majesty of Shakespeare’s Cliff, whose bastioned steeps present so romantic a profile to the surges. It stands boldly out before you, as you essay the toilsome cliff-walk, by way of Archcliff Fort, to Folkestone.

Samphire, the gathering of which, as Shakespeare truly says, is a “dreadful trade,” still grows plentifully here; and is also found growing amid the shingle by Shoreham Harbour, near Brighton, well above the reach of high water. It has been much esteemed from early times as a pickle. Thus we find, in Gerald’s “Herbal,” of 1596, “Rock samphire groweth on the rocky cliffs of Dover, Winchelsea, about Southampton, and the Isle of Wight. The leaves, kept in pickle and eaten in salads, with oil and vinegar, is a pleasant sauce for meat.”

This curious aromatic plant, with the fleshy, glaucous leaves and yellow flowers, is not uncommon, but at the same time it is very choice and selective in its habitat. Although to be found in the crannies of coastwise cliffs, there are few among the great crowds of holiday-makers by the sea, other than botanists, who have ever set eyes upon it. Curiously enough, although it looks upon the sea from its favourite spots, it will only grow in situations well out of the reach of salt water.

Samphire is said to be “St. Peter’s plant,” and to derive its name from “St. Pierre.” It is nowadays known in France as “Passe-Pierre,” or “Christe marine,” and in Italy is called “Herba di San Pietro.”

Samphire-picking is carried on in May, when the leaves of the plant are young and succulent. One must needs be young or active, and of a good nerve, to be a samphire-picker, for it is generally only in the more dangerous and inaccessible situations that it is to be found; and many have in years gone by lost their lives in the “dreadful trade,” not in these latter days so greatly followed, although, to be sure, bottles of samphire pickle are to be purchased at Pegwell Bay. The samphire nowadays more generally appeals to the collecting instincts of those devastating persons, the amateur botanists, and enthusiasts in what is known, in the latest fashion, as “Nature Study,” who are stripping the country of all its ferns and desirable wild plants; and many must be the narrow escapes every year of those who climb cliffs in search of it.

The “samphire pickle” sometimes to be bought is not always what it pretends to be, for here, as so often elsewhere, adulteration’s artful aid is called in, and the more plentiful and much more easily gathered glass-wort, which grows on mud-flats, and greatly resembles samphire, without its aromatic qualities, is bottled with vinegar, to the deception of a trustful public.

The cliffs along the way to Folkestone are of quite extraordinary interest, so numerous are the schemes and exploitations they display. Here, looking over the edge, you see, on a scrap of foreshore where the railway emerges from the tunnel, a siding with works of sorts and a smoking chimney. This is the site, not only of the Channel Tunnel works, but also of the Shakespeare Cliff Colliery.

The idea of a Channel Tunnel, under consideration so long ago as 1867, was originally received with great favour in both France and England, and an agreement upon the subject was arrived at in 1876, by which it was to be begun simultaneously from either side.

It was, however, regarded as a commercial project and in no sense as a Government undertaking, the respective Governments merely adopting a benevolent attitude toward the scheme. Some years passed before the Channel Tunnel Companies on either side commenced operations from Dover and Sangatte. It was due to the energy of that arch-contriver, Sir Edward Watkin, that the scheme at last took definite shape and was translated into action. As chairman of what was then the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway (now the Great Central) and of the South-Eastern Railway, he was generally credited with a bold plan for creating a through trunk line from Manchester to London and Dover, and thence beneath the Channel and so on to France, without change of carriage. Like many another Moses, he saw his Promised Land, but could not enter upon it. He brought the old M.S. and L. to London and lived to see it the “Great Central,” but his Channel Tunnel, begun so bravely, was stopped by a nervous Government in 1886, when it had progressed 5,500 feet. A like distance had been tunnelled from the French coast.

It was an alarmist article in the Nineteenth Century that spoiled his pet scheme, and although Watkin on several occasions went to the great trouble and expense—or perhaps it would be more correct to say, saddled the South-Eastern Railway shareholders with a great expense—of inviting parties of statesmen and influential personages to inspect the works and to partake of costly luncheons on this spot, he never gained any return for his outlay on chicken and champagne.

The plans for the Tunnel had originally provided for starting actually from the Dover side of Shakespeare’s Cliff, instead of from the present obscure situation; but the War Office insisted upon the change, although it is the simplest proposition in strategy that the mouth of the Tunnel, placed where at first intended, would have been easily controlled by the Dover forts. The selected spot, supposing the work ever to be completed, is far more capable of being used by an enemy, being relatively away from observation and masked from gun-fire by the intervening shoulders of the hills.

The plan for tunnelling the twenty-three miles was for parallel tunnels, each carrying a single line. The original estimate was £10,000,000, but the work, as it progressed through the chalk, proved so easy that these figures were reduced to £4,000,000, largely because it was found that the chalk was watertight and required no casing. The abandoned works remain quite dry to this day. The scare, shared though it was by Lord Wolseley and other eminent authorities, does not seem very creditable, and there can be little doubt but that, sooner or later, the Government bar upon the progress of the work will be removed, and the Tunnel become an accomplished fact. Meanwhile the Channel Tunnel Company continues to hold its annual meetings, and new Parliamentary Bills are duly promoted. “Public sentiment has been aroused against the Tunnel,” remarked the chairman recently, “and it must abide its time and opportunity.”

From railway tunnelling to coal-mining the transition, for the scheming brain of Sir Edward Watkin, was easy. An idea had long been current that coal existed under the Kentish chalk. Geologists considered that the French and Belgian coalfields naturally continued under the Channel, and that borings would disclose coal-measures, probably at considerable depths. Many borings were made at various places, among others at a spot north of Battle, in Sussex, in 1872, where a depth of 1,905 feet was reached, without result.

The selection of Dover as a likely place was due to the stopping of the Channel Tunnel works by the Government, in 1886, when the tunnelling machinery was thrown idle and the employment of it in shaft-sinking for coal on the same site was suggested. Coal-seeking was thereupon begun, in spite of the already long-expressed opinion of Sir Roderick Murchison, one of our most eminent geologists, that the existence of any productive coalfields in the south-eastern counties was in the highest degree improbable. The results of some thirty years’ boring and shaft-sinking at Dover seem to amply justify his view, for since March 1905, when a number of journalists were invited to inspect the works of the Consolidated Kent Collieries Corporation, little has been heard of coal at the Shakespeare Cliff shafts. On that memorable occasion the chairman of the company pointed triumphantly to a small stack of what undoubtedly was coal, and the journalists gazed, awe-stricken, upon the sight. It was not coal that would commend itself to a householder, for kitchen, or indeed any other use, being soft and easily to be crumbled between thumb and finger. The heap weighed about twelve tons, and was the sole result, to that date, from one and a half millions sterling subscribed by the public to the successive companies seeking coal here. It had thus cost £125,000 per ton; and, being so rare and costly, the chairman was very properly indignant when it was proposed to burn some. Since then; notably in 1912, other coal has been raised here and has been triumphantly exhibited in Dover shop-windows; but, up to the present, a very great deal more of that mineral has been expended upon working the machinery of the shafts than has been brought up from them.

There is a vast deal of exhausting up-and-down walking along the lofty cliff tops on the way from the Shakespeare Cliff Colliery to Folkestone. The Dover to Folkestone road itself, running somewhat inland, at first in the lap of these downs, climbs continually for more than five miles, and is a profoundly wearisome highway. It is an effect of vastness which obsesses the traveller here, and, where the road leaves the sheltered, tree-clad hollow, one of stark and uncomfortable surroundings; horribly bleak in winter, and hot enough to fry you in summer. But at a point a mile and a half along the cliffs’ edge, where they rise to a great height beside a coastguard-station, the explorer on foot may, at the cost of another considerable output of exertion, descend to the beach in a very fine, romantic, and absolutely secluded nook. Rarely will you find any one down here: the spot is too little known, and the effort of descending and climbing up again is too great. No fewer than 530 steps lead, roughly, and with many zigzags, down the face of the cliffs to the beach. The spot is known as Lydden Spout, from a clear spring which used to gush from the chalk, and, later, was made to issue from an iron pipe. It spouts no longer; but this is still a place worth all the trouble of getting at. Gulls down here, screaming and chorusing like so many party politicians (but much more sincere), take little notice of the rare stranger. If you like, you can walk back along the beach, all the way to the Colliery. Which is the more exhausting, the shingle walk, or remounting those more than 500 steps, I will not pretend to say.

The pedestrian’s way into Folkestone lies along the Warren, that ancient, tumbled expanse of wild undercliff, two miles long, which you see spread out before you on reaching the “Royal Oak” inn, by the roadside. Resisting the hospitalities of the tankards held out by the beery votaries of the wayside public, let us descend through the Warren into the town. On the way down we shall pass by the gorsy hollow called “Steddy Hole,” a spot of horrific interest a good many years ago, for here, in the Crimean War period, August 1856, a soldier of the Foreign Legion, one Dedea Redanes, a Neapolitan, murdered “sweet Maria and lovely Caroline,” as a stone formerly to be seen here described them: two sisters, Caroline and Maria Buck. He was duly executed at Maidstone. The stone is no longer to be seen, and the tragic hollow to such a degree been forgotten that on summer days happy lovers may be found in the ill-omened spot, unconscious of its tragedy.

There is a large area of Warren, appearing the larger by reason of its tumbled nature. The South-Eastern Railway runs through its midst, and the two most easterly of the old martello towers on the Kentish coast stand on guard, aloof, grim, grey, and solitary, with all Folkestone for a background. The Warren is full of wild life, and is thus the very antithesis of Folkestone’s stuccoesque conventions. I believe, on the authority of the late Rev. J.G. Wood, that the “rare earwig, Labidura riparia,” is to be found here. The information came to him by way of a courageous lady who, wandering over these hummocky hollows, discovered the fearsome thing roaming about in happy ignorance of its Latin name or its exceeding rarity, and, with a courage beyond her sex in dealing with creeping objects, captured it and sent it to that eminent naturalist.