41 



GEOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS. 



Descriptive Notice of Holy Island. 



Holy Island is situated on the eastern coast of England, forming part of 

 the detached county of Durham, and presents in its physical characters many 

 striking and interesting features. 



Its population is not great, and, with the exception of the tenants of the 

 castle, is ahnost entirely concentrated in a village, which appears in former 

 times to have originated in the dependencies of the monastery attached to 

 Lindisfame Abbey, and which in the present day, from the returns of 1821, 

 would contain about 500 inhabitants. These consist of landed or house proprie- 

 tors, innkeepers, a few tradespeople, and fishermen. The latter, with their wives 

 and children, constitute the great bulk of the population, and there are a few of 

 them who, having made a small income, have retired from business, and now 

 pass their time in gazing with an old spy-glass on the former scene of their la- 

 bours. The tisliermen have two kinds of boats ; one a light narrow craft for 

 cod, turbot, whiting, and haddock fishing ; the other, a larger and stronger built 

 boat, which is used for the herring-fishery. Each boat is manned by four men, 

 who are fearless of the ocean, following their employment to great distances out 

 at sea, and, when required, always ready to pilot a strange vessel into the harbour. 



Holy Island, when we look upon it from the mainland, exhibits a range of 

 sand-hills only separated from the shore by sands which are dry on the recess of 

 tlie waters, extending from the north towards a range of millstone grit, or the 

 sandstone which accompanies the coal measures, and which faces the more 

 boisterous seas of the north-east. From tliis there is a very gradual slope to 

 the augitic rocks on which the village is built, and which are separated by a na- 

 vigable inlet from a range of sand-hills which advance around the bay, formed 

 in part by the island, and which undoubtedly owe their existence to the shelter- 

 ing influence of the castle and village rocks. 



Higher on this ridge, and in front of the village, stand the ruins of fallen mo- 

 uachism, well known to our readers as the Abbey of Lindisfame. 



This ridge is separated from the isolated mass of columnar augitic rocks on 

 which the castle nestles, by a bay that enters inwardly from the first ridge, and 

 sweeps round with a stony bottom, though sandy beach, on which the villagers 

 dry their haddocks and skate, to the transported debris and rolled masses of rock 

 which lie at the foot of the castle-hill, and stretch to its eastern end. Here the 

 carboniferous limestone, lifted up by the trap rocks, makes its appearance, abound- 

 ing in organic remains. The vegetation of the castle rock is luxuriant in spring 

 time ; the northern aspect is covered with crops of the common wall-cup, {Arahis 

 T/mliana,) while on the southern aspect blossom several composite plants. A 

 little Lathyrus tinges the ground with purple, and the Geranium pratense and 

 G. molle, (the latter presenting varieties with white flowers,) the Saxifraga gra- 

 iiulata, the sweet-scented violet, and the more brilliant sea-pink, shed their bright 

 influence around. 



From the platform of the castle a fine prospect is obtained. On the one side, 

 the fair island with its sleepy lake and rocks dark with age, its proud crumbling 

 ruins and busy hamlet, terminating in a range of sandy hiUocks, whose cliffs 

 reflect in silver the bright red beams of a setting sun : on the other, the plains 

 of chivalrous Northumberland, stretching round almost on the horizon's verge, 

 and lifting Bamborough Castle above the long sea. Further, in the deep bosom 

 of the water, a few islets lie, — in calm weather like the nests of some bird, in 

 the stonn like fragments of a wreck, and beyond is the haze of a boundless 

 ocean. 



The shore between the easterly end of the castle rocks and the most south- 

 easterly pomt of the island, forms a small and generally tranquil bay, with a 



VOL. II. F 



