242 THE bear's head and 



In the position we have selected, its name is quite 

 appropriate : but the face, taken in front, from the 

 hawthorn, on the opposite angle of its little cove, 

 has much resemblance to that of a water-spaniel. 

 It is situated in Deadman*s Bay, just on the eastern 

 side of the easternmost quarry : and it is remarkable 

 that none of the numerous vessels wrecked on all 

 sides of it, should ever have been impelled against 

 it, and have tumbled it from its unstable position. 



Such an object, so circumstanced, would, in times 

 of idolatry, have been a famed and dreaded sea-god. 

 Sacrifices would have smoked beneath it ; and, 

 probably, the blood of the shipwrecked mariner 

 might often have flowed, in expression of horrid 

 gratitude to a senseless stone, for vessels thrown on 

 the coast, a prey to the savage inhabitants. Would 

 that such savage thirst for plunder had never dis- 

 graced Christianity ! Whether our Druidical pre- 

 decessors allowed of such idolatry may be questioned ; 

 and it is still more unlikely that the Bear's Head 

 was so far worked out, as to have been a striking 

 object in their time. We only know that, in 1785, 

 before we had yet attained years of discretion, it 

 was spring tide when the Bear's Head drank ; and 

 now, after half a century, at spring tides, its marble 

 muzzle is still bathed, at high water. 



It has lost nothing of its ursine profile within our 

 recollection ; but the front face seems to us to have 

 become more animal-like ; not so much to the bear 

 as the water-spaniel. The cleft, however, which 

 seems to divide it from the body of the rock, 

 appears also to have made progress ; and it would 

 not surprise us if another score of years should 

 witness the subvertion of this hoary relic of our 

 childhood ; and probably of the days when Ply- 

 mouth was a defenceless village, the prey of mar- 

 auders, who came to steal slaves for foreign markets ; 

 but of this more presently. Let us, in the mean 

 while, exhort all lovers of the old Bear's Head, to 

 take especial care of this plate ; probably the only 



