THE BURNING CLIFFS. 53 



of remarkable elegance and beauty. All these demand 

 more consideration than I can now stay to give them ; 

 so that I propose to return to them in detail presently, 

 describing them to you, not from the hm-ried glances 

 we can give them m the boat, but as they appear when 

 at home in the Aquarium. 



Meanwhile we put the boat before the wind and run 

 along the inhospitable coast on our left. We leave 

 the pleasant vale behind, and skim swiftly by the 

 black rocks of Ratcliff Head, and the distorted and 

 confused strata of Goggin's Barrow. We pass Osming- 

 ton Mills, where a rather ample sheet of w^ater is poured 

 in a foaming cascade over the low cliff, and where those 

 curious circular blocks of grit-stone, flat on one side 

 and conical on the other, are imbedded with regTilarity 

 in the sandy face of the precipice ; and leave on our 

 quarter the rocks, where the abmidance of iron pyrites 

 and sulphur has more than once presented the strange 

 phenomenon of spontaneous fire, — a phenomenon dis- 

 tinctly remembered still by the inhabitants of Wey- 

 mouth, who night after night used to gaze out with 

 wonder on the Burning Cliffs.* 



* In 1816, a large conical mass of earth began to slide from its 

 base, and continued with intermissions to descend for three years, 

 when it reached its present situation on the sea-beach, an oval cone of 

 800 feet in length, and about 80 in height. After a few years, smoke 

 and steam began to issue from several cracks and apertures, about 

 half way up its sides ; and in March, 1827, fire was seen to proceed 

 from them, on several occasions. An attempt to bore near the heated 

 part was made, which did not succeed, in consequence of the hardness 

 of the rock. But in April an excavation was commenced on the south 

 side of the cliff about forty feet above the beach, the materials re- 

 moved consisting of lime and alum stone, intermixed with dark 

 bituminous earth, which was smoking at the time of removal. Stone 



